Claire Trevett: Busloads of fun for NZ tour party

John Key joins in a dance at the Matavai Resort. Photo / Getty Images

Yes, he's done it again. Just moments after swearing he would not dance in public again after the mocking he got for dancing with drag queens Buffy and Bimbo at Auckland's Big Gay Out festival, Prime Minister John Key was dancing with Miss South Pacific, Vanessa Marsh, and assorted other Niuean ladies.

However, Mr Key's efforts at a reception in Niue weren't quite up to the standards of Prestige - the hip hop crew with him on his four-day trip around the Pacific. Prestige had danced that morning at Niue High School's sports day to rapturous applause and children rushed to get autographs on their T-shirts.

Mr Key's window wiper-like arm manoeuvres and gyrating hips didn't quite have the same effect - the only person wanting an autograph was the Niuean Premier, who held hopes of getting him to sign off on some aid funding. But you have to give the PM points for effort.

The real fun on the Pacific trip has proved to be wherever Michael Jones and Inga Tuigamala are. Tuigamala has been renamed Inga the Singer for his efforts on bus trips.

So stupendous is his enthusiasm that even the most serious of the diplomats in the PM's delegation now quickly leaps to his feet to jig down the aisle when Inga calls his name.

Some healthy competition has also built up between Tuigamala and Jones, and the Prestige crew. It resulted in a "dance-off" - Prestige with their hip hop followed by Jones and Tuigamala with their "old-style moves" - the moonwalk, the robot and a bit of breakdancing. The end result was Jones bagsing the aisle seat after an old war wound in the knee flared up.

The two also bicker. Tuigamala tells Jones he talks too much, Jones fusses Tuigamala round like a mother hen. It is possible they also fib on occasion. On the way to the airport in Samoa, Tuigamala pointed out the place he was born back in 1968 behind a family hut. He claims he weighed just three pounds. He also swears his mother told him he was the smallest and ugliest of all her 14 children.