Colm O'Regan: Instagram is teaching me how to dance

Comedian and Irish Examiner columnist Colm O'Regan pictured in Cork. Picture Denis Minihane.

For the first time in more than 20 years, I have a new teacher. My most patient yet. 

He doesn’t seem to mind going over the same stuff again and again. Mainly because he’s played on a loop. And no doubt there are thousands of us in his class.

He is creative_nahz on Instagram, and he doesn’t know it, but this summer he is teaching me to dance.

I mean like, maybe one step. But it would be nice to have one step that actually makes sense, as opposed to the mix of Fifth Class Irish Dancing, a barn dance from the local dramatic society production of Oklahoma and jumping around to Chumbawumba. 

I’ll learn away here with no one watching me and then unveil it half-cut at a wedding near you.

I wouldn’t go on Dancing with the Stars. It would be embarrassing to be voted out in the first week because no one would know who I was, even though I was clearly the best dancer). 

Also, the judges would be unable to hide their complete bafflement as to who I was either. 

And I couldn’t bear the idea of being on the opening credits of the show for 12 weeks and everyone forgetting I was there at all (a bit like Roman Roy’s wife and child in the Succession pilot).

But I do like the show teaches you how to dance. I think we should all be taught how to dance. Not as children but as adults. 

If nothing else it’s something to do on a night out when you don’t want to drink. 

You young’uns don’t realise that there will come a time sooner than you think when nights out will not be the simple calculation of “Drinking Time divided by volume of gut = Amount of Drink.” 

After a certain age, the hangovers get too punishing. Not just physically, but also accompanied by a sense of existential angst about how you’ve wasted your life. 

So if you want to go out, you have to sort of pace yourself. And we’ve definitely not been trained for that. 

If there was scope for non-embarrassed dancing, you’d be surprised how many rounds you’d miss out on without even noticing.

Now where you actually dance is another story. They’ve shut down the dancefloors faster than Cromwell’s puritans ever could in this country, but you’ll at least need it for the wedding. 

And if you have any kind of a step at all people will think you’ve a bit of Latin in you.

Put simply, the bar for dancing is set very low in Ireland. The only way you’re a bad dancer at a wedding is if you don’t dance. 

Because if you’re male and you hang around drinking long enough, and the DJ is even half-decent, they’ll play AC/DC’s Thunderstruck, and then you can roll up your trouser leg and rock out. 

Even if you miss that, you’ll get one last chance for New York, New York. 

A strange tradition where all the guests gather around in a circle and surround the bride and groom for the last dance and at least one crazed uncle will lean on people on either side and attempt to kick the groom. But that can’t last. 

There’s a younger generation coming up, not fatally crippled with self-doubt, and when they hit the floor after a diet of TikToks they’ll be so good you’ll slink away.

Now for the 300th time, creative_nahz is repeating the first stage of the Top Rock, and if I master that, who knows by autumn I’ll try something else. I’ll see you out on the floor.