Eee, but they're game girls!

Tonight, I turned on our beautiful music machine and it refused to utter so much as a squeak (thank you for that, Messrs Bang & Olufsen - I shall be sending the girls round to sort you aaht... and not in a good way).

Desolate, we gave the troupe the option of retrieving their hard-earned dosh and heading home without a class. To a showgirl, they elected to stay and to bodge through the class in some way or another.

That old British spirit of invention did the rest. One of our talented number immediately took to the church piano and gave us a fabulous warm up number on the old ivories. Another produced an iPhone and offered it as a replacement music player. Propped up on the stage and cranked up to maximum volume it created barely a whisper at the back of the room, leaving our showgirls there reliant almost entirely on visual cues to know where they were in the song.

Already one down in the shape of the Sparkly Bra Pixie, the Voluptuous Jules and I tried to dance as quietly as we could so as not to drown out the teeny tiny sound of the music. At one point in the number, there's a fabulous BOOM BOOM BOOM of hips from side to side - sadly, on the iPhone, that was completely inaudible at the back of the room. It became my job to shout BOOM BOOM BOOM like some excitable Basil Brush at the appropriate moment. Otherwise, big chunks of the class took place in mouselike silence as we all held our breath and strained to hear the music.

Trust me, for an amateur troupe, when we perform, we do a really good job. However, what the public never sees is the sheer bodgery that goes on behind the scenes. Tonight was us at our most ridiculous - inaudible music, badly cued by yours truly; and the need for manic concentration by the troupe. And you know what? Our showgirls still managed to master a new chunk of the routine.

Thank you for your positivity and for the laughs, showgirls - we think you're bloomin' brilliant!

Yours, wondering about mime as an art form,

Burlicious x