LovE at First sight wasn't on thE menu

First Dates

It was Valentine’s Day on Friday so I took the fiancée to the flicks to see The Lego Movie and then on to an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet, for which I had a 2-for-1 voucher.

As it turned out, the voucher was only valid Sunday-Thursday so she had to pay her share, which rather soured the romance of the evening.

Thankfully, two nights before, Channel 4 had already shown her how lucky she is to have me.

From Quasimodo to Brad Pitt, everyone has been on a first date in their life and they can be excruciating. The idea behind First Dates is that watching other people go through the experience will be hilarious — but it’s equally excruciating.

This was television at its most basic, fill a restaurant with single people and film what happens. With none of the editing or prior research which makes The Undateables such a joy, the programme had as much soul as a graveyard.

Give an immature man an attractive woman and a camera to perform to and you’ll likely get some unedifying results and so we had Ross and Mo.

After demonstrating his “leg on a string” dance which had made him “famous in the nightclubs of Bournemouth”, cocky Ross went on a date with Regan, which went so well that he gallantly said he’d “definitely like to spend the night with her”.

Twice-divorced Mo was looking for a woman who would “feed me green seedless grapes while I lay on the sofa”, which explained in one sentence why two women had previously divorced him.

He had a seemingly inexhaustible supply of corny chat up lines (“You remind me of a parking ticket because you’ve got ‘fine’ written all over you”) but was lost for words when his date, Chloe, brought her pet Chihuahua, Bentley, with her.

The only person who pulled on the heart strings was heavy metal fan Paul, whose stammer got the better of him on his date with Christine. After going their separate ways he said he’d liked to have gone on a second date “to show her I’m not a bumbling idiot” and broke down in tears.

It was such a touching show of emotion, quite out of character with the rest of the programme, that I felt like getting in contact and offering him my unused voucher for the occasion.