Like all young reporters - brilliant or hopelessly incompetent - I dreamed of the glamorous life of the foreign correspondent: prowling Vienna in a Burberry trench coat speaking a dozen languages to dangerous women narrowly escaping Sardinian bandits - the usual stuff that newspaper dreams are made of.

When it came to the stylish and graceful art of ballroom dancing my dad was a king of the clubs a prowling tiger and a wonderfully natural mover.