With all the utterly awful news that we see every day, especially at present, I wanted to bring you a little light relief with something a bit out of character for me. I’m a very long way from being the world’s best dancer – two left feet and a totally absent sense of rhythm have done for my chances of making Sadlers Wells – but I do enjoy an occasional musical dance number in a show. I am reminded of the Little Britain character ‘Ray McCooney,’ who often answered questions “through the medium of dance” and when I saw a dance video in my YouTube recommendations the other day it piqued my interest. For those of you unfamiliar either with the show or that character, the catchphrase I have borrowed for my title features in the second sketch in this brief compilation:

Utterly bonkers, but I really did enjoy that show when it was on. It probably is too far from being politically correct to be shown again now, or to be remade, but it always made me laugh. The snowflakes would probably faint at some of their sketches, but a little bit of dubious taste has always been a component of the British sense of humour.

The video that YouTube recommended for me was of the type where more recent music has been applied to clips from years gone by. If nothing else, it is an excuse to play one of my favourite Led Zeppelin tracks. I’ve watched this several times now – it is superbly done, and I love the bit where the ‘band’ make their entrance:

For anyone who doesn’t know it, the track is on the Led Zeppelin IV album, the one that became known as ‘Four Sticks‘ from its cover illustration. I doubt that Fred Astaire and Rita Hayworth need much of an introduction: as the video says, it uses scenes from the movie You’ll Never Get Rich, which I don’t think I’ve ever seen but it provided a good fit for the Led Zeppelin track.

Watching that one then prompted an outpouring of suggestions for similar videos on YouTube, many of which used a real mash up of scenes from various movies, whereas what I liked about this one was that it stayed ‘in character,’ so to speak. It wasn’t the first time that anyone had played Led Zep as an accompaniment to Fred Astaire, though. I found another which had been posted ten years before – not as well known a song, but you get the idea, I think:

The song was the title track of Led Zep’s Houses Of The Holy album, and the movie was Funny Face, which starred Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn – as long as you don’t blink you’ll see her briefly in the clip.

To avoid overloading you, I’ll just give you one more. Again, this is a song I love – which helps – and the mash up of twelve different movies and a tv series is very well done:

This is obviously something YouTube viewers enjoy: the guy who uploaded this has 2.67m followers and it has well over 7.8m views. A lot of bands would sell their grannies for stats like that! I’ve no idea why there is a brief snippet of Bryan Adams at the end, though – maybe his editing skills failed him at that point? There are some clever match ups in the piece, especially with the bits from Ted 2. The band Fine Young Cannibals were fairly short lived, releasing just two albums, one in 1985 and the other in 1989. She Drives Me Crazy was the opening track and lead single from the second album, The Raw And The Cooked, which topped the charts in both the UK and the US, as well as in Canada and Australia. It was a great album, which I played a lot at the time: it is full of catchy hooks, which probably explains why eight of its ten tracks eventually became singles. This one was released as a single on Boxing Day 1988, ahead of the album, and reached #5 in the UK. It was, however, #1 in the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

And just to prove that you don’t need to be a pro to give it everything in your dancing, how about this guy:

Isn’t that fantastic! He has a good few years on me but I couldn’t begin to compete with that. Dancing is meant to be a fun, enjoyable activity, and it certainly is when he’s around.

As this is my first ever post to focus on dancing I’m not going overboard with it, in case no one likes it! But I want to close with a piece that became a phenomenon after it was included as the half time entertainment in the 1994 Eurovision Song Contest, which was held in Dublin. Normally I would travel a long way to avoid that show, but this one turned out to be an exception. Our younger daughter was around two and a half, and had been having trouble getting to sleep. We did a deal with her: if she came downstairs to watch the show for a while she would then be a good girl and go back to bed. Yeah, right! But that explains why I was sitting on our sofa, cuddling an impish bundle of mischief, when this came on the tv:

Purists will probably say that this is ‘show’ dancing, and not really a true reflection of the Irish tradition. I’ve always loved Irish folk music and this was perfect for me, and I have no such qualms. Like everyone else, I was blown away by the performance, even if Michael Flatley is a bit up himself. As you no doubt know, this became a stage show which has played to packed audiences around the world and has been incredibly successful. One thing you may not know is the answer to the mystery to which many have asked the question ‘why?’ I was once in an audience which had this explained to us by Peter Knight, then the fiddle player in Steeleye Span. It is a shaggy dog story, but for brevity’s sake it went something like this:

“Some excavations were taking place in Dublin prior to a redevelopment, and the workers found what appeared to be an old burial ground. Along with the bodies, there were also some oilskins which, on inspection, revealed a very well preserved manuscript of the tunes we are about to play for you. The excavations continued and more bodies were found, together with another package wrapped in oilskins. This turned out to be a major find for Irish cultural history, as it was the original manuscript of a book which had long been rumoured to exist but no one ever been able to find.

The book was ‘Irish Dancing, Book 2 – what to do with your arms.'”

Well, I believed him, anyway 😉

See you again soon 💃🕺