Some Jig Competition Facts

The first John Gasson Memorial Jig Competition, in 1988, was won by members of one of John's own teams, Mr Jorrocks. Andrew Jones and Tim Bull won again in 1991.

There was an eerie moment during one early event, as organiser Tracey Rose recalls: "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 Gasson'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."

The term "morris jig" traditionally refers to dances by one or two people in the Cotswold morris style, but the competition has also seen a sailor's hornpipe, and entries derived from 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, but Tony Forster of Pig Dyke Molly performed the most unconventional version: it also involved dancing with a dustpan brush and a toothbrush. Tony has written a short article about his various spoof entries.

More than a decade after it happened, people still talk about an entry by Zhiggy Zhiggy Zhiggy, a duo from Wiltshire. They started with the final capers and performed the jig backwards - music and all.

At least one performer has danced to his own singing, and another to his own melodeon-playing. Matt Green of Bampton played fiddle while dancing a bacca pipes jig (a dance over crossed churchwarden pipes, in the manner of the Scottish sword dance). 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 late Roy Yarnell (pictured) is the only Morris Ring Squire to have danced in the competition. The current president of the Morris Federation, Barry Goodman, has twice won as a musician. Former president John Bacon has also been a winning musician.

Mark Rogers, jobbing squeezebox player, is the only person to have been a winner in all five current sections of the competition (prizes are awarded to both dancer and musician). Bizarrely, the last of the five titles he claimed was Best New Entrant, playing for David Roodman of The Bouwerie Boys.

David Roodman's Best New Entrant title in 2009 made him the first American prize-winner. He flew in from New York on the Thursday before the competition and flew out again the day after it. David came a very close third in the solo section (only one point separated the top three dancers). He and Mark Rogers practised together on opposite sides of the Atlantic, by emailed video.

David's entry sparked a prolonged internet debate on the Morris Dance Discussion List. The arguments about judging, American style and even the competition's very existence can be followed in the list archives. MDDL Archive.

The first American entrants in the competition are thought to have been Steve Galey and musician Sherry Neyhus of Seattle Morris, in the mid-90s. Steve told members of the Morris Dance Discussion List: "My performance went off ok - I didn't win anything but most who saw the dance were quite complimentary and I feasted on free beer most of the rest of the week."

By tradition, the solo trophy is filled with a drink 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).

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 four times by dancing brothers (2001, 2003, 2007, and 2009) 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, usually by siblings and in 2005 by two brothers and their mother. The audience prize has been won by two sets of father-and-son dancers (all members of Great Western Morris), and by a husband and wife... and also by the Zeppelin Brothers, who aren't actually related.

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 danced as a past winner without having won. In 2008 he had to perform the previous year's 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"?).

Simon Pipe and Lawrence Wright of The Outside Capering Crew are the only people to have featured in the competition without knowing it. They had entered with a broom dance in 2007 and 2008, and fluffed it both times. The following year Lawrence was in France on the day of the competition and Simon was five thousand miles away, on the remote island of St Helena. Both were unaware that two other competitors had entered in their names, wearing pictures of the absent duo over their faces. They still did not win.

When the now-defunct Innovation Prize was introduced in 1995, the judges decided no one deserved it.

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 became 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 dancer to win the solo competition, at the age of 45 - and won the doubles title the following year. Barry and Jack Honeysett (Great Western Morris) 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 - the audience wasn't told his age.

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, possibly making him the only musician to have competed against his own partner).

Of the eleven dancers who have won the double jig competition, seven have also been winners in the solo. Laurel Swift of Morris Offspring was the first dancer to win both competitions in the same year, in 2006 - when her brother, Doug, also won the audience prize. Ben Moss matched her achievement in 2009, when his brother, Dom, was his partner in the double. Dom was banned from the solo competition that year, because he'd won it the year before.

The Outside Capering Crew, an innovative jig team based in central England, was formed as a direct result of the competition and its members have won several prizes 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.

Aside from the very first winner, only one dancer has won the competition at the first attempt.

Barry Honeysett is thought to have come second in the solo contest more times than anyone else - he cannot remember how many.

No detail should be overlooked by competitors. Compere Chris Rose announced that double jig entrants Barry Honeysett and Simon Pipe would lose points for having incompatible hairstyles. When Simon later performed his broom dance in the same year's event, Chris said he'd get extra points for having the same hairstyle as the broom.

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.

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.

As with all the best folk traditions, there is a 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.