Fitness fans turn to pole dancing

Brace yourself girls. Pole dancing is apparently the latest fitness craze.

At one health club in Soho, demand for classes in ?exotic dancing? has so out-stripped supply it looks set to become the new aerobics.

Given a daytime slot when the club opened in May, the class will soon move to a sought-after late evening slot and poles ? albeit retractable ones ? put in the main studio.

All this leaves class teacher Helen Jackson, 25, who also works as a showgirl at Raymond?s Review Bar in Soho danced off her sparkly perspex heels.

?The first class was absolutely jampacked,? said Miss Jackson, who has worked in cabaret on cruise ships. ?We even had a few men turning up, who are definitely not allowed.

?Women like it because it makes them feel sexy. I encourage them to wear sexy outfits and high heels, because it changes the way you hold yourself. It?s also a great way to keep fit. It?s good for posture and great for your bum because you are constantly pushing it out and squeezing it.?

After an hour of prancing and shimmying in a mirrored basement studio at Third Space, I could see what she meant. Although much of the class involved learning how to walk in a figure of eight ? ?strut girls!?, shouted Miss Jackson over the din of Shirley Bassey ? by the end I ached all over.

As for feeling sexy, the posture we were encouraged to adopt ? think of an S-shape and you?re there ? made me feel more like a duck than a diva. But by the time we had learned the slinky cabaret-style routine at the end, I was hooked.

?I love it,? said Patricia De Miguel, 24, a marketing manager from Golders Green who has been going since the first class. ?It?s so much fun. It makes you feel so sexy. You come out and you think: I feel fantastic. After we did some work with feather boas I went out and bought one ... and the dress to go with it. I?ve even promised a couple of my male friends a private viewing.?

Emily Morley, 25, was at the class to pick up some tips for her job as a dancer at Spearmint Rhino?s in central London. ?I?ve never danced this way before and it?s very daunting,? she said. ?It?s a really big club. You want to know what you?re doing before you get up on that stage and take your clothes off.?

Miss Jackson too thinks she?s found her vocation. ?Before this I?d done all kinds of dancing all over the world ? fire-eating, can-can. I?d even done the Portuguese gay scene with a drag queen. But stripping and dancing professionally are so different. I had to learn a whole new way of moving.

?But now I?ve learned, I feel more comfortable with this kind of dancing. After the first class I thought: ?I should have done this years ago.? I think I must have been a Burlesque woman in a previous life.?