Strictly Come Dancing returned last weekend and I remember that, as a child, Come Dancing was a favourite programme of my mum’s that I “endured”, along with her other favourites – Crossroads and Coronation Street.
But I tenuously owe my very existence to dance halls.
Back then, they were a very popular meeting venue for young adults and it was then that my reluctant mum was coerced into visiting one on the promise of meeting a very popular charismatic pseudo-Irish, riotously funny guy.
So, I can only imagine her disappointment when she was first introduced to my dad. Worse, still, when she also discovered that he couldn’t dance and she returned home to find her legs and feet battered and bruised from his constant kicking and treading on her toes.
Undeterred and to combat this, she signed them up to the notorious Peggy Spencer Dance School where my dad sadly only learnt to stamp on her toes in perfect rhythm to the Quickstep, Samba, Tango and Foxtrot.
Fast forward and my own bad experiences of dancing were at college discos.
Looking back, I’ve absolutely no idea why I’d spend the week relentlessly glaring above my textbooks at the girls I fancied and then, having never spoken to them in real life, thought it was a good idea to wait until Saturday at 10.56pm, when the disco lights had dimmed, to ask them if they’d like to dance with me to The Power Of Love by Frankie Goes To Hollywood because the resident DJ only had that one smoochie song.
How was this approach ever a good idea?
Even waiting until10.56pm whilst drinking copious amounts of alcohol for confidence was ridiculous because the girls were either chatted up beforehand and dancing with someone else or I’d accidentally win the dancing competition by drunkenly crossing the floor to talk to them.
Nowadays, I spend Saturday nights enduring Strictly Come Dancing. Sat in a chair, watching attractive women dancing with other guys and crying into my beer. It’s exactly like my student days.
Categories:Dad, Television
Russ Writes 
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