Some Jig Competition Facts

The first John Gasson Memorial Jig Competition was won by members of one of John's own teams, Mr Jorrocks. There was an eerie moment during the first competition in 1988, as organiser Tracey Rose recalls: "There were 26 solo jigs and many of them were done for John. The competition was in the council chamber and we packed it. The spookiest bit was when Rob Pearson did the Nutting Girl. Rob did about four steps and the lights dipped and then came straight back up. The Nutting Girl was John's jig." As far as Tracey knows, no one had dimmed the switch. "I felt that it was John telling me he was there watching us and he approved of it."

Duncan Moss of Great Western Morris is the only person to have won a prize in the competition without having entered it, and the only person to have performed as a past winner without having won. In 2008 he had to perform the previous years' winning double jig in place of one of his sons, who was abroad. So heroic were his attempts to match his remaining son's athleticism that he was given a special prize ... and rapturous applause (or should that be "rupturous"?).

The rules say each dancer may perform to only one musician, but perhaps that should be, "a maximum of one". At least one performer has danced to his own singing. Matt Green of Bampton had no one to play for him: he performed his bacca pipes jig (a dance over crossed churchwarden pipes, in the manner of the Scottish sword dance) while playing the fiddle. And Mary-Jo Searle and Penny Gillett of The Bee Team performed a fiddle jig in which each played while the other danced, and then both played and danced at the same time.

The term "morris jig" traditionally refers to dances by one or two people in the Cotswold morris style, but the competition has also seen broom dances, a sailor's hornpipe, and entries based on Molly dancing and North West morris - both team-based traditions. So far, no one has attempted a linked-swords dance.

Four people have entered broom dances over the years, but Tony Forster of Pig Dyke Molly performed the most original version: it also involved dancing with a dustpan brush and a toothbrush.

More than a decade after it happened, people still talk about an entry by Zhiggy Zhiggy Zhiggy, a duo who came from Wiltshire (as if that explained anything). They started with the final capers and performed the jig backwards - music and all.

No detail should be overlooked by competitors. Compere Chris Rose announced that double jig entrants Barry Honeysett (Great Western Morris) and Simon Pipe (The Outside Capering Crew) would lose points for having incompatible hairstyles. When Simon later did a broom dance in the same year's event, Chris said he'd get extra points for having the same hairstyle as the broom.

The dancer at the side of the page is the late Roy Yarnell, he is the only Morris Ring Squire to have entered the competition.

Hattie Vale of Ditchling Morris became the youngest winner of the solo competition at the age of 14 (and the youngest winner of the audience prize at the age of 11, when she was listed as Harriet!). Mark Pinder, who jigged with his brother Alun in 2008, is thought to have been the youngest dancer in the competition's history, at the age of ten; they were accompanied by 11-year-old fiddler Dylan Cairns-Howarth, who the competition's youngest-ever musician. All three were members of Nyfte, the National Youth Folklore Troupe of England.

Sue Graham (Windsor Morris and The Outside Capering Crew) became the oldest winner of the solo competition at the age of 45 - and won the doubles title the following year. Barry and Jack Honeysett simultaneously became the oldest and youngest winners of the double jig competition when they danced together at the ages of 47 and 17. John Maher of Bristol Morris Men is thought to have been the oldest dancer to take part: his daughter put him up to it, to celebrate reaching his 70th birthday - but the audience wasn't told his age and wouldn't have guessed.

Even when the names of the winners have been announced each year, the suspense is not over. There's still the mystery of what's been put in the trophy. Since the earliest competitions, the tradition has been that it is filled by the previous years' winners. Some winners get champagne (or fizzy wine); Darrell Hurtt complained that he and Ian Dedic got warm canned beer; a year later, they filled the trophy with a half-bottle of gin and "as much tonic and lime as it could take", which probably wasn't enough. Jameson Wooders and Jane Berrisford-Smith used the trophy as a trifle dish. Another year, it contained a "morris ale", containing "hops" (beer), capers and "slows" (sloe gin).

With five prizes at stake, judging can be a drawn-out affair. One year, a superb but increasingly anxious juggler, booked to entertain during the judges' deliberations, ran out of tricks before they returned; in 2007, there were so many entries to be considered, the venue had to be cleared for the next event before they had finished, and the prizes were awarded in the park.

No one has ever fallen asleep while judging the competition. Organiser Tracey Rose is sad to report that she has lost her photograph of a member of the audience who slept through the whole event, snoring.

Julian Drury of Stony Stratford Morris is the only person to have won the solo jig competition as both dancer (1993) and musician (in 1995 - when he also won third place performing a broom dance).

Five dancers have done the double in the double, winning twice - but only one musician, Mark Rogers of Stroud Morris and The Outside Capering Crew. Mark has also won in more categories than anyone else (four). Four dancers have won the solo competition more than once. See the list of winners for the names.

Of the eleven dancers who have won the double jig competition, seven have also been winners in the solo. Laurel Swift of Morris Offspring is the only dancer to have won both competitions in the same year, 2006 - when her brother, Doug, also won the audience prize.

Jameson Wooders of Berkshire Bedlam Morris says on the Tips page of this website that it helps if jig dancers have a close relationship with their performing partners. He must be right: the double jig competition has been won three times by dancing brothers (2001, 2003 and 2007) and once by father and son (2005). The solo prize went to siblings in 2002 and daughter and father in 2007. The best new entrant prize has been won by relatives six times in nine years, usually by siblings and in 2005 by two brothers and their mother. The audience prize has been won by the aforementioned father and son and by a husband and wife ... and by The Zeppelin Brothers, who aren't actually related.

The Outside Capering Crew, an innovative jig team based in central England, was formed as a direct result of the competition and has claimed several victories since. Team members failed to add the main solo prize in 2007 but shamelessly claimed it anyway ... by recruiting the winner, Emma Darby of Oyster Morris.

The newcomers' prize was introduced in 2000, when Sue Hamer-Moss of Jack Straw Morris was the only contender. She was told it would not be awarded automatically ... but danced well enough to receive it. But when the now-defunct Innovation Prize was introduced in 1995, the judges decided no one deserved it.

No one called Thorn has ever won a prize in the competition. On the other hand, it's been liberally strewn with Roses. Saul Rose, a winning musician three times, is not related to Ben or Ned Rose, who won the newcomers' prize with their mother, Mary Rose; and none of them are related to organiser Tracey Rose ... who is, however, married to the compere, Chris Rose.

As with all the best folk traditions, there is an mystical formula for calculating the dates of future jig competitions. They always take place on the afternoon of the last Sunday before the first Monday in August. See you there.