Andy Richardson: Dancing around like a headless chicken

I was busting moves – as us dancers call them – in a studio somewhere near Cardiff while my dance teacher thought about busting my head.

"You're a 'bit chicken'," Charlotte added, as I tried to perfect a move called 'the windmill' while listening to The Temperance Movement.

"Funky chicken?" I asked.

"No, Chicken Tonight. . ."

She laughed at her own joke.

"Thanks, Charlotte. Here's your £35. Spend it on Maltesers."

I am Charlotte's Red Rooster. Charlotte is my Christina Aguilera.

I am Charlotte's John Sergeant. Charlotte is my Ola Jordan.

We make a great team. Sort of. She's got the looks, the talent and the skinny little body. I've got the, erm, the. . . wait a minute. I've got something. Let's try that again. Charlotte's got the brains, the rhythm and the sass. And I've got the. . . the, you know, the. . . OK. I'll get back to you on that when I find it.

Charlotte tolerates my mania and I let Charlotte tell me off. Actually, I don't. I don't have a choice. Charlotte puts up with my wise-cracking, toenail-scraping, Idiot Andy nonsense until she's bored, then: 'whip-chooosh', she lets fly. I quite like it. It's sexy. Tell me off again please, Ms Hilling.

Learning to dance featured at number one on my bucket list. It's a short list. Only two things feature. Everything else was done in a burst of just-about-legal-and-if-it-wasn't-this-isn't-the-time-or-place-to-write-about-it hedonistic tomfoolery.

The only boxes I didn't tick were dancing and buying a particular car. Automobile acquisition can follow some years from now, once I've paid off an overdraft run up by high living on Michelin dinners and Moo Collective passion fruit yoghurts. £2.40 for a yoghurt? Man, that's ridiculous. Though they taste pretty good.

But I digress.

By day, Charlotte is an accountant and PA to a famous and exceptionally talented chef. But at weekends she puts on a skimpy top, a funny pair of shoes and trips the light fantastic to a pounding beat. In her hands, I almost look like I know what I'm doing.

I'd initially wanted to learn how to Northern Soul dance.

"I'm not teaching you that," Charlotte said. "That's shuffling, not dancing."

She made me pick a different style.

I opted to jive.

"No," said whip-chooosh. "It's too quick, you won't keep up."

So we settled on rock'n'roll and spend an hour a week Keeping The Faith in a more-Bill-Haley-than-Northern-Soul-kinda way.

In many ways, I'm lucky. Charlotte's no Craig Revel Horwood. If I put my hand in the wrong place – no, not there – she just laughs, rather than kills me with an acid critique. If I bang into her hip like an elderly woman rushing at a Stannah Stairlift, she just politely rubs the bruised bone and gives me a wan smile. It speaks volumes.

By week three, I was as loose as a goose and turned up for class wearing a V-necked T-shirt.

"You're a little bit pineapple," Charlotte laughed.

"Pineapple?"

"Pineapple. . . Y'know, a little bit," she turned down the volume as she said his name.

"Louie Spence. You're a little bit Louie."

I've interviewed the former artistic director of Pineapple Dance Studios and can say, quite confidently, that I'm not 'a little bit Louie'. I told Charlotte that Paul Weller wears V-necks. She told me to shut up and dance. It was like being in panto.

Bless.

I body-waved and swerved. I perfected my windmill and learned how to push Charlotte away without her falling over. Though the first time I did it she hit the ground. And I laughed until I cried.

There are more moves to learn. Though I'm not planning to kick. That's for horses and footballers. Nor will I be wearing multi-coloured costumes or trading in my leather-soled lace-ups. I'll leave that to Bungle and Zippy. And as for acrobatics, well, they can stay in the circus. Charlotte sends emails to check up on me.

"Have you been practising?" she asked.

"I've been going through things in my head."

"That's the best place to go through them." It was a 'very Yoda' response.

Come tomorrow I'll turn my head-dance into a real dance and Charlotte will be dazzled by my brilliance. She will fall at my feet and declare me the Vaslav Nijinsky of Cardiff, the Gene Kelly of Shrewsbury, the Michael 'one-glove' Jackson of Tiptonshire.

And then I'll wake up. And Charlotte will be standing over me laughing. 'Whip-chooosh'.

Within a month or two I'm planning to have this dancing lark licked. Fred and Ginger had better watch out. . . That's Fred the painter and decorator from Lichfield and Ginger the barman from Stourbridge NOT Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. They're safe. For now. Cluck cluck.