Faithless? Not me.

Few things from our early lives stay with us. Likes and passions come and go: Bay City Rollers on Monday and David Cassidy by Saturday. Allegiances and devotions switch and fade: Everton 'til I die! But in reality only until Alan Ball went to Arsenal: Arsenal 'til I die! But sometimes you get caught up in something which ends up running through you like a stick of rock, dictating attitudes and behaviours and making you forever an active or passive ambassador for something the values and attributes of which, once lived, are never ever forgotten.

Monday marked the 40th anniversary of the first all-nighter at Wigan Casino and all over the land circle skirts and Oxford bags will have been neatly pressed and donned to mark the occasion. I didn't go anywhere to celebrate, but I had a bit of a shuffle around to Harold Melvin & The Bluenotes' classic, Get Out. R. Dean Taylor's, Ghost in my House and Esther Phillips', What a Difference a Day Makes, amongst

Essential dance floor kit for smooth moves.

others — making talc-angels on the floor as I spun around and ignoring the kids from Fame staring at me from the 3rd floor of The Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts. (Eat your heart out would-be hoofers!)

Northern Soul. For most of the 70s it ruled my world. It fashioned what I wore, where I went, how I danced, who I was friends with; it really was a way of life and for many it still is. It never fades away. One of the sweetest proofs of this can be seen on YouTube, wherein a dressing-gown and PJ-clad mum is persuaded on the morning of her 50th birthday to soul dance for a £50 bet. 

What wasn't to like? The sounds were eclectic, the beat and pace being the identifying features and, looking back, I realise that it pandered to the adolescent need to be different, in that the more obscure your record collection the more respected you were. The charts! Pah! Alan Freeman can take a running jump.

We shared with our cousins,The Mods, a love of heraldry, and our clothes and accoutrements, be they a bowling bag, shirt, or a Vespa, became a canvas on which we could display our colours as each club you belonged to or all-nighter attended was thereafter forever commemorated by virtue of the embroidered badge sewn onto your bag or slim-fit cardigan.
They were the most graphic of movements.
      
And the clothes! 
Blimey did people look smart! There was a uniformity to the look, but customisation lay in the flourishes you added (buttons, badges etc) and in the way you wore it. So made-to-measure suits were teamed with crisply ironed bowling shirts, Fred Perry's and Ben Sherman's. And who could forget Harrington jackets and Oxford Bags, the width of which could be anything up to 18 inches (and if unpicked would provide sufficient fabric to run-up a circle skirt) and the weight of which was trebled by dint of the dozens of buttons sewn onto the back pockets. Bowling shirts, cap-sleeved 'T' shirts and vests allowed ease of movement on the dance floor. And footwear. Platforms, Brogues (with segs) and Chelsea Boots. Bowling shoes, mochassins and beetle-crushers for dancing.

And the moves!
The athletic and balletic qualities of Northern Soul dancing are a wonder to behold and, interestingly, the blokes were always the best and most enthusiastic dancers. Watching some of the links I've provided and others you will find, it's not difficult to see how Northern Soul dovetails into hip-hop, break-dancing and disco. The strength and fitness required to be able to perform some of those moves is breathtaking and if we made it compulsory in schools the obesity problem would simply dissolve away. The moves once learned are never forgotten (back to our birthday girl above) and they're likely to resurface in the most unlikely places: supermarkets in my case (and it seems I'm not the only one, take a look at this chap in Japan) when someone in charge of the music knob has an unexpected bout of good taste and plays a 'tune'. Coded!

A recent feature film Northern Soul The Film contains some truly fantastic dance sequences produced by veteran 'soulies', professional dancers and (encouragingly) very young converts. Perhaps the latter 'found' soul or it's an adopted brand, rather like the Brillo pads you buy because your parents did. And there continues to be a sizeable market in Soul fashions and all-weekenders at various holiday camps around the country have always enjoyed high attendance.

To commemorate the anniversary mentioned above, BBC2 will be showing a documentary about the Northern Soul movement as part of its Culture Show strand at 10pm this evening. And if you're stationed elsewhere in the world, you can now use the BBC iPlayer service to catch up. Do watch.

Northern Soul. It's a way of life.
Who knows, it might become yours too.

Keep the Faith!