CAN IT REALLY HELP YOU FIND THE ONE?

married to someone he went on a full-length date with.

‘The conversation was like, “Status, job, hobbies, where do you live?” I felt pressured and came away from our date thinking, “Er, no. I don’t want to see her again.”

‘Saying that, I struck up a rapport with my now wife within 45 seconds. So maybe it wasn’t the time constraint that was the problem, it was just the combination of people.’

It may be hard to believe but marriages have sprung from a mere micro-date. Ellie Tew, 30, is now happily wed to a man she had a micro-date with five years ago. She gave her now husband Olivier Sclavo just one hour to impress her.

‘It’s like more advanced speed dating,’ she explains. ‘For me, it really took the pressure off. I thought, “If it bombs I can leave after an hour. If it’s great we can set up another date.”

‘I strongly believe you know within five minutes whether or not you click with a person. On a traditional date, if you don’t, you have to sit it out because you don’t want to be rude. And before you know it, you’ve spent three hours with a person that you know you’re never going to see again. It’s a waste of time.

‘The way I think about dates is that they’re a “social interview”. You’re trying to find out whether the other person ticks the right boxes. You want to know whether that connection you had online translates to real life.’

For Ellie, who works for a recruitment start-up, it did and she married 30-year-old journalist Olivier last month. ‘He always jokes now that I gave him more than an hour. I left the date knowing I wanted to see him again. I was intrigued. A good micro-date will leave you on a bit of a high.’