I miss what the judges are looking for in the cha-cha-cha heat, which will decide who will be going through to the final of the dance competition, because my sister and I are already squabbling.
"Don't let me down," I hiss to her.
"Well, don't do your Brian Fortuna impression," Kate snaps back. We look at other couples going over their steps.
"Maybe we should have practised," says Kate. It's the only thing we agree on.
I don't know if it's the pressure of being under the lights, in front of an audience of 200 Strictly Come Dancing fans in a country house hotel in Nottinghamshire, but neither of us can remember the steps we learned in our lesson that morning. The music starts and we are a shambles. By the end of the song, we seem to have sorted ourselves out, but it's too late.
"I'll give you 10 out of 10 for effort," says a woman in the front row, kindly. People are laughing and we are, we realise, the John Sergeants of the Strictly weekend. We score the lowest mark.
There are several Strictly Come Dancing weekends being held around the country over the next few months, with a couple of the professional dancers from the BBC programme attending each one. At our weekend, at Thoresby Hall Hotel near Ollerton, James and Ola Jordan are the stars.
Of the 400 guests, we must be the youngest – in some cases by more than five decades. Cath and Mike Jennings, from Sheffield, started learning about five years ago, inspired by the show. "We're avid fans, and we wanted to come here to meet the stars," says Cath. They don't seem nervous about the final (they beat us in the cha-cha-cha).
Our first class is led by Alejandro and his partner Kerri, and held in the great hall, a beautiful room with huge windows that flood the room with bright sunshine.
"You can be the man," my sister announces as we face each other. We run through the moves, which actually are quite easy to learn. Kerri wanders around the room.
"Looks good," she says to us.
"We should enter the competition," I say.
"We could win," says my sister.
The rest of the weekend is taken up with more Strictly-themed entertainment. There is a question-and-answer session with James and Ola, in which we learn that Ola loved dancing with Chris Hollins, the sports reporter with whom she won the most recent series, but wouldn't have chosen him to begin with: "He was short. A bit porky."
You can try on costumes from the show (I wrestle into the red dress that pop star Rachel Stevens wore for her tango in the quarter-final – luckily it is very stretchy) and have your photograph taken with James and Ola, which proves very popular.
I have a few gripes: you only get two classes, which are taught by tutors, not by the Strictly stars, and each lasts just 45 minutes, which, if you are a complete beginner like me isn't nearly enough to learn much (although I'm told they may fit you in to more classes if there's a spare place). The hotel is curiously disappointing – the huge Victorian Grade-I listed main building is glorious, but a new extension, where we are staying and where much of the action takes place, reminds me of a motorway hotel. Also, the hotel pipes the same handful of songs from the show throughout the building, morning until night, which is maddening.
There are escapes from the never-ending music, though: we swim in the pool and walk around the beautiful grounds. Other guests, not tempted by a Strictly trivia quiz, were taking archery lessons or reading and playing games in the wood-panelled library which looks out on to the gardens.
But if you want to dance the weekend away to a live band, this does make for a brilliantly fun, glitzy – if kind of tacky – weekend.
The highlight though is the competition. We are relieved not to have made it through because it looks terrifying. The set is drenched in glitter, the judges – James and Ola plus two of the teachers, holding scoring paddles – sit on stage in front of the band, and more than 400 guests watch the floor. The 10 couples look nervous.
Cath and Mike are up first – Cath looks sensational in her borrowed green sequined costume with tail feathers (the one actor Zoe Lucker wore in the most recent series) – and they storm the cha-cha-cha. But Tony and Julie, a brilliant couple who do the jive in red outfits, take the majority of audience votes.
Collecting their trophy, Tony says "not bad for a man of 74" and everyone gasps because he looks easily 20 years younger. They are the clear winners, and if my sister and I can stop arguing over the right steps, maybe one day we'll be in with a chance, too.
• Warner Hotels (0800 138 2633) runs Strictly Come Dancing weekends at various hotels round the country until 30 July, from £359-500pp for three nights (or four nights midweek), including meals, dance classes and leisure activities. East Coast Trains go from London Kings Cross to Retford from £18.70 rtn, (online, advance fare; 08457 225225).
