Dancing the night away...

I am addicted to Strictly Come Dancing. I watch the Saturday night, the Sunday night and the tea time partner show if I can get away with it. This is, I know, somwhat sad. But it is nice watching people who have no idea whether they can do something get up and give it a go (desperate attempts to start off the next stage in their media career aside, of course).

What does make me laugh about it is the fact that it has helped to start off a dancing craze across the country. The new alternative exercise option is a dance class. One can only assume that people think they may come out of that class being the next Aleysha Dixon or Mark Ramprakash. The essential difference, though, is that they are getting one-on-one tuition with some of the country's (nay, world's) top competition dancers. They aren't being taught by Pablo (honest, I have Spanish ancestry) Wrigglesworth in the PE hall of their local primary school along with twenty other people with only the aid of a dance tape which has carnival nits on one side and 'Viva La Spainia' on the other.

I have been to a salsa class. The experience is not one I'd like to repeat. You could smell the waves of middle-ages singleton desperation wafting from between the double doors. Then, of course you have to stand in lines and copy the basic steps (all the while being highly conscious or your bottom- because we are British). This is actually ok. We can cope with that bit. This is despite the extremely bossy other pupil who should clearly be in the intermediate class, but likes 'helping' and the intermediate class clashes with her pottery class. This has nothing to do with her clear passion for Pablo's latin trousers.

It is the moment when you have to start dancing with someone that is utterly terrifying. The choice is not great. I had the guy who constantly rotated your arms as if he were trying to wind you up. One can only suspect that he thought the women there were a more complicated, clockwork, independently moving version of his last girlfriend (who he had to blow up). The other set were three very suspiciously adolescent lads- one of whom had an Iron Maiden t-shirt and who looked a little out of space. Two of them where clearly there to meet girls and pretending to everyone else in the room that they liked the dancing. The other clearly liked the dancing, but was trying to pretend to his mates that he was there to meet girls. Because pretending you are a virgin at twenty is less in embarrassing in British society than admitting you like to boogie.

I don't know how I got out of there alive. Bruce has got a lot to answer for- and it's not just the golf.