SLOW, slow, quick quick, slow.

No, that's not the speed at which I do a training run, it's the time-honoured signature for ballroom dancing.

And as I pirouette into this week's column, the dance floor beckons big-time.

As I write, we have just come from attending a performance of Irving Berlin's White Christmas at the Dominion Theatre in London.

The First Lady and I have been down visiting our son in the Big Smoke and we took in a show.

Aled Jones starred, and among a brilliant cast were Mrs Battersby from Corrie and Graham Cole who used to play PC Stamp in The Bill. We loved it - pure family entertainment and a fabulous afternoon out.

It was the Saturday matinee, and such was the demand for tickets, our seats were in well-separated rows. I landed beside a group of Scottish ladies who were seasoned veterans of the musical theatre scene - my immediate neighbour had seen Les Miserables nine times.

But rather than just writing an essay of what I did on my holidays, there is a point.

Dancing. The principals and cast of White Christmas spent a considerable proportion of the show hoofing their way through routine after routine - lots of foot-stamps, thrusting of arms and plenty of high kicks.

To an old martial artist like me, a lot of it looked like karate without an opponent.

They must have sweated buckets, indeed at one point a chorus member handed Aled Jones a towel to mop his brow after a particularly taxing number.

I was exhausted just watching them. There is no doubt that professional dancers are among the fittest folk you can get.

When I was a young apprentice solicitor, I had an evening job in the Theatre Royal in Hope Street. I was saving up to get married to the First-Lady-to-be, and on an annual salary of £1,900 gross, I was just about digging ditches to get the house deposit together.

Night after night, I sold ice creams and programmes as an usher for all sorts of shows - in one memorable week I saw a young Sheena Easton share the bill with a singing (though only just) Dennis Waterman, and Kelly Marie's mother wandered round backstage at one point to try to get Kelly a gin and tonic before her appearance.

But it was the Scottish Ballet - men and women - who stood out. Stick-thin and with ripped abs and arms, they were a kind of physical perfection - though all absolutely tiny.

Some years later, when I took the family to New York, we did the Radio City Music Hall tour.

As we were shown around backstage, every corner of the corridor was populated by dancers stretching before their rehearsals.

Obesity was certainly no epidemic there.

I think I have mentioned before a legal friend who spent a decade or two doing marathons in various countries - including New York. Eventually the pavements caught up with his middle-aged knees, and he had to stop the relentless pounding of soles on sidewalks.

ALMOST seamlessly he and his wife took up Scottish country dancing and attended classes weekly. He told me after a few months of ceilidh-ing, he had never been fitter - or slimmer.

Now, the best evidence of dancing being good for fitness and shape is right in front of us - on our television every weekend.

Strictly Come Dancing is not just an exhibition of how much talent you can squeeze out of a celebrity, but every one of the contestants has attested to the weight loss caused by weeks of physical training and performing. Even Ann Widdecombe shed a considerable poundage as she hefferlumped round the floor until voted off.

Scotland is particularly well-served in the energetic dancing stakes. Strip the Willow, the Dashing White Sergeant and the Gay Gordon are all sweat-inducing if done properly, and I have been at many a ceilidh or dinner dance when it has felt like a workout by the time Auld Lang Syne is sung.

Even without traditional pieces, a decent Abba medley can get the pulses racing - the First Lady reacts to Dancing Queen like one of Pavlov's dogs, dragging all and sundry up for some wild boogying.

So it's as simple as that. If we all did a couple of evenings of hard dancing, in any style, we would be vastly improved as a city and as a nation.

May I ask you for this dance?