WE'VE BEEN TANGOEDPlanned as little more than an easy-going Saturday

IT was the day the paso doble died. When the BBC finally brought the axe down on long-running telly institution Come Dancing in 1996 you could almost feel the big hairdos droop and the infamous hand- sewn sequins losing their lustre.

After an astonishing 46 years at the top (it was the Beeb's longest-running programme), this glitzy showcase for competitive ballroom and Latin dancing had lost its foothold in the ratings - sliding from 10 million viewers during its heyday in the mid-1970s to 2.8 million. The world had changed, argued Auntie Beeb. And sunbed- kissed couples doing quicksteps, foxtrots and formation tangos were no longer part of it.

The fans were not going quietly though.

And throughout the land there were rumblings of discontent at the passing of this national institution.

"Don't pull the plug on this dancing feast, " cried Coronation Street star Sue Nicholls in the Daily Mail, flying the spangly banner for blue-rinsed matrons everywhere.

For the programme's creator Eric Morley, its demise was a particular blow: "When I heard that the BBC planned to axe Come Dancing, I felt abiding disappointment, sadness - almost shock.

"It offends nobody, " added the arbiter of family values, who also gave us Miss World.

Ballroom dancing, he believed, "remained the best way for boy to meet girl without offending any moral code".

But this was 1996, not 1956. And boys did not meet girls in ballrooms any more. The famous palais (a particularly popular feature in Glasgow which at one time had 14 to London's six) had long since become bingo halls. Come Dancing, with its bouffants and yards of highly flammable formal attire, was an anachronism.

But what a difference eight years makes.

Now, as the creators of the BBC's Strictly Come Dancing take a breather between last night's second series finals and a glitzy Christmas special, the UK public's love affair with ballroom dancing seems firmly back on course. And television bosses have not been slow to pick up the rhythm.

Already, the BBC has announced Strictly Dance Fever for next year, presented by Graham Norton. And ITV has struck back by recruiting Torvill and Dean as trainers for a forthcoming celebrity knockout contest, Stars On Thin Ice.

Meanwhile, Strictly Come Dancing - hosted by Bruce Forsyth and screen-candy sidekick Tess Daly - has helped revive the corpse of Saturday night telly. It has consistently trounced ITV1 rival The X Factor in the ratings: nearly 8.5 million haved tuned in for the peak- time public vote in the closing weeks compared with talent show The X Factor's average seven million.

And while The X Factor's Simon "Nasty" Cowell has dismissed Strictly Come Dancing as being for the pipe and slippers brigade, it seems ballroom fever is not just the preserve of the over-60s.

TV writer Gareth McLean admits to being a bit of a fan, battling over the remote each week with his partner, an X Factor devotee.

"The audience is skewed slightly older, " he says of Strictly Come Dancing. "But then only 46per cent of The X Factor audience is 16 to 34. It's also actually watched by an older audience than you might think."

As one local newspaper observed:

"[Strictly Come Dancing] is camp trash.

But it is family camp trash - and that's the key."

Over the past eight weeks, everyone from macho taxi drivers (one admitted to me that he was "obsessed") to six-year-old girls (my daughter has been agog at the spangly costumes each week) have tuned in to watch celebs - including last night's finalists: camp comic Julian Clary, Olympic athlete Denise Lewis and EastEnders star Jill Halfpenny - and their professional dance partners be put up for the Big Brother-style public vote.

NOBODY is more surprised at the nation's renewed appetite for ballroom and Latin American dancing than BBC Entertainment head Wayne Garvie, who admits that "people thought we were a bit mad" when the idea was first mooted. Even those on the competitive ballroom scene - or "dancesport", as it is called by those campaigning to have it included in the Olympic programme - were dubious at first.

Margo Fraser is general secretary of Scottish DanceSport, the governing body for amateur ballroom and Latin American dancing in Scotland. She regards Strictly Come Dancing as "the best thing that has happened to ballroom dancing for a long, long time". But with memories still fresh of Baz Luhrmann's luridly bitchy 1992 film Strictly Ballroom (which she admits was "quite true to life"), she had feared the worst.

"At first we weren't sure what kind of show it was going to be. We thought, 'Don't tell me this is going to be another take-off of ballroom dancing.' But when we saw it we thought, 'Oh, this is going to be good.'

"Everyone is delighted with it, the amateurs and the professionals."

As far as she is concerned, ballroom and Latin dancing has just been biding its time, waiting for the right format to spark a resurgence. "Every other country [except the UK] has had a revival, " she explains.

"All the other countries have thousands of dancers."

And, she argues, it is no accident that those nations where ballroom dancing is big (Italy, Japan, China and Russia being particularly keen) also happen to show it on television every week.

But telly exposure isn't everything. Fraser has been immersed in ballroom for years, presiding over a healthy competitive and social scene that supports numerous couples at world level (on the professional front Scotland has produced one of ballroom's biggest stars, 14-times World Latin American Champion Donnie Burns).

But even she can see that Come Dancing did the "sport" no favours in what one might describe as its Vegas years.

"The old-fashioned type [of Come Dancing contestant] where she sewed on the sequins herself and the dress had 500 yards of net - that was just ludicrous. It sort of became a joke. It just didn't have the right format to encourage people to dance - but I think this [Strictly Come Dancing] definitely has."

ACCORDING to Fraser, and others in the business, this is one telly craze we are not just enjoying from the comfort of our armchairs. Unlike cookery programmes - where we salivate as Nigella whips up a culinary feast, then pop a ready-meal in the microwave - when it comes to Strictly Come Dancing, viewers are actually waltzing the waltz.

"This has definitely caught the imagination of the public, " says Fraser. "My phone never stops ringing with people wanting to know where to dance."

But she warns: "They're thinking they're going to be able to dance like that in five weeks, but they're not getting professional coaching six days a week."

Ballroom instructor Chris Malone, who offers both beginners' classes and private tuition, has also noticed a post-Strictly Come Dancing surge in interest: "I've certainly had many a phonecall with people looking to take up this type of dancing."

And, he adds, it's not just retired types looking to recapture their youth. Today's disconnected young people are queuing up to sample the old-fashioned intimacy of dancing cheek-to-cheek.

"We're talking early 20s and so forth. It's a lovely thing to do because it's something you can do with someone you're very happy with, as opposed to some singular activity where you're not involved with your partner."

But why bother with ballroom when there are so many easier ways to get close to another human being? Maybe there is something more fundamental at play in society's apparent stampede to get back on the dance-floor? You could argue it augurs a return to old-fashioned values - and perhaps for some older couples that is exactly what it represents. After all, what could be more reassuringly traditional than ballroom dancing's first principle: men lead, women follow?

Chris Malone is suitably chastened when he admits: "I have to say, there are a lot of those values [in ballroom dancing] and I still repeat those values whenever I'm teaching. I hate to think that it sounds really sexist, but it is really important the male and female understand their roles when they're dancing."

But it seems most couples leave ballroom's gender roles behind when they leave the dance-floor. Says Malone: "You always get one or two men who when you're saying, 'Gentlemen, you're in charge', you'll get that little aside of 'That'll be the first time'."

For Morag Deyes - director of Edinburgh's Dance Base and a woman who is most definitely in charge - any nostalgia sparked by Strictly Come Dancing is purely of the aesthetic kind.

"It goes right back to the whole Fred and Ginger thing, " she says of the current ballroom fever.

"That kind of dancing has always been associated with glamour. You see the dancers wearing loads and loads of make-up and basically varnished from head to toe - that's what you have to look like. It's fantastic - it's a fantasy dance."

Glamour, of course, is one word for it.

Camp is another. Many on the ballroom scene have condemned the media for lingering over orange tans and powder-puff dresses when we should be concentrating on the finer points of the cha cha cha.

But TV presenter David Dickinson's mahogany hue and Julian Clary in a fitted frou-frou shirt on Strictly Come Dancing are rather hard to ignore.

And for younger audiences especially, isn't this high-sheen glamour - ballroom bling if you like - part of the attraction?

"Young people are definitely liking the campness, " says Morag Deyes. "We've just seen a fashion and music revival of big hair and glossy eyeshadow and all that dripping-with-jewels stuff. The younger audience love all that."

For TV writer Gareth McLean, the key to our renewed love of ballroom - whether as viewers or participants - lies in the oh- sopostmodern idea that we appreciate it on a number of levels.

"I suppose there is a certain amount of nostalgia as you're watching [ballroom dancing]. It's quite funny, because you can watch it and just enjoy the movement - and still laugh at them for being all tits and teeth.

"With Strictly Come Dancing, they've got the whole irony level in for younger, more knowing viewers and then older viewers can still enjoy the dancing. They've been quite clever in pitching it at both audiences simultaneously. There's no ironic way to enjoy The X Factor."

With Strictly Come Dancing now finished, bereft fans can comfort themselves with news of two forthcoming specials. There's a champion of champions show, featuring the best contestants from the first two series. And then there's a Christmas special - Strictly Ice Dancing, with goalie David Seaman among the celebrity contestants. Is there any ironic way, one wonders, to enjoy that?

Champion of champions show, December 22, 8pm and 10pm, BBC1;

Strictly Ice Dancing Christmas special, December 26, 6.30pm, BBC1

Chris Malone teaches ballroom classes at Dance Base, Edinburgh 0131-225 5525 Scottish DanceSport, 0141-563 2001 www. scottishdancesport. org www. bbc. co. uk/strictlycomedancing

COMPETE TO THE BEAT

IT is estimated that around 5000 people in Scotland currently participate in some form of ballroom or Latin American dancing. But, of these, only about 2per cent will go on to parade their hard- earned skills and glitzy costumes in front of panels of exacting judges.

Competitive ballroom dancing - or DanceSport, as the would-be Olympic sport is now known internationally - has a highly organised global structure, involving a constantly revolving glitterball of events ranging from local "Sunday circuit" competitions to world championships.

Competitions are generally segregated into amateur and professional categories.

But it is at the amateur contests that all ages get to strut their stuff, with further breakdowns for juveniles (under 12 years), junior (12 up) and senior (over 35).

Regardless of age, everyone must do the same dances. These fall into two distinct styles - "modern" (or "standard") and Latin American. As fans of the BBC's Strictly Come Dancing will know:

"modern" includes the more stately dances like waltz, tango, foxtrot, quickstep and Viennese waltz; while Latin American involves the sexier cha cha cha, samba, rumba, paso doble and jive.

Scotland has around 50 couples on the competition circuit at any one time, with two or three amateur pairs and around the same number of professionals normally competing at world level.

Financial rewards for amateurs are few, with prizes barely covering travel costs.

But top pros, such as Hamilton-born 14-times Latin champ Donnie Burns (a demigod in ballroom) commands thousands of pounds for a demonstration.

Debate over whether such competitions qualify as sport has been raging for years and in 1997, the IOC granted DanceSport "recognition" as an Olympic sport (along with karate, golf and roller- skating).

Inclusion in the 2008 games is the next goal for foxtrotters around the globe.

Copyright 2004 SMG Sunday Newspapers Ltd.
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