Synopsis

Set against a nostalgic vision of 1950s East End London, the video follows a young boy watching his older sister prepare for evenings at the local palais. Ray Davies appears both as the boy and as the sharply dressed spiv who escorts her to the dance hall. Domestic arguments, courtship, and memories of family life unfold around the ballroom, before the Kinks perform onstage. The older spiv remains in the hall, watching the band with a reflective stillness that gives the upbeat song a bittersweet edge.

Factoids & Trivia

• The video was filmed in November 1982 at Ilford Palais in Essex, using the ballroom as both a period setting and a performance venue.

• Local Kinks fans were used as members of the dance-hall audience.

• The clip first aired in Britain in December 1982 on Channel 4's music program "The Tube." It made its American MTV debut on March 25, 1983.

• Ray Davies' spiv character was partly based on the Davies brothers' uncle, Frank Willmore, whom Dave Davies remembered as an old-school Cockney figure.

• The song and video draw on Ray Davies' memories of his sister Rene, who died from a heart attack while dancing at the Lyceum ballroom in 1957.

• The spiv character returned in later Kinks videos, including "Don't Forget to Dance" and "Do It Again."

• Ilford Palais was demolished in 2007, giving the video an added documentary value as a record of a dance-hall culture that had largely disappeared.