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Dancing sends us crazy – look at Strictly come prancing and Abba’s Brexit queen

Embargoed to 2035 Saturday September 22 

For use in UK, Ireland or Benelux countries only Undated BBC handout photo of Kevin Clifton and Stacey Dooley during a dress rehearsal for Strictly Come Dancing. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Issue date: Saturday September 22, 2018. See PA story SHOWBIZ Strictly. Photo credit should read: Guy Levy/BBC/PA Wire NOTE TO EDITORS: Not for use more than 21 days after issue. You may use this picture without charge only for the purpose of publicising or reporting on current BBC programming, personnel or other BBC output or activity within 21 days of issue. Any use after that time MUST be cleared through BBC Picture Publicity. Please credit the image to the BBC and any named photographer or independent programme maker, as described in the caption.
Embargoed to 2035 Saturday September 22 For use in UK, Ireland or Benelux countries only Undated BBC handout photo of Kevin Clifton and Stacey Dooley during a dress rehearsal for Strictly Come Dancing. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Issue date: Saturday September 22, 2018. See PA story SHOWBIZ Strictly. Photo credit should read: Guy Levy/BBC/PA Wire NOTE TO EDITORS: Not for use more than 21 days after issue. You may use this picture without charge only for the purpose of publicising or reporting on current BBC programming, personnel or other BBC output or activity within 21 days of issue. Any use after that time MUST be cleared through BBC Picture Publicity. Please credit the image to the BBC and any named photographer or independent programme maker, as described in the caption.

Someone has sent me their phrase of the week. It is in Latin. Oh help. Something by that great Roman philosopher Cicero, apparently. “Nemo enim fere saltat sobrius, nisi forte insanit.”

Let me think, I do not have much of a grasp on Latin but nemo is nobody and it is something about something insanitary so I don’t think I want to know.

Ah, the automatic widgety translator thing says it means: “Almost nobody dances sober unless, of course, he is insane.” Ah, I see.

What is it with dancing? Every year about this time, many people start mumbling about dancing because Strictly is on the telly.

What a waste of energy that programme is. The judging is a bit too random to be taken seriously, most of the so-called celebs are not that good, and the only reason they agree to go on is to get a bit of exposure to try to show everyone that they don’t take themselves too seriously.

But they do, they really do take themselves absolutely seriously and do not like the fact that they could be laughed at. However, they could not miss the chance to be in front of nine million viewers.

So there is this constant exposure to twisty-clicky-flicky dancing by people who would have been better off staying on the sofa like the millions of viewers.

Most of the people at home only watch because it is just Channel 4 News on the other side nowadays. The celebs’ hearts are not really in it, a bit like the professionals who have to dance with these numpties and somehow try to make them look good. It all ends up looking like some sacks of potatoes being flung around a barn and now we know the real reason, thanks to Marcus Tullius Cicero, the geezer who said wise things and was around, according to the best available records, from January 3, 106 BC till he waltzed off into the sunset on December 7, 43 BC.

When I think of dancing, I think of Scottish traditional dancing, not all that lah-di-dah ballroom stuff.

Think post-ceilidh dance in the Bernera Hall circa 1974 or the pre-wedding celebrations – the réiteach – on the island of Todday before the wedding of George Campbell before he made it to the mainland and went off to work for the security services and became Major George Cowley with Bodie and Doyle in The Professionals. Yeah, him. Gordon Jackson, that’s the fellow.

That was the famous tale, retold with a little licence by Compton Mackenzie in Whisky Galore, of the ship SS Politician, an 8,000-tonne cargo ship which left Liverpool on 3rd February 1941, with a cargo including 264,000 bottles of whisky, but which came to grief off Eriskay.

Which reminds me of hearing about a dance teacher in Inverness, probably with a southern isles connection, who taught her students a dance called The Politician. It is easy to learn if you want to try it. All you have to do is take three steps forward, two steps backward, then side-step, side-step, and turn around.

Which brings me to Theresa May. Oh my golly gosh. She glided on to that stage at the party conference to the strains of Dancing Queen but very quickly became a bit robotic and ended up looking like someone trying to move a sideboard.

When I finally peeped out from behind the sofa, the funniest thing was the sight of all these Tory Party conference delegates with what appeared to be stick-on smiles, obviously afraid to laugh out loud in case they were castigated for treason.

And we were all thinking Mama Mia, what is going on?

She had started this Maybot shoogling on her African tour recently and just couldn’t help herself.

How much more is to come? Will she boogie on down when she is next on the Andrew Marr show?

I am not sure I could keep Sunday morning breakfast in the right place.

There are still a few Abba hits left she could shake her thang to at prime minister’s questions – Knowing Me, Knowing You, The Winner Takes It All or, better still, Take a Chance on Me.

She could get stuck into Brexit negotiations with Voulez Vous or even The Winner Takes It All. Spooky, most of Abba’s hits could have been written for the reluctant Brexiteer.

Enough is enough. We can only have a giggle about it for so long. As far as Swedish schmaltzy singalong nonsense goes, I suppose I liked Abba.

They were bigger than they should have been so their music was pretty much everywhere. We always look back more fondly than we actually were at the time. No longer. Abba is now an instrument of broken governments. That dancing queen is dead to me.

Of course, as one who has not set the disco floor on fire for decades, I would never describe anyone else’s dancing as toe-curling. It is just coincidence that I have been able to get my shoes off for a week.