  We investigate representations of mapping class groups of surfaces that arise
from the untwisted Drinfeld double of a finite group G, focusing on surfaces
without marked points or with one marked point. We obtain concrete descriptions
of such representations in terms of finite group data. This allows us to
establish various properties of these representations. In particular we show
that they have finite images, and that for surfaces of genus at least 3 their
restriction to the Torelli group is non-trivial iff G is non-abelian.
