Ride 'em cow girls

So what exactly is a burlesque barn dance?," my friend Caroline asked nervously as she watched me accessorise a rather daring corset-and-cowboy hat combo with two plastic guns and a bullwhip that I'd found in a carnival store.

"I have no idea," I replied merrily, "but I expect this is what people wear to one."

Walking into The Hurly Burly Hoedown in Bush Hall, Shepherd's Bush, half an hour later, I realised of course, that I was wrong.

The rest of the crowd, who were a mixed bunch but fell mainly into the late-twenties/early-thirties age range, were in jeans, plaid shirts and cowboy hats. But if they were surprised by my rather eccentric take on the dress code, they didn't show it. "Howdy y'all!" a stream of rather beautiful cowgirls greeted us as we were shown to our table. "Would you like something from the bar?"

Caroline and I quickly got stuck into the wine (£3 a glass, £12.50 a bottle) to distract ourselves from the fact that we didn't have any trousers on.

"Gosh, the guys are so friendly here!" I remarked, as the second cowboy in as many minutes offered to buy us a round. "That's because we look like a cross between Indiana Jones and a hooker," said Caroline, yanking her skirt down over her bare thighs.

But if there are certain advantages to socialising in your underwear, they definitely come at a price. Caroline loosened my corset so I could eat dinner (included in our £20 tickets, or we could have paid £12 without food), but insisted on pulling me back in again afterwards, using the knee-in-the-back technique favoured by Victorian ladies' maids and the worst kind of sadists. My eyeballs bulged and the hog-roast sandwich that I had just washed down with yet another glass of white wine threatened to squeeze back out through my nostrils.

At that moment, the house band, The Acoustic Astronauts, whipped out their fiddles and the willing crowd spilled on to the dance floor. As sitting down in my corset was now impossible, I had no choice but to join them, which I did with an enthusiasm that far outweighed any semblance of competence.

The evening had been put on by a company called Bonobo Presents, which specialises in unusual events. As promoter Melanie Dias explained: "Burlesque is everywhere but a burlesque barn dance is something completely new. We love the challenge of putting on something totally unique and groundbreaking. And like the bonobo ape - distinguished by its fervent sexual nature and juvenile behaviour, even in adulthood - our evenings are always sexy and playful."

A little too playful on this occasion, I found, as the compere shouted: "Swing your partner round to the left!" and I crashed obliviously through the circling dancers heading in completely the wrong direction.

Roaring with laughter as a handsome cowboy named Tim twirled me around to face the right way, I accidentally caught several unsuspecting ladies around the back of the knees with my bullwhip. "Don't worry about it," they winced kindly, pulling their skirts down to cover the lash marks.

As soon as we'd got the hang of the basic steps, the music picked up and so did the dancing. The fact that I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing didn't seem to matter and I soon found myself being whirled from cowboy to cowboy in a complicated tangle of "do-si-dos" and "promenades". It was all wildly exciting, and judging by the sheen of sweat covering my hide, pretty good exercise too. "I'm having so much fun!" I squawked, catching sight of Caroline as I was swung into the air by one of the more enthusiastic participants. One of my guns clattered to the floor as I landed, closely followed by the second, which smashed into smithereens under a herd of stampeding cowboy boots.