“I WON’T dance. Don’t ask me.” So sang Fred Astaire, in the most famous rendition of a great old song which has since been covered by a myriad of artists from Frank Sinatra on down.

(That song, incidentally, contains surely one of the greatest rhymes in popular music: “Heaven rest us, I’m not asbestos.”) The deliberate irony in Fred Astaire singing that lyric was, of course, that he was in fact just about the most amazing dancer to ever grace a movie screen.

I, on the other hand, could happily adopt that tune as my personal theme song, because I really can’t dance. Not that all that many people have asked me, now I come to think of it.

Awkward of gait, uncoordinated, and with practically no sense of rhythm, I was never going to be the heir to Astaire, but I’ve always been fairly at ease with my gaucheness in that direction.

The other day, however, some scientists mooted the idea that being able to dance can be a sign of male health.

The theory is that anyone who can put together the required series of moves to make up a dance is showing off the fact that they are fit and healthy and a good bet, reproductively speaking.

Now, even with my limited understanding of scientific research, I can see at least one flaw in that deduction.

As far as I can tell, most dancing these days is done by people who may well be young and fit but have also consumed a large amount of alcohol, which surely is no indicator of good health.

But if there really is any link between dancing and health, I probably shouldn't let my life insurance provider see me at a wedding reception.

When I was a sixth-former, practically the only social activity that took place between our boys’ school and the nearby girls’ school was a ballroom dancing class.

Like a lot of the boys, I decided to give it a go.

For the rest of that afternoon, I trod all over the feet of a succession of unfortunate young women before slinking off, head down, never again to voluntarily take to the dance floor.

Today, of course, I can see that what was really holding me back – apart from being about as well coordinated as a cow on ice skates – was probably my belief that I couldn’t do it.

With the right attitude, and by putting in more time and effort than the naturally talented people, I might have eventually been able to make a decent fist of it.

But it’s probably too late now. Because now I have kids. And as we all know, any dancing done by a dad automatically embarrasses everybody nearby.

AS the story above shows, working in science must be a frustrating business.

You can be labouring for years over complicated but valuable work, only to see an inordinate amount of attention given to a bunch of evolutionary psychologists who have been watching people on the dance floor.

Reporting science properly is a challenge for the media, because so few journalists understand it. And I certainly don’t claim to be any different. I was awful at science at school, and even today my scientific curiosity hasn’t expanded far beyond wondering how the little people get into your television.

But with the government now cutting science grants and telling universities they'll need to find commercial fund-ing, we need to be vigilant.

Otherwise, researchers working hard on treatments for nasty but unfashionable diseases are going to increasingly be sidelined, while all the glory goes to those who can supply the media with those fluffy stories about how scientists have discovered the formula for the perfect knock-knock joke.