The Cloggies

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The Cloggies, an Everyday Story of Clog-Dancing Folk , was a long running cartoon by Bill Tidy which ran in the Private Eye satirical magazine. It gently satirised northern British male culture, and introduced a shocked nation to the scurrilous delights of Lancashire clog-dancing. This particular variation of the art involved two teams dancing towards each other in formation, followed by each attempting to cripple their opponents with gracefully executed knee- and foot- moves. Thus the Forward Sir Percy, a synchronized low-level knee attack, the Double Arkwright wi' Ankle Lever, the Heckmondwycke with Reverse Spin and the ever controversial Triple Arkwright. The Cloggies were undisputed champions of this "sport", usually inflicting grave injuries before repairing to the nearest pub. Their capacity for beer was legendary; their home venue, the Clog and Bells, Blagdon. There were also unorthodox activities involving the use of ferrets.

The series wickedly lampooned folk dancing and introduced an entire sub-culture of dance leagues, a governing body for the sport (characterised as officious, clumsy, over-bureaucratic and out of touch), an idiosyncratic cast of sociopaths and a yearning for earlier days of greater respect (the famous Policeman on a White Bicycle).

The Team consisted of:

Stan (captain), later ennobled as Lord Stan of Blagdon
Albert (second boot, with his false teeth)
Neville (third boot; trilby and glasses)
Arnold (fourth boot)
Ted (fifth boot, with the grey socks)
Norman (bearded, who at sixth boot, replaced....)

Wally (deceased).

The sub-title, an Everyday Story of Clog-Dancing Folk, parodied the subtitle to the long-running BBC radio series, The Archers, which was subtitled an Everyday Story of Farming Folk.

Collections of the cartoons were published between 1969 and 1977, with titles The Cloggies (1969), The Cloggies dance again (1973) and The Cloggies are back (1977).

There is a theory suggesting that Bill Tidy's inspiration for this series grew from one of his cartoons in Punch in the mid 1960s, where he parodied the funding objectives and credibility of the Arts Council of Great Britain by illustrating a group of morris dancers in full costume, slumped around a table outside a pub, behind an enormous pile of empties, with one of them asking "Well lads, what shall we do wi' rest of Arts Council grant ?".