The Lambada

At work the Polish girls were talking about pop music they heard on the radio in the mid-eighties, Modern Talking’s Brother Louie, the big hair and camp Euro-pop, then Monika mentioned The Lambada, the mere mention of the song title send a shudder through me.

 

I would have been 17 I think when the Lambada song and dance craze took off, so it would have been Christmas night 1987 and the whole family were down the local pub, The British Lion ( to my knowledge lions are not native to Britain but that’s another blog).

 

Towards the end of the night my mum’s friend, Gladys who must’ve been 50 if she was a day and to put it politely was pretty well oiled by 11pm, determinedly made her way over to me through the busy pub,

As the music started up she was hacking at the drunken revelers like a soldier in the jungle with a big knife to get to me.

She wanted me, a very shy and rather sober 17 year old (shocking, I know but I didn’t really drink then) to dance the Lambada with her.

I turned in horror to my mum, who handed me over to her like a sacrificial lamb.

 

“Have a dance with her, it’s Christmas”

 

For those that may not know, the Lambada was a Latin American dance of seduction that required very loose hips and hopefully a passion for the person you were dancing with, I had neither.

 

She thrust one of her legs between my legs grabbed me around the waist, to steady herself as much as anything I think, and then threw the top half of her body back, shimmying her shoulders and proceeded to writhe around bringing herself up to me and away from me, all the while wriggling her leg further between my legs until her mini-moo was wedged on my crotch – all the while I stood there rigid, horrified and praying for the song to be over, and trying to keep her tongue away from my ear.

 

Remember I was 17, she was at least 50, when after what felt like an eternity the song was finally over, she handed me back to my mum with the words I’ve never forgotten.

 

“it was like dancing with an ironing board”.