Meanwhile, down in Buenos Aires, tango is back. For decades, it's been the preserve of the wrinklies. But these days, everyone's at it. The music on Argentinian teenagers' iPods isn't Marilyn Manson or McFly. It's Ortos Aires or San Telmo Lounge, tango with a 21st-century twist.

The city even has its own dedicated tango hotel - the Mansion Dandi Royal. You check in, you put on your dancing shoes and you live and breathe tango until you check out. It's piped into your bedroom and it's on television. It's taught at the in-house academy and it's the main motif on the wallpaper. The doors are even propped open by tango shoes.

Stay for a week and you invite a whole world of trouble upon yourself. According to one theory, the word tango comes from a New Guinea slave word meaning "closer", which is highly appropriate. It is a dirty dance for bad men and badder women. You arrive all European and proper, but you risk leaving a snake-hipped Latino. Here is what
happened when a strait-laced English couple went to tango academy.

DAY ONE

Matt: It's a well-established fact that we, the British, are not very sexy. Collectively, of course, rather than personally: you'll never get any of us to admit to being poor at it on a personal level. But, as a nation, we readily admit we're dreadful. We're a nation of undressers in the dark. If we undress in the light, we take our socks off last. Or leave them on throughout whatever may or may not ensue. We're not sexy.

The French, if one can generalise, are terribly sexy by comparison. All late-night poetry-reading, mistresses and filthy rolling vowels. Ditto the Italians and, on occasion, the Greeks. But for sheer, outrageous, pulsating frolics, you have to ditch Europe altogether and go to the tango halls of Buenos Aires.

Nowhere on the planet will a British man feel more keenly aware of his innate (collective) unsexiness than at his first-ever lesson in tango. Tango is the sexiest dance in the world. It is passionate, powerful and intense, rhythmic, gymnastic and intimate. A British man does not stand a chance.

I'm embarrassed before I've even started our first private lesson. Our instructor, Noelia, is disconcertingly beautiful just sitting still; she is the kind of woman who makes men feel ugly and ungainly. When she demonstrates some steps, she is stunning. She does the tango walk - that slow, confident surge forward and back - and, wow. We copy - and, yuk. We look like we've got rickets. Harriet says she feels like an elephant in a tutu.

Outside tango academy, it's a hot, steamy afternoon in the crumbling district of San Telmo. Everyone is slinking around, looking all Latin and sexy. Our first lesson is really a lesson in being Latin, and it doesn't come naturally at all.

Noelia shows us the basic six-step. Beautiful. We try. Awful. She says "Excellent" - how can she lie to our faces like that? - and moves on, far too quickly for my liking, to the basic eight-step. I'm still trying to remember the six. Harriet's being cocky, and wants to move on to the eight. So we do the average, a seven, and I nearly break her foot.

"You are the man," says Noelia, doubtfully. "You must lead her." Harriet is used to wearing the trousers in our relationship. She won't be led.

Harriet: The first lesson ends in disarray. Time for Matt to walk and me to hobble around the corner to Plaza Dorrego. The plan? Several cold beers, a steak sandwich and some bargain shopping at the antiques market. And absolutely no tango.

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