KEN from Manchester was looking belligerent. Pushing his sweaty round face close to mine, he bellowed: “Them dance host sods are hogging all the single ladies!”

He had his eye on my glamorous fortysomething friend Helen. But as the Bee Gees hit the high Cs of How Deep is Your Love, she glided out of reach — safe in the arms of a tuxedo-clad gent.

Thanks to a posse of perfectly mannered “gentleman hosts”, we were finding this side of cruising — dancing until the small hours — utterly and unexpectedly compelling.

Upmarket cruise lines call them “ambassadors” or “social hosts”. Lower down the scale, they are mere “dance hosts”. Yet all share common characteristics: expertise in ballroom dancing; a willingness to emulate an Elvis hip thrust, or a Jagger strut, albeit in a muted, middle-aged way; and good conversational skills. In this ambassadorial fashion, they hold the key to making single women, many recently widowed or divorced, feel comfortable on a holiday with a heavy bias towards couples.

In exchange for twirling ladies around the dance floor and the odd escort duty, hosts receive bed and board and as many cruises as their stamina will allow. But it’s not all glamorous, or plain sailing, as the following ambassadors’ stories reveal . . .

BARRY ORAM, 70, RADISSON SEVEN SEAS CRUISES

“I was a ship’s officer with the Union Castle Line, and if you could dance as an officer, you were halfway up the ladder with the ladies — so to speak.

“I’ve worked as a host with the Fred. Olsen Cruise Line and the QE2. It’s a grand life, but certainly at times I wonder why I do this job. Times when you are sweaty, exhausted, and predatory women circle around screeching, ‘You gave her three dances, and me only one!’ But the more expensive the cruise, generally, the nicer the manners.

“Obviously there can be some chemistry on the dance floor, so e-mail addresses get exchanged. I’ve had the opportunity for something more, but we sign a strict pledge: “You shall not cross the threshold of a lady’s cabin.” This works because you can often hide behind the pledge in difficult cases.”

ALAN DOYLE, 52, FRED. OLSEN CRUISE LINE

“This business attracts people looking for companionship — I’m divorced and I teach dance. I packed up my job at the Post Office because a friend of mine in this business used to make me envious with his tales of flitting off to the Canaries in winter.

“You have to get on with people. The Cunard interview is very competitive — they try to get inside your mind to see whether you are up to the socialising side of things.

“I sometimes do tour escort duties — and that can be tiring. And worrying. I lost a woman in Palma. She didn’t return to the coach at the appointed time, but luckily she was wearing a striped hat and garish yellow shirt, and therefore was easy to track down.

“The funniest part of the whole business is sharing a cabin. Imagine what it is like to have a totally strange man in his eighties prancing around such a small space in his Y-fronts — or, worse, nothing at all.”

GEORGE ALFORD, 75, HOLLAND AMERICA

“I try to keep a wide berth of the pushy ladies. You can give off the wrong signals without meaning to — and then they make a beeline for you, and get quite aggressive if you’re not careful. If there are only four dance hosts and lots of ladies, you get trouble-makers. I’ve seen fighting — they push each other away to have a go with you. They can behave like real cats. Some get very awkward if rejected. Some try to get you into their cabin with various ruses.”