We are millions strong, John Sergeant’s Army. People of all nations come together: we have Latin and Viennese. We have lovely old ladies, captives of the Sergeant smile; ­spinsters ecstatic at the sight of his cummerbund; bootboys chanting: “The judges hate us but we don’t care”; art school revolutionaries marching backwards under the ­banner: “Death to chacha-ists, long live Dadaists.”

We are a network, we are a notion, we are a nation – the John Sergeant Nation. Children the length and breadth of Britain are making banners: “Who’s the daddy?” and “Who’s the granddaddy?” Spaniards in west London muster, clacking castanets and shouting: “Somos Hon Sarhant’s pasa doble armada.”

An Old Timer writes in during a tea and biscuits break between sessions at the Joyce Grenfell Memorial Glee Club: “Am feeling a little hoarse after a lusty rendition of Stately As Two Galleons but feel obliged to raise this question: was there ever a dance called The Lunghi, a routine called The Healey or a gavotte called The Stephens? Of course not.

“When we finish our Peek Freans Marie biscuits, my dear companions and I will be launching ourselves into a lusty Dashing White Sergeant, always the high spot of our evening. It is our life. I can hardly express the joy it gives me to settle down on Saturday evening to see our own divine Dashing White Sergeant. He is not the lord of the dance, he is the sergeant of the dance and that ­matters so much more.”

In France they take to the streets in thousands to show resistance to authority; elsewhere they fire shells and storm palaces. That is not the British way. We express our dissidence more subtly and effectively.

For what could be more subversive and more potent than commandeering the BBC at peak hours at the weekend to show we will not be dictated to by experts or restrained by textbook orthodoxies, that gym-work and cosmetic surgery means nothing to us, that we don’t give a damn whether some showbiz also-ran has worked and sweated and cried and improved ever so much since last week.

Does our Dashing White Sergeant improve? Who knows? Who cares? Improvement is really not what ­matters. We have no time for fleet footwork and smooth sashay. We don’t support the Sergeant because he’s good, we support him because he’s the Sergeant.

They thought they would jolly us for a few weeks, wheeling on an old charmer to keep us amused until the going got serious and we sent him home. They thought they were ­taking us for a ride; they thought they were being cute; they thought they could tell us what’s what.

But we have seen the light and the light fantastic and we are not ­stopping now. We are the army with two left feet, we are the army that can’t keep a beat. We are keeping on to the end of the road.

Victory to the Dashing White Sergeant… yes we can.
 
david.robson@express.co.uk