Put on your dancing skates

I'm thinking Roller Girl, I'm thinking Robbie Williams stripping off in Rock the DJ, I'm thinking waitresses skating down Venice Beach, carrying trays of martini - anytime, anyplace, anywhere.

I've got the tiny white pleated miniskirt, got the glitter make-up - the only problem is the last time I rollerskated was in Washington when I was five. Fortunately, at the new Rollerdisco at Bagley's, that isn't an issue.

Rollerskating is back. On Saturday, among the 500 rollerskaters at the club in King's Cross, there were 17-year-olds in spandex who'd never skated before sporting Farrah Fawcett hair and knee-high socks, clubbers in Marc Jacobs tops, curious tourists, and the cast of Starlight Express.

There are guys skating backwards with flashing lights in their skates, doing jumps, backward crossovers, 180s, 360s, barrel rolls and slalom. Currently, my stopping methods include pedestrians, skin loss and gravity. I'm just aiming not to dent my friends. Fortunately, this is a democratic place - the slower you go, the more people ask for your number.

The monthly Rollerdisco at Bagley's came about after 30-year-old Dave Cobban finished his set at Home one night. He and his friend, 28-year-old Treen Wisneiwski, were sitting around thinking of a club night they'd like to go to. "We were bored with the traditional clubs," he says, "and Treen suddenly shouted, 'A rollerdisco!'" As Cobban also DJs at Fabric and Ibiza, contacts weren't a problem. They approached Bagley's, whose owners ran the Camden Palace rollerdisco in the Eighties.

Ten thousand flyers went out, and they went round the world. "Treen got e-mails from France, I got them from New York," says Cobban. "The sports shop chain Offspring sold out of the new Nike rollerskates because of people buying them for the Rollerdisco."

"Rollerskating is a contact sport - ie when Saturday Love is playing, gorgeous guys don't mind when you clutch onto them," says 29-year-old business developer Tanya Lowe. "It's great for novices because it's as much about the music, hair, clothes and dance moves as the skating. The only thing wrong with it was the queues, which I guess was a teething problem for the first night."

Francine Bell-Gam, 17, from Croydon, was eager to get her skates off, "It's a really good vibe, but I want my shoes back."

Kate Johns, a 35-year-old who works for Save the Children, pointed out that the best thing about Saturday was that it reinvented rollerdiscos for the Noughties, "It wasn't a sad night with people skating to Seventies tunes, it was stuff you'd hear in Ibiza. Like the new Mojo song Chillin, which actually has a rollergirl in the video."

"I'm into hard house and clubbing," says Sarah Michaels, 24, while doing swizzles in a spandex halterneck bra-top. "My friends know I love rollerskating, so they told me about it and we all came together."