00:00In the bustling tapestry of Britain, where centuries-old traditions blend seamlessly with modern life,
00:05there exists individuals who march to the beat of their own drum.
00:10Meet the inventors, the dreamers and the eccentrics, whose daily lives are anything but conventional,
00:15as we showcase the vibrant eccentricity that colours the landscape of British culture.
00:21Unconventional Brits invites you to step into the worlds of local legends,
00:25celebrating the delightful diversity that makes Britain truly extraordinary.
00:30Coming up this week, we're revisiting our traditional folk music heritage with a sea shanty crew
00:39and a day of dance in Lancashire.
00:43We sing sea shanties, people come and listen, they can bring the fish and chips
00:48and throw some money into the buckets to support the iron line.
00:53I'm the present captain of the shanty crew, which we set up in 2015.
01:03I primarily play guitar, but I also have a six-string banjo and a six-string mandolin.
01:08I've always had a love of folk music since I was a boy, and many of the crew also like sea shanties.
01:20Keep it up and away we'll go, all on the plains of Mexico.
01:27We're by the sea. We just have one RNLI member, Tony Cox, who is the mechanic and he's also the coxswain of the lifeboat crew.
01:39And he's our one true RNLI crew member.
01:44We also have on our percussion team Mike Leach, who plays the coxswain and drums.
01:50And we have what we call a monkey stick, which is basically a stick which has got lots of beer bottles on it.
01:57And we have a monkey at the bottom, so it's our monkey stick.
02:00I play this, which is a traditional shanty instrument.
02:11It's a monkey stick, or an ugly stick, or a river rattler, or a Mendoza, or a lager phone, named after all the bottle tops that are on it.
02:19This is a traditional shanty instrument.
02:21The idea was that the shanty man, the shanties were all from the age of sail.
02:25And when the shanty man was beating out the tune, he needed something to beat the tune with.
02:29And so this was what he used.
02:33So this is a very lager-y update of an 18th, 19th century instrument.
02:46I'm really sad to say, I wasn't the one who made it.
02:49But our cajon player made it, Mike, and he drank all of the beers to make this lager phone.
02:56Also be beer and tobacco.
02:58So, yes, he's the one responsible for putting all this together.
03:01And he didn't stop drinking once he got to the end of making this.
03:05He's kept going since.
03:06The sailor's still a sailor, just like he was before.
03:10So all you have to do is bang it.
03:12But the beauty is, once you're banging at the tune, you could also give it a bit of a shake and tap and things like that.
03:18So there's a bit going on with it.
03:19Don't hold the rope, don't climb at the mast.
03:23If you see a sailing ship, it might be a last.
03:26So!
03:27Get your stearings ready for another run ashore.
03:31A sailor ain't a sailor ain't a sailor ain't a sailor ready for...
03:33Particularly here in Lytham St. Anne's is quite poignant because in 1886 there was the greatest disaster that befell the Arnolai when 27 lifeboat crewmen from Southport and St. Anne's crews,
03:53they lost their lives, saving 12 of the crew of the Mexico, the Lytham crew saved them, and it really sparked the public appeal for the Arnolai, Queen Victoria supported, donated.
04:12We raised money for the Shannon Lifeboat Appeal in 2017 and 18.
04:18Oh, it's time in the day since he came on deck.
04:21He's good at his job, don't you feck, he'll be fine when he gets some grog down his neck.
04:28So this is our third album and it's called Kilgram or Bells, and it's got a mix of traditional shanties and songs that we've written ourselves.
04:35Hasn't got a sailor yet, hey!
04:39I had an extra verse in there as well, did you notice?
04:51Yes.
04:52Yes.
04:53Yes.
04:54Yes.
04:55Yes.
04:56Yes.
04:57Yes.
04:58I enjoy the movements.
04:59I like the dancing.
05:01I enjoy the movements. I like the dancing and music. Yeah. I think from a public point
05:24of view, they like the colour and the costumes. It's not majorly popular, but it is vibrant.
05:36Before COVID, there were 800-nod teams active in the country. Anecdotally, people have struggled
05:43since COVID to recruit and retain members. We dance northwest.
05:53The sort of military sets in rows of eight people, two abreast and the garlands. That's
06:02specifically from the area round about Manchester and Cheshire. But some of the ones here today
06:08are doing sort of Cotswold with the hankies and the high pigs. You also see quite a few
06:15boarded teams around here, typically for painted faces, big sticks, lots of noise, a lot of
06:23very loud percussion.
06:24The team is called the Royal Preston Morris Dancers, based on a team that danced in the
06:331890s. There's two distinct types of Morris. One is the Cotswold Morris and the other is
06:43the Northwest Morris, which is what you see today with clogs. And that's a modern idiom.
06:48That was only sort of Victorian times. The original Cotswold teams. I think there's records
06:53going back to 1413.
06:55The original team didn't dance in clogs and very few teams actually did. But when the
07:04teams were revived and Horwich are revived, they said, that's where clogs. So clogs were
07:10not a prerequisite. Slippy surfaces and clog irons are not a good combination. Neither are
07:17a man at all. I think the public are generally very supportive. I think they enjoy it. I think
07:30it's probably something that they come out on a Saturday morning and don't expect to see.
07:36We are tribal belly dances. So we do tribal belly dancing, but we dance our moves to the English
07:47folk and Morris tunes. And we kind of pinch some of the Morris formations and incorporate
07:52them into our dances.
08:05It's our 20th anniversary this year. There was a group of dancers came together and sort
08:10of started experimenting with different styles and different types of the tribal belly dancing.
08:15What people usually think of as belly dancing is what they kind of see in Turkish restaurants,
08:19the sort of jingly bells, the gauzy outfits, the solo dancers. Tribal dancing is much more
08:25about dancing as a group, as a connected unit. And in its purest form, tribal belly dance is
08:32improvised. So all the moves have signals and cues. So whoever is at the front will dance a move
08:37and everybody knows what they're going to do. We do dance choreographies, but we use those moves
08:43within the choreographies.
08:53It's taken a little bit of work, but a lot of what we dance, because of the formations
08:58and the structure of the moves we do, they're built on a four beat, four step, eight step.
09:03So as long as the rhythm has got a regular four beat, we can usually make it more smooth dance
09:07to most tunes.
09:12It's a dance style that suits every body shape, every level of fitness, every age, every style,
09:21because it's adaptable. The moves are sometimes vigorous and sometimes energetic, but they can
09:26be adapted and they can be quite graceful and elegant or quite frantic and busy. But we tend
09:32to go for the elegant.
09:38Traditionally, it's all about the layers of skirts and the bloomers and the thing that sort
09:44of the old fashioned tribal jewelry and the sort of dreadlocks and the flowers. So our
09:48costumes have been created to try and do a nod to that traditional tribal style costume,
09:53but also we've incorporated all the flowers and the ribbons and the bells as our nod to the Morris.
09:58So we've kind of fused the two styles and the waistcoats and the little top hats as well.
10:02So it's kind of anything goes and we kind of have a bit of an expression is more is more.
10:07So when you think you've got enough jewelry on and you think you've put enough skirts on,
10:10put another layer on.
10:11I think it's the fact that a lot of our members certainly want this tradition to carry on.
10:24And we get to go to places that I've danced at the Albert Hall, for instance.
10:29No, I wouldn't have been performing at the Albert Hall doing anything else, would I?
10:33It's fun to do. It's great fun to do. Yeah.
10:41Music of a different kind next week as we meet a 10 year old gull screeching champion.
11:00Hi, I'm Cooper Wallace. I'm 10 years old, also known as Seagull Boy.
11:04And this year and last year, I won the European gull screeching championships.
11:11From England, come on. And then they said, Cooper Wallace, like, yes. I did it again.
11:23And we hope not to scream four when we meet an 11 year old competitive golfer.
11:28I'm 11 years old and I'm going to the Champions of Champions in Ireland.
11:32We head to Ireland on the 20th of July to compete in the Champions of Champions.
11:39There's hundreds of juniors from all around the world.
11:42And I want to go on to win the Masters, the US Open.
