It’s the heart of festival season and I’m at Camp Bestival, a family-friendly boutique festival staged in the grounds of Lulworth castle in Dorset. (Yes it’s a very nice place*)
I’m determined to fit in a dance before the month is through so I opt for a sedate Sunday morning Waltz, hosted in the Come Dancing tent by a tutor who appears to be a tap dancing Butlins red coat, crossed with your dad. Yes your dad.
Our surrogate dancing dad is accompanied by his DJ son, three dancing demo “princesses” & a back catalogue of jokes so bad that his repertoire makes an average box of Christmas crackers feel like the Edinburgh fringe.
Camp Bestival holds the tradition of fancy dress on the Sunday. The theme this year is Animal Magic. I have come as a welly-wearing leopard. My dance partner who I met two days before is a fancy dress cross between a welly wearing alpaca and a lamb. Dinosaurs, bees, monkeys & the remainder of Noah’s Ark fill the rest of the tent two by two, setting a surreal Sunday morning backdrop for our class ahead.
And just when I thought things couldn’t get more bizarre, in walks Frankie Boyle. I’m glad to see that even celebrities like Frankie have made the effort with this year’s Animal Magic theme. Frankie’s come in a Homo Sapien outfit with magical beard. I’m a bit of a fan. I have a soft spot for this foul-mouthed Scotsmen. I instantly regret my leopard face paint.
Frankie takes a pew in the corner of the tent. He adopts the contemplation, beard-stroking poise of a man bemused. He remains there for the full hour studying the group of waltzing, welly-clad animals. He even remains there when surrogate dad tries to spark up comedy rapport, throwing in a few Boyle jokes for measure
It’s enough to put you off your steps. But maybe there was animal magic in the air, for by the end of the hour I was waltzing around the dance floor as gracefully as any welly footed leopard could be.
*All jokes courtesy of my surrogate dad, & not Frankie Boyle.
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