Love you too Alex xx

Yes, that's the other tip - you need a good band with a good sound person.

A good band who will give the customers a tune if they don't want to dance all night, is a big assest. A band who will only play for me to call a dance misses the point - a lot of the time most are there for other reasons (a party, a wedding, a fundraising), we are the 'entertainment'. So a caller needs to pace things. OTOH if the dance floor is too small for those who want to dance, keep the dances coming until some of them need a rest.
It helps to have a selection of dances of different levels. I sometimes do an over simplified dance to tune Horses Brawl - 2 or more lines of dancers - dancing anywhere, encouraging others to make your line the longest, twirling, 1 person through a line of arches and a new leader starts again.
Not something I'd particularly want to dance, but some gigs you need something like that to get them up.
Then when they are up if you are working with a band with a good sound person so that you can be heard even when the musicians are playing you can change the call, get them into a circle.

Other nights, you can tell from the way they line up for the first dance that they know what they are doing, and don't want any of that rubbish.

The couple dances go down differently according to age. Over 60s (here in the NW) seem to know them, under 30s wont know Gay Gordons but they may know the French version (which I can't spell, and which didn't go down well with the Rotarians).