This penguin can dance

Dancing came naturally to me, ever since I was a young chick. I just loved leaping around, flapping my wings and showing off.

None of the other penguins took any interest, they were only ever impressed by great feats of swimming, diving, splashing around in the water, something I was never any good at.

I almost gave up the dancing altogether, but I was smart enough to notice one crucial thing. Humans loved it. Every time I danced I was bombarded by fish from the ever-watching crowd. The more they threw fish at me the more I danced, the more I danced the more they threw fish. Before I knew it I was dancing twelve hours a day and was loved by the other penguins for all the fish I shared with them. There's nothing impresses a young lady penguin more than a fella that always has a spare fish or two about him.

The zoo authorities noticed, of course, and I became their main attraction, front page news in the local Chronic. Before too long I was all over the internet and once that happened I was suddenly too big a star for a lowly municipal zoo. I was moved to the capital zoo, but within a year I had my very own show in the West End, with "See the Penguin Dance," in bright neon letters, my webbed feet treading the boards the Gielgud and Olivier once trod.

Of course, once I was filling out venues, the pressure was on me to develop my act. Doug, my trainer and go-to person about anything showbiz, always warned me about the competition.

"Why would some schmuck pay to see a penguin waddle about? You've got performing seals who can balance a ball on their nose, a dolphin who can leap through a hoop and a gnu that can do Soduku. If you wanna be a star, you've gotta give them glamour, action, a bit of wow."

Doug worked me hard. I trained all day and all night, not just on my routine and my fitness, but working on that showbiz stuff, a hypnotist who taught me how to entrance an audience and a big name in burlesque, who showed me how to make my act sexy: wet feathers, everyone loves wet feathers.

The first run in the West End was a sell-out, but though the run was extended ticket sales started to dwindle. Doug left me in know doubt where I was going wrong.

"You wanna know what your trouble is, my little feathered friend? Your trouble is that you're a one-trick pony. You're a penguin who dances. Nice, worth a visit, but that's it, only worth seeing the one time. You wanna know the hard, cold truth? You don't have a repeat audience. No-one comes back to see ya. What sorta star does that make you? You think people only went to see Brando one time? You know anyone that just saw one Eastwood movie? No, a star is someone you see again and again, and a dancing penguin ain't that kinda act."

Lesson delivered, Doug went on to tell me how I could reach for real stardom. The answer was hard, hard work. I leant to juggle, I learnt to eat fire, to jump through hoops whilst whistling the star spangled banner and ended my act with a comedy drunk routine that was funnier than Chaplin.

The hard work paid off. I was granted appearances on game shows and chat shows, becoming a regular on Jonathan Ross's couch, indeed I was in the running to replace him when he left the BBC, only to be pipped at the post by Ann Widdecombe.

But fame is fickle and a star that flickers brightly can suddenly shine no more, a fact as true in showbiz as it is in cosmology. A new generation of penguins took to the stage, attracted by the wealth and fame my success had brought me. These penguins didn't just dance, they could do magic tricks, knife-throwing acts, Morgan Freeman impressions and comedy routines that put mine to shame. Doug left me for a new upcoming act who could sing the entire catalogue of Beatles songs whilst juggling chainsaws and drinking a glass of water.

The theatres became half full, then half empty, then mostly empty. I waddled out of the West End into the provincials, touring the B-list of the theatre circuit, following in the footsteps of Chas and Dave, Bob Carolgees and other fallen idols of yesteryear.

But I played even less well in Eastbourne and Leigh than I had in the big city; it takes more than a performing animal to impress a hardy yokel local and my stage career ended with all the dignity and grace of a slap round the face with a wet fish.

I was reduced to sideshows in zoos, a five minute distraction from the main event of watching a lion sleep or an elephant eat a lot and shit it out again. On minimal wages I could no longer afford my own apartment and I was forced to return to the zoo compound. With the stress of failure my feathers startle to ruffle and I lost 'it', the glamour and poise that had got me to the top. I looked like the has-been I was.

You might think that the other penguins would be excited to have a star in their midst, but they shunned me. They thought that I'd shunned them by having my own private pad and parade of showbiz chums and were getting their revenge. It was true, I suppose, that I'd never been back to the zoo in all the time I was A list, in fact I sometimes acted as if I wasn't a penguin at all.

I thought I had reached my lowest point. My career gone, no money, all alone. But to make things even worse dancing on the hard concrete floors of the communal compound damaged my feet, I had to keep my dancing to a minimum. I was growing old and nobody likes an old dancing penguin.

The one thing that kept me going was the kids. They didn't bear any grudges against me and were genuinely delighted to have 'that penguin from the telly' living among them. Two of the youngsters were particular fans, Pete and Gary, brothers who used to come and watch me dance every day.

I started giving them lessons, simple dance routines that they loved. I got to know their mother, Milly, a single parent who was delighted that her boys had a father figure who kept them out of trouble, for some of the time at least. We started seeing each other every day, using the dance lessons as an excuse. Before the year was out we were officially clicking beaks together.

I decided to retire. After all, a penguin can't dance forever and I now had a family to think about. I started writing my life-story, Doug's advice again. He came to see me in the zoo. He didn't say much about it, but I gather from mutual friends that he'd developed some form of cancer and was making his peace with everyone he'd let down over the course of his career. With his contacts he managed to get me an advance that paid for a more than comfortable retirement, and we moved out of the zoo into a modest family home by the coast.

I'm now managing Pete and Gary, who are taking their own tentative steps into the world of showbiz. Some say I shouldn't encourage them, given what happened to me. But I hope that with my guidance they'll avoid the mistakes I made. Besides, I understand what drives them, at the end of the day it's not the money, not the fame, not the glory, it's just there in their feet, in their genes. When a penguin's gotta dance a penguin's just gotta dance.