But – there was still one more appearance to come in 2012. And lo! – on Christmas Day did appear the wise men of Berkshire Bedlam! And 7.3m viewers watched! And said, as the images flickered but too briefly across their TV screens “whose backside was that – it looked familiar?”. Yes, this was our appearance in ITV’s Christmas special episode of Downton Abbey, in the country fair scenes, filmed in August in the grounds of Eton College. As Sue had been unable to make the day of filming, Jerry had stepped in on melodeon, playing many of the same notes as Sue. A team of 6 dancers had gone along, and the first action for 4 of them on arrival was to have a short back and sides haircut for added 1920s authenticity, plus, in the case of Roy, a full beard removal, requiring the assistance of a blowtorch and several strong men. The programme’s costume designer had done a great deal of research to find us some reasonably authentic looking 1920s morris gear, including handmade baldricks, and the resulting kit not only looked the part but wouldn’t be out of keeping today (great effort Dora!). On the day, we performed simple sequences of a couple of dances over and over while filming took place all around us, although in the final broadcast we were only on screen for a few seconds. You could however hear various morris sounds even when we weren’t in shot, including the sound of clashing sticks while we were supposed to be doing a hanky dance. Ah well, that’s showbiz….
