Forget the gyrating youths in Kingston's modern day superclubs, it was 1940s acts like Bert Berryman's Band which really set the town swinging.

Audiences of up to 200 people danced the foxtrot, tango and quickstep to the swinging sounds of the popular band at Surbiton's Claremont Hall and Assembly Rooms and Kingston's Coronation Hall.

Walter Berryman, otherwise known as Jim, was the band's double bass player from the 1930s to the late 1950s.

A draughtsman at Hawkers aircraft factory during the day, he and brothers John on tenor sax and band leader Bert on piano got Kingston's joints jumping in the evening.

The band were particularly active during the Second World War, when local firms involved in war work organised regular midweek dances alongside the traditional weekend events.

"At times I was playing almost every night of the week," says Jim, now 86.

"They really came to dance, not to mess about. They used to have competitions as well.

"It got so popular they formed a Sunday club, so we were playing on a Sunday evening as well.

"All the big bands were playing dance music at that time, like at all the big clubs in London. Dancing was at its peak then."

It is not hard to imagine that a member of a fashionable dance band would be quite a hit with the ladies, but Jim is not so sure.

"They always used to look at the drummer," he says.

"They used to fancy the drummer because he wasn't really playing music, so he would have been eyeing up the crowd!

"There were other bands that used to lark around but we were strict tempo."

Jim stopped playing in the band in the 1950s when smaller rock and roll groups began to become more popular.

But he says modern youngsters just do not know how to dance like they did back in the 1940s.

"There's no dancing now, they just sort of jump about and skip around. Back then it was real dancing, where we took hold of each other."

sbrody@london.newsquest.co.uk