YOU may not like it but dance music is now one of the most popular music genres on the planet. The charts are packed with 4/4 tunes made or remixed by superstar DJs. The irresistible and relentless groove of the dance floor fills clubs and stadiums, themes the biggest TV shows and is the soundtrack to mega advertising. You can't escape the beat. But how did we get here?

BBC's new three part documentary, Can You Feel It - How Dance Music Conquered The World is a timely reminder of just what a world beating movement it has been over the last 30 years and although I may have hung up my dancing shoes and whistle these days, it was a wonderfully nostalgic wallow in my past, which rekindled my love for music and house and techno, and made me realise what a major part of the soundtrack to my life dance music has been.

In the first episode we followed the 4/4 beat from its disco origins through remix culture to house, techno, acid house and the current EDM explosion. It was fascinating to find out how crucial to the music's development just a handful of people were whether they were disco legends like Nicky Siano and Tom Moulton or the boffins who designed new sound systems to play the music such as Alex Rosner who explained how having speakers "mounted like a chandelier above the dancefloor" totally transformed how music was listened to and danced in New York clubs like Studio 54 and Sanctuary.

The fascinating array of talking heads was the real plus point of the programme and it treated what some might think of as a rather throwaway genre of music with real respect, reverence and deserved intelligence. House pioneers like Marshall Jefferson, Farley 'Jackmaster' Funk and Steve 'Silk' Hurley, Detroit techno inventors Juan Atkins, Kevin Saunderson and Derrick May and modern DJ superstars such as Pete Tong and David Guetta all contributed and highlights included the utter bafflement the US DJs experienced when they headed over to the UK in the late '80s only to be met by thousands of young white people dancing in fields to their music. Ah them were the days....