It’s not easy to interview a dancer who can’t sit still.
Peter Martin has had the dancing bug since he was knee-high to a grasshopper and when we meet at a tea dance it takes all his effort to resist the allure of the dancefloor.
Growing up surrounded by dancing, Peter took it up at the age of nine.
He went on to win medals and trophies, eventually turning professional and following in the dance steps of his father who was a promotor for Victor Silvester, a major figure in the British dance band era, who was key to the rise of ballroom dancing in the early 20th Century.
“You’re too young to know who he is,” says Peter in the London accent he has refused to lose during his 40 years in the Midlands, “but everyone here would know – he was a big deal...”
Peter stops mid-sentence as his ears prick up.
“It’s the Tango!” he gasps, “I’m so sorry, I’ve got to go...” and he dashes for the dance floor.
The 82-year-old from Kenilworth walks like a man in his 20s and could give Patrick Swayze’s Dirty Dancing moves a run for their money.
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Working for Victor Silvester, like his dad, he managed a venue in Southend-on-Sea bringing in 1,700 people a week and went on to open his own dance school.
But the good times hit the buffers when his girlfriend and dance partner became pregnant.
“In those days that was a disaster,” he says.
“My mum and gran said ‘Marry her!’ and there was no question, so I did.
“It was the worst thing I’ve done in my life. We were married for 18 months before separating and divorcing.
“At that time I decided I was finished. I said ‘I’m never going to dance again’.
“I had hundreds of trophies and medals and I threw the lot away, even my Great Britain gold badge.”
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Aged 29, he stopped dancing, turned his studio into a rock-and-roll venue and went into the pop music industry as a promoter.
It was in this new role that Peter came to the Midlands, settling in Coventry where he used as a base while he drove between venues right across the 海角视频 putting on all nighters by acts including Black Sabbath.
“I had them all,” he says, “The Beach Boys, The Who, Led Zeppelin...”
Peter met Pat shortly after his divorce and eventually she followed him to the Midlands.
“She didn’t want to dance. She wasn’t interested,” he says, “So we brought up a family and that was that.
“It’s the foxtrot!” he beams, “Please forgive me, I’ve got to dance...” and once again he’s lost to the music.
After retirement and 40 years of marriage, a cruise would change their lives when Peter, aged 72, took to the dancefloor for the first time in 43 years.
Pat, who will celebrate her golden anniversary with a tea dance at Sutton Coldfield Town Hall later this year, says: “When I first met Peter he’d won all these trophies, and he’d danced for England and been on TV. But I never liked ballroom dancing I was more into jiving.
“When our daughter, Julie, was 12 he taught her to dance but I didn’t like the false lashes and precociousness of it all.
“I spent every weekend on the dance floor with pushy mothers and thought ‘This really isn’t for me’.
“But 10 years ago we went on a cruise and met a lady who had been a ballroom dancer but had no one to dance with.
“I said ‘I’ll lend you my husband’ and off they went to the dancefloor.
“She came back and said ‘You’ve been married to this man for 40 years and you can’t dance?! You should be ashamed! So many women would give anything to have a husband who could dance like that’.”
Peter says: “We came home from that cruise and she asked me to teach her.
“Of course, I said yes, but I told her it would take three years to really learn to dance because we’d have to do it the right way. It’s the only way I know.”
They’ve been dancing together ever since.
“Once we started dancing as a couple we realised there just weren’t enough dances locally for us to go to.”
Peter launched one at the Leamington Pump Rooms, running it for five years. It’s now still running, on the third Monday of each month.
He then launched dances at the Tower Ballroom in Birmingham six years ago and then took on events at Stratford’s Civic Hall (now called the Stratford Arts House) in aid of Stratford Hospice.
The tea dances are reviving the music and dancing of a bygone era and couples who waltzed away their youths are now flocking back to the dancefloor with old friends and new.
The tradition spread nationwide after tea dances started at London’s Waldorf Hotel in the early 20th Century.
By the 1920s weekly dances had spread to halls across the Midlands with Birmingham’s Tower Ballroom beside Edgbaston Reservoir hosting the biggest.
Peter and Pat now run a tea dance at the venue on the last Wednesday of each month, when the hall comes alive with light-footed couples with music from two DJs sporting full dinner-suits and dickie bows.
Pat says: “Dancing is so good for you mentally, physically and socially as you get older. It really is a wonderful thing.
“I’ve said to him ‘You’ll drop dead doing the Viennese waltz’ and he says ‘Good, I hope so’.
“Not yet though,” she adds.
“It’s the waltz!” gasps Peter, running off with his wife.
As the crowded dance floor clears, they appear, locked in each other’s clutch, spinning around the dancefloor with supreme elegance.
* The next dance at the Tower Ballroom, Edgbaston is on June 25. Tea dances will return at Stratford Arts House on July 12, August 9 and 17, November 2 and December 6.