WHAT on earth is it about dancing that makes normally sane people - or even wives for that matter - want their husbands to do it?

Ever since our eyes met across one, my wife has been determined to get me on to a dancefloor to learn how to do all those dances that our mums and dads manage to do with such consummate ease.

On regular occasions, I squeeze myself in to a dinner suit for what is still bizarrely called "a function".

(On some - thankfully rare - nights, I have believed there would have been more fun to have been had from staying home and attempting one).

Sometimes, there is live music.

This is rarely of the Fatboy Slim, hard house Techno, "everyone get down on the beat" variety.

It is a dance band whose roster of songs never strays in to the territory marked by 10-minute drum solos, air guitar shapes and ear-splitting guitar riffs played all the way up to 11.

So I have to sit down and watch as practised couples - slightly older than me, it has to be said - glide their way across the dancefloor.

Unfortunately, this experience never fails to bring out the worst in my wife, who is so moved by the sight of these people whizzing round the room that she demands that we take up learning to dance ourselves.

A couple of times, friends have taken pity on us and the husband heads off round the dancefloor with my wife, while the poor wife is left to drag me - inwardly screaming - in the same direction.

There are problems, of course.

Firstly, I dance like an arthritic hen.

Secondly, I have all the grace of an inebriated rhino wearing a blindfold and could do some serious damage if required to co-ordinate my movements in a manner which demands more than putting one foot in front of the other.

Even on those occasions when I have been prompted to strut my stuff to something more modern, onlookers have been moved to note that I appear to be listening to an entirely different song.

But I fear that I will soon be persuaded - nay, dragged - to join a school so I can dance like my Dad.

But beware.

This whole experience may not make a six-foot, heavy-set man more graceful.

It may just make him faster and therefore far more dangerous to innocents.