Following Sergeant's resignation from BBC show Strictly Come Dancing last week, Tim Loughton and Peter Bottomley tabled a joint Early Day Motion calling for the House to announce its "devastation" at his departure and demand his reinstatement to the dancefloor.

The joint bid, which Mr Loughton said he "scribbled out" on the train to London, "calls on the BBC to reinstate John Sergeant on the show immediately and for the veteran political commentator, turned entertainingly dodgy dancer, to dust down his sequins, return to the dance floor and manfully face the music until the British Public, or injury, decides otherwise".

He admitted there was a obviously humourous element to the bid, but said it also addressed the serious issue of democracy and the importance, and relevance, of voting.

He said: "This is a popular light entertainment show which depends for its success largely on the participation of the viewing public, who pay to cast their votes as to who best they want to see entertain them.

"After all the recent scandals about TV vote-fixing, as well as the worryingly low turnout at real elections, this is something that the BBC should be encouraging not suppressing.

"If you can't vote whether a dodgy dancer stays in a television show, how on earth are you going to make a difference bothering to go along to a polling station on voting day?"

But one Shoreham man, who asked not to be named, wrote to the Herald to say he was "frankly shocked" at the MPs' bid.

He added: "They are not paid to waste tax-payers' money on such a pathetic idea.

"This area has many problems that should take priority over what is on the television, or are our MPs simply trying to gain points with the narrow-minded members of our society, for whom TV is their life?"

John Lovell, a former Lib Dem councillor from Sunningdale Road, described the bid as "jumping on any passing bandwagon".

He asked "Have our representatives at Westminster not got more important things to occupy their time with when many of their constituents are facing hardship in the present financial climate?"



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