First Dates remains a heady mix of artifice and honesty
The thing about First Dates (Channel 4) is that, even in its 15th series, it retains the ability to surprise. You would think that a red-blooded male in his sixties would be quite taken with Kelly Ann. She’s gorgeous, vivacious, 69 but could pass for 15 years younger. The looks of a Bond girl, and was once a Bunny girl. The boys in Weird Science couldn’t have created a better date.
Fred Sirieix, maître d’ of the
First Dates restaurant, called her “swellegant”. When former model Steve arrived, Kelly Ann turned on the charm. “We’re rather gorgeous, aren’t we, Steve?” she purred. To hell with false modesty. This was a woman who had dated Jack Nicholson, Peter Cook and Jimmy Page! The production team asked if they planned to meet again, and Kelly Ann batted her eyelashes and prepared to bask in Steve’s adoration, and then Steve said… “Nah”.
Excuse me, what? My surprise was nothing compared to Kelly Ann’s. “You don’t fancy me? Bloody hell. What’s wrong with you? Are you blind?” she said, joking-but-not-joking. Possibly it was that kind of thing that put him off.
There is a certain fakeness to First Dates that you can’t help but notice, and not just the fact that the waiters are actors with their own talent
managers. When Kelly Ann departed, the cab driver said: “Taxi by yourself? He must have been mad.” Which we couldn’t possibly have heard unless there was a microphone in the cab, meaning that he had primed him for the moment. Some of the dates talk about being shy – car mechanic Rhys said he got “the worst anxiety ever” from “just the idea of a date, having to sit across a table from somebody” – but still feel compelled to apply for a TV show in which they go on a date in front of a camera crew and have the results beamed to the nation. (Rhys has a tattoo above his penis that says “lucky girl”, which we know because he undid his trousers and showed it off in the middle of the restaurant. His date still volunteered to see him again.)
EX-RAF driver Aaron appeared gobsmacked when his date, Jess, walked through the door. It turned out they had dallied before, back when Aaron was a woman. What are the chances? But every time you started to feel you’d been had, the show gave you something heartwarming. It was touching to see Aaron and Jess happy together; dancing queen Donna may not have seen a future with fitness instructor Selvin, but they had a fun night out. Meanwhile, Kelly Ann is at home, practising her Bunny Dip and wondering at Steve’s dodgy eyesight.
How can you tell if an elephant is pregnant? Not a Christmas cracker joke but a scene from fly-on-the-wall documentary London Zoo: An Extraordinary Year (ITV). I’m not going to paint too graphic a picture as you may be reading this over your breakfast eggs, but it involves a vet, a very long rubber glove and a vast quantity of effluent. “Should’ve put wellies on,” said the vet.
To be honest, there are other jobs at the zoo I’d prefer to do. Being counsellor to an agoraphobic camel, perhaps, or getting a hug from a sea lion. Above all, this series shows how devoted the staff of London Zoo and Whipsnade are to their charges. Was there too much anthropomorphising going on? As a non-expert in animal behaviour I’m really not sure, nor do I know how the animals feel about life in a zoo; I found it uncomfortable to be staring through glass at a captive gorilla, who stared right back at us.
But some animals, according to the show, thrive on the attention. It was filmed during lockdown, when the zoo was closed. Jimmy the white-cheeked gibbon was bored, we were told by his keeper: “He’s a really good example of a zoo animal that genuinely enjoys people watching, so he’s missing that human contact.” Jimmy particularly likes female visitors: “He’s got a real thing for the ladies. Always gone for young women in their twenties.”
To keep spirits up, the keepers took the animals on walks to visit their neighbours. The donkey went to see the sea lions, the Eurasian eagle owl popped over to the giraffe enclosure and a pygmy goat was taken to gaze at the lowland gorillas.
Programmes such as these function as advertising, which is why institutions are so keen to get camera crews through the doors. Chief operating officer Kathryn England deftly reminded us that the zoo is a charity and relies on people coming through the gates; every month that it remained closed during the pandemic it cost £2.3 million in lost revenue. Happily, it has now reopened, although to limited numbers. Jimmy will be delighted.
First Dates ★★
London Zoo: An Extraordinary Year ★★★