The Fourth Decade

Welcome back to DraMattics, yes I’m sorry I’ve left you in the dark for a month. But, whilst it may sound as unbelievable as James Murdoch’s testimony at the Leveson inquiry, I have actually had a life for the last few weeks. You’ve probably noticed I have also made a few changes to the layout of the blog, I hope you like it. For some reason I thought the picture was appropriate. I choose to imagine the little girl in the raincoat is crying, I don’t know why, but somehow it works. For those of you following the blog by e-mail update, you probably won’t be able to see the new blog format, sorry but you are missing out – it’s actually a picture of Tulisa’s naked breasts. I say missing out, you’ve probably seen them before, if you’ve used the internet.

Enough discussion of Tulisa’s breasts, time instead to talk about what I’ve been up to whilst you’ve been sitting at your computer crying waiting for this blog to update. Well friends I have turned the ripe old age of thirty. Yes who’d have thought? Certainly not my mirror. Which currently is estimating my age, to be the average age of items shown on the Antiques Roadshow. Regular readers of blog, familiar with my tone being much like that of Victor Meldrew crossed with an angry goose, will expect me to have had a miserable 30^th birthday. Well in fact I had a good birthday, so there! You didn’t expect that did you?

The actual day was Easter Saturday, which was a little inconvenient as everyone tends to be busy across the Easter weekend. But it did give me the opportunity to spend the day itself with my family. Who organised this lovely birthday cake for me:

I was also lucky enough to receive a shout-out on Graham Norton’s radio show, organised by my flatmate. Despite actually working in the media industry I still found this deeply exciting, as if all the other listeners were wishing me a happy birthday, instead of ignoring it and sipping coffee like I do when I’m listening and hear other birthday messages. Anyway I played the whole thing very cool, and absolutely didn’t record the shout-out on my computer so I can play it back again and again. No I definitely did not do that.

The rest of the day was spent with my Dad constantly reminding me I was now thirty. I couldn’t work out if this was his way of getting his own back for all the times I called him “old” as a child, or just the worry dawning on him that he was now old enough to have a fathered a thirty year-old child. In hindsight the crying should have given away it was the latter option.

The next Saturday saw me have a birthday party, horray if you came, boo if you didn’t come and awkward if you’re reading this and weren’t invited. I blame Facebook which manages to have a message delivery system about twice as inefficient as Royal Mail, admittedly with a slight smaller queue than in the Post Office. Seriously where do those lost Facebook messages go? Maybe one day they will turn up and I’ll find out I missed my own wedding or something?

I should of course say thanks to my friends who made me wear this “30” balloon around my arm for the whole evening, like a modern day slave labourer’s ball-and-chain.

Effectively it’s like having a giant advertising hoarding strapped to you saying “Too old to date”, which you then have to take around on the Underground. This resulted in one memorable exchange on the way home with two rather drunken women, who first of all asked “Whose birthday is it?”. I resisted the urge to reply “Me, you daft cows. That’s why I’m holding the balloon.”. After explaining it was my birthday one of the women then went onto then say “Oh I just turned 30 myself, it’s really awful isn’t it?! Are you having a good night?”. To which I replied “I was…”.

I was then asked “Are you the oldest person in your group?”. “Do I look the oldest?”, I said. “Yes” came the reply. It was at that point when I pushed them under the train, so sincere apologies if your Northern line service was held up on Saturday 14^th of April. It was necessary.

I was lucky enough to receive quite a few birthday cards:

Thanks so much everyone who sent me one, sadly if I added up all the 30’s listed on the cards, I’d have an age of about 1,200. Fortunately no one was stupid enough to send me a “With Deepest Sympathy” card, probably realising that had they done so their nearest and dearest would be receiving similar cards very soon. I should at this point show you a card made by graphic designer friend, which is amazing:

So there you go, shocking as it seems I’ve actually written a happy blog – broadly. Bet you’re surprised.

Has anything changed since turning 30? Well not really, my face doesn’t seem to need more ironing than it already did, and no vital limbs have fallen off or anything. I have made a few life changes, I’ve lost three and a half  kilograms on a diet and have started driving lessons. Yes clear the streets of Clapham, I am learning to drive – more on that in a few weeks’ time (provided no one, especially me, dies in the process).

Is there anything I regret not doing before turning 30? Well veteran readers will remember that back in September I went through a list of 30 things I was “supposed” to have done before turning thirty:

30 Reasons to take Cyanide

And that I had achieved six of these things, I still have achieved six of these things. And do you know what? I don’t care. They are all stupid things I don’t wish I’d done anyway. Like having a meaningful relationship. Who wants to do that? I guess if I was to list one regret over the last thirty years, then it would probably be not having assassinated Katie Price. I’ve had two distinct opportunities to do this neither one I have taken up and I feel for the good of humanity I should have.

The first was when I interviewed her at the Brit Awards back when I was making student television. It was just after she launched her bid to represent the United Kingdom in the Eurovision Song Contest, you may remember her being dressed in a very tight pink PVC suit whilst heavily pregnant:

Apologies for sharing that photo with you. I asked her to tell me something about her Eurovision entry, which she said she would if I promised to vote for her in the UK selection process. I duly promised her my vote, and she then told me nothing. Well I got the last laugh bitch, because guess what? I didn’t vote for you. Hahahahahahahahahaha!

The second time was when I was working at The London Studios, ITV’s Southbank Headquarters, in an adjacent studio she was filming some tedious Katie & Peter-esque chat show for that highbrow channel, and home of thought provoking documentary ITV2. Humorously the show was cancelled a few episodes before the end of its run because Katie Price had booked herself a plastic surgery session out of the country and therefore couldn’t attend the last few episodes of her own show. I’m not even making it up, that actually happened! My regret is I missed a perfectly good opportunity to run into the studio armed with a flamethrower and melt her breasts into molten plastic. I would like to take this moment to point out to any security services monitoring this blog, that I in no way encourage or endorsee any kind of terrorist activity. Though I suspect any court in the land would let me off, when they heard my motivation.

So there we go, thirty and happy(ish) and bar sharing the earth with Katie Price, I think I am happy with my achievements. I look forward to a stream of comments and replies telling me why I shouldn’t be happy!

Bathing with the Masses

The other day I was going to the toilet – apologies for starting a blog with this sentence, but if you had any standards of taste and decency you’d surely by now know that you need to leave them at the door when dealing with this blog. Without wishing to be indelicate, I was having an extended visit to the bathroom, if you know what I mean. This particular visit was happening in a bathroom in a company I happened to be visiting, not one of my regular bathrooms. I promise this is all important information. It was then whilst “at stool”, that I glanced to the right, to notice a full length mirror. A full length mirror showing a reflection of myself on the toilet. Why on earth would you put a full length mirror in a toilet? I tried to look away, but like a horrific car crash, I was drawn back. There I was witnessing my body in the least flattering of circumstances, and as I glanced down I saw the hideous rolls of fat bulging over the rim of the toilet bowl.

You’re probably feeling somewhat nauseous reading that statement, so imagine how I felt seeing it in person. There at that moment it became clear why I was single, because I had the physique of an old bean bag, recently sat on by Heather from Eastenders (rest in peace). It was time to do something about it, and hence I have made a concerted effort to get back into swimming. Yes that’s right exercise, I know I am as surprised as you.

I’ve previously been a reasonably regularly swimmer, I wouldn’t say I was a good swimmer, but then I’ve never drowned so that must say something. My last regime of water-based exercise ended when I was unfortunate enough to read a set of rules printed on the wall of Brixton Leisure Centre. It was the final rule that got my attention:

“Rule Number 7: If you notice any discharges of bodily fluid into the pool, please inform a member of staff immediately.”

Then printed directly underneath it said:

“Enjoy your swim.”

Which is now impossible, given what you’ve just read. And thus I decided swimming wasn’t for me.

Anyway to mark my return to the swimming pool, just in time for the London 2012 Olympics – which is entirely coincidental I assure you, I thought I’d give you some of my rules of swimming. These rules, you’ll be pleased to know, primarily don’t involve bodily fluids. They simply represent a series of what I believe are socially acceptable ways to behave in a swimming pool – though it probably wouldn’t do any harm to make them law punishable by death.

Here’s the Draconian laws that I will now pass:

·       No affection in the swimming pool. Heavy petting in the deep end, holding hands across lane ropes and god forbid a naughty kiss near the diving board should all be banned. There’s just no need for it, save the hideous displays of affection for the escalators on the Underground (though if it could be banned from there too that would be nice).

·       My speed is the correct speed. The lanes in my pool are divided into Fast, Medium, Slow and an unnamed lane which presumably is for those so slow that they’d be considered static. I swim in the medium lane, if you are swimming faster than me go in the fast lane, and if you’re swimming slower than me get in the slow lane.

·       Don’t pull out in front of me. If I’m coming to the end of pool, and about to turn round, don’t suddenly pull out in front of me and force me to stop. You wouldn’t do it in a car because we’d up having a multi-car pile-up. And a multi-swimmer pile-up will make the least touchy-feely people feel very awkward.

·       Old men should not wear tight inappropriate swimming trunks. Self-explanatory really.

·       Good looking men should wear tight swimming trunks – I need a cheap thrill in my life, and a reason to do exercise. So do your civic duty and help out.

·       Get your hair wet. Anyone who isn’t prepared to get their hair wet should instantly be relegated to the slow lane. Bobbing about with your head above water, in the fast lane is annoying and not fast.

·       No talking at the ends of the pools. It’s not a bloody coffee shop, if you’re lucky enough to have a friend stop showing off and clogging up the end of the pool so no one can swim.

·       No diving over me. I don’t appreciate people diving over me, to get an athletic start in their lane swimming. I remember 999 with Michael Buerk, there’s every chance you could land on me and break my back into more pieces than the NHS will soon be in.

·       No backstroke. Backstroke is about as socially friendly, as releasing a combine-harvester into the swimming pool – only more people get injured. Until some special magic goggles that allow you to see where you are going are invented, no backstroke in the pool.

·       Don’t have more fun than me. Basically this is what all my rules are saying, and to be honest this one can be applied both in and out the pool. I am a grump, don’t have more fun than me, it makes me jealous.

There you go, ten rules that will make my life better in the swimming pool – well they would if I hadn’t shamed myself by choking on water the other day and the life guard coming over to check I was alright.

I’ll be issuing some rules for other life situations soon, so look out for them.

And that is it, it’s also it for a couple of weeks! Sorry guys, I won’t be updating for a little while, because I’m on a work trip to Los Angeles, yep I realise that even saying that makes me sound like an utter w**ker! But if it makes you feel better I’ll be turning 30 pretty much as soon as I get back, see karma giveth and then taketh! Don’t worry I won’t be going on about the LA thing too much – did I mention I’m flying business class. No? Oh I’m flying business class!

Have a great couple of weeks and yummy Easter, and I’ll be back blogging very soon!

“I’m so full of business, I’m pissing cash up the wall” – and 101 other reasons why I won’t be appearing on The Apprentice

Don’t worry I won’t be revealing who lost or who was fired in this week’s episode so even you have a date with iPlayer booked you can read on.

In case you’ve somehow slipped into a coma, perhaps you watched the Budget, you won’t know that yesterday marked the return of The Apprentice. This is the eight outing for this now stalwart of the BBC One schedule. On the face of it this show shouldn’t be successful, after all on paper it’s an hour of watching a group of business people unsuccessfully selling printed T-shirts whilst being sneered at by the host of Countdown. Yet somehow The Apprentice is so much more than that, not just a reality show, but such a classy reality show that unlike with its ITV rivals you don’t feel like you need a wash even if you fully immerse yourself in it. I’m a full Apprentice fan, cancelling all my plans for 13 Wednesdays of the year (admittedly not that hard if like me you have no friends), and watching avidly through not only the main show but its excellent support show – The Apprentice: You’re Fired over on BBC Two. If I did this for any other reality show, I’d feel ashamed, I certainly would admit on this blog (even if it is read by approximately no people).

For me The Apprentice doesn’t feel like any of the other reality shows, I’m not quite sure why this is. Maybe it’s the high production values, maybe it’s the fact that there’s no telephone voting or begging for calls, perhaps it’s the fact that the contestants actually want a career that doesn’t make them a “celebrity” or perhaps it’s simply the fact that everyone is in a suit. I can’t be sure why but either way the format keeps me more glued to the telly than a documentary exposing how writers of excellent internet blogs make the best sexual partners. They do, it’s science fact.

Viewers of The Apprentice are much like armchair football fans or passengers on the London Underground, in that they arrogantly seem to think they could do a better job competing/playing/making all Londoners miserable than the people currently doing the job despite their obvious lack of experience, skill and qualifications. I take a different approach to the norm, I know full well that no matter how badly the contestants are performing I’d be doing worse. I’d be awful at The Apprentice, absolutely bloody awful, worse even than Germany is at World Wars. I’d fail at the first step, no not the first task, the first step – the purposeful group walk across The Millennium Bridge. The problem is in my head I’m sure I look like a purposeful power bastard strutting across the Thames, but in reality I look more like I’m power mincing across the bridge desperately trying to find the toilet.

The next step of failure is recording the cringe worthy sound bites, the bits where the candidates say something ridiculously stupid such as “I’m the reflection of perfection” or “I’m a business superstar”. In fairness the candidates are probably egged on by a t**t of a television producer – don’t you just hate television producers – right k**bs they are. However in my case I’d even fail here,  I’d oscillate between either saying something ridiculously meek like “I’m, alright at business, as long as I don’t do anything involving selling” or saying something so ridiculously over the top that even the usually bulls**t-immune other candidates would point and laugh such as “I’m so full of business, I’m pissing cash up the wall”. Mind you given what was said this week I’m not far off the mark.

All of this abject failure and we have even got to the instructions for the first task yet, the first time you face Lord Sugar in the boardroom. I don’t know about you but if Lord Sugar was my boss, I’d s**t myself so much that the boardroom would soon resemble a particularly grim sceptic tank accident with Nick and Karen clinging onto each other in a desperate bid to stay afloat. A grim image maybe but a true one. I strongly believe that if commanded to by Lord Sugar, Nick Hewer would don a pair of leather gloves and strangle any complete abject failure before tossing their lifeless body out of the nearest window – there wouldn’t even be a taxi or anything. And for good reason that image terrifies me. Though in fairness if Lord Sugar did start talking about solving a Where’s Wally? puzzle or locating Lord Lucan I am more likely to laugh at his insane madness rather than open up my bowels.

With suitably random task set, the teams have two important pieces of business to deal with, firstly naming the team. This always results in a series of potential answers so pretentiously wanky you’d be forgiven for thinking you’d tuned into a toff’s special of Who Wants to be a Millionaire?. I on the other hand would play it somewhat more downbeat “Team Disappointment”, “Team Utter Disaster” I think would be more realistic choices, at least that way your results in the boardroom can only be an improvement on Lord Sugar’s expectations. Or how about “Team Kittens”, even the cold heart of Lord Sugar would surely not be able to fire someone from Team Kitten? No?

Second on the to-do list is to select a project manager, a job which often has less willing volunteers than a Jeremy-Kyle-snog-a-thon. As admirably demonstrated by the boys this week if you asked for those willing to project manage to step forward, the entire room would shuffle back faster than a group of parents confronted by Mothercare’s new paedophilic range – don’t be disgusted, worse ideas have regularly been pitched on The Apprentice. In fairness to these people, they are right to be scared of project managing, in Week 1 it is invariably suicide to project manage – there simply isn’t enough time in that first week for anyone else to f**k up enough to out f**k up the simple fact that you project managed the losing team. If it was up to me, I’d vote Karen to be the project manager, how could we possibly lose?

Next it’s onto the project, this week saw the teams printing t-shirts, bags and teddy bears to sell. I am going to say something shocking here, unlike the millions of people sitting at home confident they could do better, I can exclusively reveal that I have no idea how to run a printing business – not a clue. By the end of Day 2 I’d most probably still be sitting in the introductory boardroom position, dribbling and burbling loudly whilst internally wishing I’d paid more attention in my reception class on potato printing. Mocking the actual candidates for missing the finer points of cost-benefit analysis, choosing the right location and harassing people in shops sounds funny now, but I would never have got anywhere near those. I’d still be wondering if a print of man entering his earlier thirties hanging himself would be appropriate on a baby’s T-shirt. Then there’s the selling part of the task, somewhere else where I wouldn’t excel. In a sales-based situation I have all the imposing dominance of a piece of belly button fluff, my sales’ pitch is something on the lines of “Would you like to buy this? No?! Ok.” – meekly whispered with all the authority of a struggling supply teacher who has just been locked in the stationery cupboard by a load of 17 year old bullies. I’m just not pushy enough, I’m exceptionally British, I could make awkward flailing an Olympic event – though I’d never be forceful enough to get to the top of the sport.

After a horrid two days, I’d return into the boardroom to have everything I’d done ripped apart by Lord Sugar – and fail to get any customer service support for my Amstrad computer I owned back in the 1980s when computer games had to be loaded off a tape over a period of approximately fourteen working weeks. Predictably the boardroom discussions on this week’s show turned into the shouting version of last year’s London Riots, where a selection of gibbering morons shouted at each other so well that they could probably replace the House of Commons and no one would notice. Again I wouldn’t contribute well here, I’d be sat in the corner, raising my hand politely waiting for my turn to speak. When confronted by an angry Lord Sugar wondering why I’d lost £600 of money that probably wasn’t his on a ridiculous task that would be a far less effective way of raising money than just begging on the street, I wouldn’t be able to robustly defend myself. I’d probably just mumble something about wishing I’d applied to be on Pointless instead of The Apprentice.

At this point understandably Lord Sugar would fire me, because let’s face it the boardroom chair I’m sitting on has done better in the task than me. Here at least I would have the common decency, unlike all the other applicants, to burst into tears throw a tantrum and slap Karen round the face. None of this “thank you for the opportunity Lord Sugar” c**p from me – the biggest piece of bulls**t anyone on that show says. Though at this point Lord Sugar probably wouldn’t order me a taxi, and instead I would have to get the night bus home, and then get stabbed by a drunken man as I pathetically ranted about what a terrible mistake Lord Sugar had made and how one day he would regret it. He won’t.

I imagine none of this year’s contestants will do as badly as I would, though it would make a difficult interview for Dara O’Briain on The Apprentice: You’re Fired as he desperately tried to ask you where you think you went wrong as you bled out of several new orifices happily carved for you by a drunken man on the N67. And on that grim note I’m offer to hand my resignation into Lord Sugar just in case for some reason he does decide to hire me – apparently Nick Hewer is a known stapler thief and I can’t bear to work with people like that!

Oh my God there’s a Raging Inferno in the Kitchen – Oh no Wait it’s just the Candles on my Birthday Cake!

This week DraMattics is celebrating its 30^th blog entry, sadly I’m about to celebrate a similar anniversary, so it seems rather appropriate to tackle that thorny subject of age.

Ever had someone ask you how old you are, and then when you reply with you REAL age, they say the phrase “In your head maybe, go on what’s your real age?”. This is always a comforting reaction to admitting your age, in that sort of way that having an armed squad from the KGB smash in your windows and hold you at gun point is comforting.

To avoid the inevitable awkwardness of having to guess my real age is I can tell you now, that contrary to popular opinion it’s not 21, but I’m in fact 29 but not for much longer, 30 is looming like Eric Pickles looming over an all-you-can-eat buffet, hence the reason I feel this conversation is specifically pertinent.

As I get towards the age where the London Fire Brigade need to be called to put out the candles on my cake, I’m forced to question at what point am I old, and at what point is it ok to moan about being old? Is 30 old? It would be old for a cat but young for a cast member of Last of the Summer Wine, so I guess like all things its relative.

Which brings me to the next point, friends of mine who are closer to 40 have claimed that I have no right to moan about being old? Really? But what about a 50 year old, surely they would say the same to thing to the aforementioned 40 year old, if he moaned about being old. Extending this logic surely the only person allowed to moan would be the oldest person alive, as they bore the second oldest person alive with statements beginning “You think you’re old…”. But surely if you follow my earlier logic a two-year old can moan at a one-year old about how young they are, which to be honest I don’t mind if it’s done with appropriate wit and comic flare.

Clearly neither of the extremities I have detailed above are any more correct than the fact that Kerry Katona’s allowed to breed and she hasn’t been chemically sterilised for the good of the gene pool. So what age is it ok to moan about being old? To add to the evidence only a few weeks ago I was telling a friend who’d just turned 23 to “shut up” after they moaned about being old. If that’s the case what gives me the right a mere seven years later to do the same?

Well in fairness I think there’s one very good reasons why the mid-twenties (and by that I mean late-twenties, but at least it’s still the twenties), are the time to start moaning about your age. Because this is the first time in your life you start to realise you’re not the youngest any more. Fair enough people in their thirties are older, but it’s in your late twenties when you first realise you are at the top of a slippery slope. It’s here at the top of a hideous metaphorical helter-skelter ending in a pit of spikes somewhere around the eighties mark, that you realise thirties are your inevitable destiny, just as forties are the destiny of those in there thirties and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.

You see between 18 and 25 you can claim you’re young, because no one’s younger than you. Of course there are children, but there have always been children, and you’re used to children being younger than you from school. In school children are segregated entirely by age, and there was an advantage to being older, as older kids got to beat up younger kids/take their pick over who got anally bu**ered (dependent on whether you were state or private educated). No the late twenties are the first time there are genuine adults younger than you, and not even ones you can excuse away with the fact they are at university so there still kids really. I have two 25 year old people working in my office (who nominally I’m in charge of, though they have other ideas), they’ve been to uni, and whilst I think of them as kids, they’re proper genuine adults and they are clearly younger than me! Up until the mid to late twenties this has never happened before; people younger than me have always been children.

Additionally you spend the first twenty years of your life believing your body will never age, the most traumatic thing to drop out of your body are your teeth and your testis (but you get a new set of at least one of these). Now hair’s starting to fall out, except for my nose which is now sprouting hair so fast a team of landscape gardeners needs to be called in. Seriously if don’t do at least a weekly root around the nasal area with a shaver I start to look like that attachment you put on the vacuum cleaner when you want to do the skirting boards. I’m also coming to the inescapable conclusion that my face is slowly starting to slide down my head, there seems to be a build-up of excess skin around the chin area, at this rate by the time I’m fifty my face will look much like my scrotum. Though in fairness I’m less likely to get arrested for waving it around in a school playground.

And then there’s my health and physical fitness, gone are the days where I can eat what I want, no longer am I able to hide successive days of junk food binging without worrying. Now a pizza binge manifests itself so that under poor lighting I look like I could be a few months pregnant. And as for exercise, it becomes that much harder for that much less reward, gone are the days where a quick 5 mile jog started the day and got me off to a bouncy start. Now running for the Tube makes me more breathless than an asthmatic in the vacuum of space.

There’s also the worry about things you can’t do any more, as a child getting older meant there were more things you can do drinking, driving, lottery, buying pornography without the need for a step ladder. The only things you stopped being able to do was go to the under 8s ballet class, and then that was alright because you got to go the 9-12 year olds ballet class. As you get to the late twenties, you’re simply not allowed to do things any more, I’m questioning whether I should go on an 18-30 holiday now before it’s too late. Yet the concept of an 18-30 holiday utterly despises me, but what if on the day I turn 31 I suddenly decide that I really want to vomit all over beautiful areas of the Mediterranean, hang my undergarments off a lamppost and go to a foam party and have more inappropriate fun with bubbles than Michael Jackson ever managed?

So you see I admit that 30 is not that old in the grand scheme of things, but it’s the end of that crucial age where nature finally reminds you that you are going to be old. As superhuman and as invincible as you may have seemed during childhood, 25-30 is the age at which your body starts to rebel, at which the signs of age start to show you that soon you will look like a Colonel Gadaffi body double with exactly the same employment prospects. You may not be old yet, but you’re no longer young and no matter what you thought, your body is deserting you, it won’t be long before when you stand up your knees make a sound like an old dial-up modem connecting to the internet. Or put another way the late twenties-early thirties is the age where getting older starts turning s**t, under 25 and there’s usually a bonus to getting old, over 30 and you already know your life is s**t so you shouldn’t be surprised! There the perfect conclusion to an argument on why turning 30 is the worst age to be, I think it makes sense, but it might not – my brain is old now.

So there you go, the official point at which my mental breakdown at turning 30 starts is here. Don’t worry there’s a few more blogging opportunities between now and the big day for me to cry. And when I say big day, it will actually consist of me crying into a large tub of Ben & Jerry’s with a candle in, because I’ve dropped the spoon on the floor and my stiff old back won’t let me bend down and pick it up.

Where were you when ITV Play died?

There are many important moments in global history that for the rest of your life you’ll almost certainly remember where you were, when you first heard about them.

Where were you when The Berlin Wall fell? – I don’t know, I was only seven at the time. Though I do seem to remember hearing about it on Newsround and wondering why the people didn’t just walk around the wall to get to the other side of Berlin (simpler times).

Where were you when Princess Diana died? – At home sitting on my bed annoyed that the news was on when it was supposed to be CBBC.

Where were you when the Queen Mother died? – At home, where I’d just finished watching Auntie’s Bloomers, the outtake programme hosted by Terry Wogan. Problem with watching outtake programmes is you get in the mind-set that whatever you’re watching is about to go wrong. So as I was watching Peter Sissions break the news of the Queen Mother’s death I kept expecting him to fall of his chair – as it was the only thing that went wrong on that day was when he decided to leave his burgundy tie on.

Where were you when September the 11^th happened? – On my first trip to America, unashamedly shi**ing myself as my holiday seemed to be turning into Armaggedon – obviously now with hindsight I wasn’t really affected by those events, certainly compared to the thousands that were, but sadly that logic still doesn’t pay for the resultant rather expensive dry cleaning bill.

This is rather roundabout way of filling up some blog inches before I ask you the key question of this blog, where were you when ITV Play died? You probably don’t remember, the reason I ask is because today the 6^th of March is the fifth anniversary of the day ITV Play said goodbye – and they say I can’t be topical. I believe to mark the occasion ITV are burning Brian Dowling on a giant bonfire consisting of your cash. If you want to be part of this event all you have to do is call 08845 600 9000, and answer this simple question, what is the name of the main street on which Coronation Street is set?

A.      Coronation Street

B.      Baghdad High Road

C.      Cheryl Cole’s Driveway

Calls cost £85 per minute and you almost certainly won’t be picked to be put through to the studio but your call will still be charged.

For those of you who don’t remember ITV Play it was one channel, amongst a plethora of other digital and satellite offerings which showed back to back phone-in quizzes. Where suspiciously attractive looking presenters, and Brian Dowling (I should at this point apologise to Brian Dowling for being the only quiz show presenter I unfavourably compare throughout this blog, but it’s your own fault being the only quiz show presenter who has reinvented their career and thus remains in my consciousness) asked a series of apparently deceptively simple quiz  questions. Each question was worth a not unreasonable cash prize, and as caller after caller rang into the studio only to give the wrong answer the average viewer was left increasingly confident that their answer was the correct one, until eventually they called in.

Television call-in quizzes got in trouble back in 2007 after a number of high profile programmes, across many channels, had been found to be conducting their quizzes unfairly with callers not being selected equitably or production team members standing in for callers, amongst some of the complaints. ITV Play itself got in trouble when viewers complained about the question “What items might be found in a woman’s handbag?”, to which two of the answers were “Rawplugs” and a “Balaclava”. As the numbers of scandals across the industry increased the Press eagerly started a campaign against television for not being 100% honest, thus making the revelations back in 2011 that the press weren’t 100% honest all the more shocking. Eventually, with public opinion mounting, ITV suspended all quiz channels and interactive quizzes within programmes on the 5^th of March 2007 pending an independent audit with ITV Play broadcast its final shows in the early hours of the 6^th of March. On the 13^th March ITV announced ITV Play would not return, and on the 16^th of March ITV replaced the ITV Play channel with ITV2 + 1 making the channel about 96% less watchable.

Of course television has changed lot since then, after it went through another scandal as viewers realised that television lied to them about other things to. The scandal had many sorry chapters including the revelation that EastEnders wasn’t a documentary, the discovery that Gordon the Gopher wasn’t real and the outrageous disclosure that Dale Winton was actually straight.

The reason why I bring all of this up and focus specifically on ITV Play, yes there is a point – you’ll be shocked to discover, is that I once auditioned for ITV Play. Many years ago when I began my career in television when I was 18, (don’t question the fact that according to this blog I was seven in 1989 and eighteen in 2007 – that would be rude), I was on many websites where television jobs were appearing and I often applied for all kinds of different entry level jobs in order to get myself more experience. One such job was as an assistant presenter on an ITV Play programme called “The Debbie King Show”. The job involved being taking over during the show when quiz-show royalty Debbie King was having a break, clearly it’s exhausting ripping off the general public for three hours straight.

Despite my MAJOR reservations about doing this kind of job, let alone the moral and ethical issues, I was convinced by friends that applying would be an experience – they weren’t wrong! After sending off my application I was contacted by a researcher from the programme, for the purposes of storytelling let’s call him Gavin. Gavin informed that they would like me to come in for an audition and provided me with the time and location for where to attend. It was at this point it first became clear that Gavin had all the intellect of a Findus Crispy Pancake. I quickly Googled the provided address only to find it was several miles away from the nearest station that Gavin had told me to go to, something smelled odd. I e-mailed Gavin to confirm that the address provided was correct, only for him to reply with “No! That’s not the correct address” in a tone that seemed to suggest I’d volunteered the location, rather than was querying the address that he’d sent me in the first place. It turned out that Gavin hadn’t sent me a different address, he’d just manage to make a typo in the correct address. Easily done you may think, except Gavin had managed to make a mistake on three lines of a four a line address! An impressively moronic feat even before you remember the fact that this address was the location of where he worked, his office, a place he visits every day! It’s almost if Gavin had got the address of his workplace through an elaborate game of Chinese whispers in the office.

Despite Gavin’s best attempts I managed to turn up at the company’s offices, where I was shown in by Gavin who impressed even himself by being able to successfully operate a door. It also turned out that Gavin was not only a cretin, but had an annoying habit of just laughing moronically in response to whatever was said. I introduced myself as Matt, Gavin laughed. I thanked him for showing me in, Gavin laughed. I think the response would have been the same if I’d have produced a surface-to-air missile launcher from my bag and threatened to fire the entire salvo directly into his genitalia.

Inside I found myself in an office so ridiculous trendy that it was almost a caricature of itself, if Edina and Patsy had stumbled out from one of the doors I wouldn’t have been surprised. I wandered in between desks, avoiding the office’s resident dog – which apparently was necessary for a “creative department”. Gavin headed towards a room named the “creative room”, which given what I’d already seen, concerned me that it might be a wing of Battersea Dogs Home. Fortunately I wasn’t set upon by a pack of ravenous hounds, Gavin ushered me to one of the chairs, but being a “creative room” these weren’t normal chairs, instead I was asked to sit on a Perspex chair which was artily designed so that the seat of the chair was approximately one inch off the floor. This major design feature essentially made the chair impossible to use for its primary purpose of sitting, as I was forced to squat down in a ridiculously low position looking about as graceful as I imagine I would if I was trying to climb onto a camel. Once in the seated position, I now had the strange problem of what to do with my legs, with my bottom only an inch off the ground my legs were completely obscuring my face to Gavin as he tried to brief me. In the end my legs ended up sort of splayed out across the floor, making it look as if I’d fallen off a high balcony and landed on the chair breaking my back in the process. These ridiculous transparent Perspex chairs were accompanied by an equally stupid clear Perspex table which to match the chairs was only two inches high, thus representing an almost invisible trip hazard. I started to seriously consider the possibility that Gavin had designed this furniture himself.

After a quick briefing I was taken over to stand in front of a camera and do my audition piece, I wasn’t too nervous about this, primarily because Gavin was operating the camera so I suspected the chances of it actually being filmed were minimal. I was given a question, a fictitious phone number and a celebrity gossip story to talk about. The twist on The Debbie King Show, was that as well as playing the competition she would also be discussing topical celebrity news stories, which viewers would be able to call in about and offer their opinion on (for the nominal fee of 75 pence a call). My celebrity gossip story was about Heather Mills’ appearance on the American version of Strictly Come Dancing. As I preceded to “host” the competition, Gavin played the role of a series of moronic callers giving ridiculous answers to the set question and asking me whether I thought Heather Mills would be able to dance with only one leg, a role which he seemed suited to, were it not for the moronic laugh he gave every time I told him he had the wrong answer.  Once I completed my audition Gavin laughed, unsurprisingly, and then told me I’d been very “technical”.  Technical? Really? The only technical thing I did was read out the question and phone number, a question and phone number he had invented?! Perhaps reading out 11 consecutive digits is technical to Gavin, either that or in my tedium I’d accidentally told the audience how to go about changing a carburettor in your car engine. It could have happened.

I never saw my audition tape, according to Gavin it was sent to the ITV Bosses for review, which I sincerely hope is a different postal address than submissions for You’ve Been Framed. So rather fortunately that tape will never see the light of day again, though this is ITV so there is a chance it will be played out during England’s next World Cup goal or broadcast on their current affairs programme after being described as IRA training footage.

As I went to leave the audition room an unbelievably camp drip of a man burst through the door in a manner so ridiculously over the top that even Julian Clary would have thought it a tad effeminate. He introduced himself as JC, presumably because he shares all the personality of two-thirds of a digger. And then with his camp lisp, excitedly disgorged the information that Britney Spears had just shaved her head and walked into the path of oncoming traffic. This revelation that a celebrity and mother was having a full scale mental breakdown caused both Gavin and JC to burst into hysterics, something that I felt was rather distasteful. I left at this point, worried that my Gaydar was going to explode in the presence of such a highly refined source of pure homosexuality.

I never heard back from The Debbie King Show, which I presumed meant I hadn’t been successful in my audition, though it may have been and Gavin simply rung the speaking clock in error confusing our similar phone numbers. To be honest I was quite relived not to have been selected, if anything the audition process had cemented my views on the hideousness of the genre. I did decide to watch the launch night of The Debbie King Show, in that sort of morbidly curious way you watch a car crash. I was strangely intrigued to see if JC had got the job, though the bit I managed to stomach solely featured Debbie King. Based on my snapshot of the programme, it would appear that the production company had hoped to recover the entire outlay spent on the set with the first phone call!

Unfortunately for The Debbie King Show its first transmission date was the 5^th of March 2007, and if you remember way back at the beginning of this blog, you’ll know that on the early hours of the 6^th of March, ITV Play ceased transmission permanently. That’s right after all that effort there was only ever one addition of The Debbie King Show – poor Debbie, Gavin and JC, they must have been devastated.

If you take one thing from this blog, let it be the theory that if you turn me down for a job your channel gets pulled the very next day! If enough people think it’s true, the myth will enter folklore and I’ll never be looking for work again! 

Abercrombie & Bitch

I look and feel like a tramp, no really I do. Recently I’ve noticed that my favourite clothes and shoes are starting to resemble a novelty colander, there’s so many holes in them that I look like a cartoon representation of Wile E. Coyote after he’s been savaged by a pack of hungry tigers. This means it’s time to go clothes shopping. Problem is I’m sure clothes shopping is supposed to be fun, after all I’m a gay man I’m supposed to find purchasing new garments at least 168% as much fun as throwing around a selection of scatter cushions in an artistic fashion. Sadly stereotypes aren’t always correct, though I do like a good scatter cushion.

Middle age must be beckoning, because now when I go around clothes shops I find myself saying horrendous comments that I believed only my parents were capable of uttering such as “These don’t look very practical”, or “They’ll be a bugger to iron.”. It’s all really quite upsetting, I blame modern fashion. How on earth are you supposed to wear jeans whose legs taper to an infinitesimally small point at your ankle, so that they only really fit the triangular Mr Rush from Roger Hargreaves’ Mr Men books? Or trousers that have a seam that spirals around your legs like a rampaging anaconda desperate on sucking the life force out of every vein your body. See they don’t look very practical, and they would be a bugger to iron.

Frustrated by my inability to find anything I like in my regular shopping haunts, which whilst boasting an impressively large shop floor space seem to be laid out much like an episode of Scooby Doo. In that if you run for long enough it turns out you’re just passing the same three T-shirts and one style of chino as that is all the animators could be bothered to draw. I decided to take the plunge and head to some more “designer” shops, shops that have been recommended by my friends, who whenever I meet them seem to be wearing clothes that look fashionable but not so outlandish fashionable, that they look like thye were dressed by a blind flamingo. So with expectations riding high, and a need to get some clothes that don’t make me look like I’ve been attacked by Edward Scissorhands I headed for the “designer” shops.

The first thing I notice upon entering such stores, is it’s not immediately obvious where the gender divide runs. Shops I’m used to like Next and River Island and even the department stores my mother used to take me to, are usually split with male and female departments on different floors. Which for men always means a trudge up and down a flight of stairs, I sometimes think it’s a miracle that disabled men actually own any clothes and don’t have to wheel around naked all the time. However in the new-fangled designer stores of my new fashionable lifestyle, it’s not to so obvious. An arbitrary wiggly line runs down the middle of the shop with all the definition of a hotly dispute international border. It’s easy to accidentally stray into hostile waters and find yourself looking at a T-shirt that looks really nice, except upon checking the price you realise it’s a Size 8. With disgust you throw back the T-shirt horrified that someone might have seen you and instantly presumed you’re a transvestite, rather than coming to the far more logical conclusion that you were shopping for someone else. Some shops make it even more complicated, Gap for example has pictures of androgynous models all around the store so you can’t be sure if their male or female pictures near the clothes you are looking at. They’re beautiful definitely, but every single model has a smooth face is clean shaven and sports suspiciously short hair. It takes just as long to judge their gender as it does to judge the gender of the clothes beneath them. Other stores go to more random extents, I’m sure my recent visit to Superdry was confused by them having a large men’s department surrounded by various satellites of ladieswear, with no clear frontiers between the two. The other problem with this kind of stylish fashion, is even the garments that look obviously feminine could be for men, perhaps plunge neck T-shirts have become fashionable for the man about town, or maybe Culottes are now a unisex item, you can never be sure.

Of course complex segregation of male and female stores isn’t the only potential pitfall for the unwary shopper. I recently visited a store called Abercrombie & Fitch for the first time, despite sounding like the name of two particularly ostentatious cats (“come down from the worktop Abercrombie”), it’s actually a high-end designer clothing store. On arrival you’re not met by the usual shop system that we’re used to, the one that’s served us well for the rest of our lives. No rather than being faced with the traditional door that you enter the shop through surrounded by windows displaying what the shop actually sells. You instead come face to face with a store with no windows, because it’s too exclusive to actually display its wares, and a queuing system that would make Chessington World of Adventures envious. Yep that’s right you have to queue outside the store just to make the store look more desirable so that more people join the queue, in a vicious cycle that couldn’t be more British unless whilst waiting you were served tea and scones and got to say something deeply xenophobic. In my mind this doesn’t make Abercrombie & Fitch look designer, it makes it look like the Post Office but with less old people.

Once you’ve meandered your way through the queuing system, there’s a veritable team of people to great you at the door. Firstly, in order to give you the entirely false impression that the store is actually a five-star hotel, a number of smartly dressed men open the doors for you. Because you are clearly too important to open the door for yourself, as an aside (and I don’t wish to do people out of jobs, especially in these tough economic times) but if not having to open the door is that important, why not just fit automatic doors – it works for Poundland. Up next there’s a woman employed solely to say “Hello”, that seems to be all she does, just says “Hello” – I could do that job…, if I was woman, wasn’t a grumpy s**t and didn’t have all the looks and charm of a rancid plate of semolina. Then there’s an unfeasibly attractive half dressed man, with a ripped torso who you can pose and take a photo with. If that is you’re mad. No one in their right mind gets their photo taken next to an unfeasibly attractive person, because in the resultant photo their beauty will make you like Quasimodo on a particularly unpleasant visit to the Burns unit. Upload that photo to Facebook and people won’t be thinking about how attractive the man looks, or how much of a fun time you’re having, but instead on how old you’re looking or that they didn’t realise you’d got fat. This is why sensible people only ever agree to get their photo taken with their ugly friends, because it makes them look that much better. And if you can’t work out who the ugly person in your group is, then it’s you. And before you make a smart a**e comment, I am fully away of my place in the food chain of looks, what can I say? I appreciate the plight of the plankton. Apparently you have to pay for the photos, again another connection between Abercrombie & Fitch and Thorpe Park, though at least in this photo you won’t look like you are vomiting your dinner up (sadly the same cannot be said about your friends viewing the photo making unfortunate comparisons between you and the model).

All this and you haven’t even entered the store properly, in fairness it has to be said Abercrombie & Fitch looks pretty plush. Where Primark at the end of a busy day looks like the aftermath of a particularly bloody explosion at a Bring and Buy sale, Abercrombie & Fitch still looks elegant and tidy. Primarily this is because the minute you do so much as even breathe in the direction of one of the display racks a team of highly trained professionals rush to rearrange all the tops lest you upset the karma of the store. The shop’s wears are, as you’d expect from a designer clothing label, perfectly bog standard t-shirts, hoddies and jumper swhere the inclusion of a designer logo has led to the decimal point, on the price ticket, jumping one place to the right. Aside from the clothes, the most bizarre thing I discovered in the store was a dance floor complete with dancers. No, not some professional dance act recruited in from a swanky London performing arts college, but actual members of staff, in the staff “uniform” dancing away. As if to show that working for this company is soooo amazing, all we get to do is dance all day because we’re that cool, and our lives our wonderful because we work for Abercrombie & Fitch and we’re only employed because we’re beautiful. All us mortals can do is hope that they all spend the work Christmas party crying in the corner because they realise just how fake all their work friends are, that they’ll be forced to wear a branded paper bag over their head the minute they hit 25 in case they make people wretch, and that their lives are meaningless pawns in a sea of commercialised bulls**t. As I say, all we can do is hope, because actually they’re having a great time. To**ers.

Despite the clear abundance of staff in the store, with enough spare people to dance next to the racks of clothes and fold out every micro-crinkle that the displaced air caused as you moved your fat body through the store. Despite all this, when I visited there was only one till open, and a massive queue. Would it have killed the brand image if for one moment the dance floor had been emptied and some people manned the tills? Apparently it would have. Unfortunately for some ridiculous reason the problem of the large queue was magnified by the fact that the till area was decked out with more mirrors than the average swanky hair salon. Resulting in thousands of copies of the same row of frustrated sand bored faces being visible on every surface wherever you looked, much like a Girls Aloud concert.

Obviously the big question is did I buy anything? Of course not, I was just confused by the array of unknown shopping experiences I hadn’t expected. Like Henry VIII wandering through a modern shopping centre for the first time, both appalled and intrigued at what I saw with equal measure. Which coincidentally is the same set of facial reactions you see if ever I’m forced to watch The Only Way is Essex. Instead I simply walked out of the store, empty handed only to pass the “Hello” lady again, except this time she said “Goodbye” – but in a tone that really said “I knew this shop wasn’t really for you, but I didn’t say anything as you came in.’

On that note I’ll bid you adjure, except to say you can now follow my tedious ramblings on Twitter just “connect with” @mattymatician #goonyouknowyouwantto – see look at me down with the kids. And incidentally if anyone has any decent second hand clothes they wish to send me, they’ll be welcome. The situation is getting quite desperate. I claim to be a size Small, but in reality unless it’s at least a big Medium, the fabric will be pulled across my body tighter than the skin on Anne Robinson’s face.

The Cycle of False Hope - The Horrors of Online Dating Part 2

Welcome back to DraMattics the blog you’ll be wishing was stopped halfway through by James Corden. If you read yesterday’s entry you know that we’re halfway through a two-part special on the pitfalls of online dating. With your profile finally constructed it’s now time to meet that special someone online. Slightly nervous, you log online and start the search...

Initially you start browsing through the profiles carefully reading all the text, as you know that compatibility and shared interests are far more important than looks. Within 15 minutes you just start flicking through the photos and dismissing people based on the slightest blemishes. Eventually after a lot of searching, you find the most beautiful person you’ve ever seen, there’s not a flaw in any of their photos, they are the one. You even read their profile and convince yourself you’re a perfect match “They like watching television, going to the cinema and socialising as well, what are the chances?”. So you go to write them the perfect message, the message that’s going to get them as excited about you as you are already about them. Problem is it turns out that just because you’re not face to face with them, doesn’t stop you being awkward, which makes writing an opening message rather tricky. You start with “Hi”, after hours of thinking of something witty to say your message still reads “Hi”, eventually you send a message reading “Hi, how are you?”.

The minutes pass, they’ve not replied, why not? Your opening message was so good. Finally an e-mail pops up, someone has messaged you – it must be them, you log on with excitement. What can they have possibly said? You open up your messages, it’s not from them, it’s from someone 20 years older than you with a face that looks like it’s been attacked by a cheese grater. Additionally they have a bizarre penchant for typing their messags in capital letters SO IT LOOKS LIKE THEY’RE SHOUTING AT YOU LIKE A PSYCHO. Disappointed you reply to the sender, “Sorry you seem like a nice person, but you really aren’t what I am looking for. Thanks”. And then the questioning begins, they ask you “why aren’t I what you are looking for?” no matter how polite you try to be in fobbing them off they continue to reply to you. It as if their emotional self-worth has a death wish that it’s desperately trying to fulfil and won’t be sated until they hear the words “Your face looks like a scrotum that’s been in a hot bath too long”. Finally they stop e-mailing you, you can’t be sure they haven’t taken their own life but by this point you don’t care, just desperate stop the never-ending torrential barrage of questioning. It represents the most pointless conversation you’ve ever been in, since you last got stopped in the street by a charity worker, knowing full well that as soon as they pause to take breath in their opening spiel you’re going to say “no”. You soon learn it’s better to ignore those who message who you clearly want nothing to do with.

It then dawns on you, that maybe the reason your true love hasn’t replied is that they, didn’t get your message – that’s the only logical answer left clearly. You best send them a new message, however if you thought the first message was awkward, you soon realise that trying to explain in words that “you’re not sure if they got the first message” only serves to make you appear desperate. You send the message, and wait. Suddenly a new message pings in your inbox, you open it excited, you were right they didn’t get the first message. Turns out the message is an automated message from the site, telling you about an exciting new feature, where you answer a series of mind-numbing questions in attempt to match your pathetically vague answers to other people’s pathetically vague answers on the site.

Finally you accept that the true love, isn’t going to reply. In fact you don’t actually know if they want to reply but are unable to. The clever thing about the strategy that allows you to join a dating website without paying is that there can be a number of profiles online at any one time, of people who haven’t paid up. So you can send these people messages (the site wants this, to encourage those people to join to read your messages), but you will never know if you were ignored because of your face or because they weren’t prepared to part with their cash. You decide to move on, knowing the reply rate of dating messages is about the same as letters to Santa Claus, or CVs sent in Wolverhampton, you send a number of messages to different people. Lowering the standards of your potential suitor as you go. Again you wait for replies. Nothing.

Eventually you get a reply, to your dismay, it’s from one of the least worst choice options you e-mailed, someone you messaged on a particularly lonely night home alone when your standards were so low you’d have considered dating a jar of Bovril. Now in the cold light of day, you realise that their hobbies include murdering babies, strangling squirrels and watching Loose Woman and their picture makes them look like a less attractive version of a Crimewatch photo fit. You feel awkward now you have to fob them off, and you initiated first contact. You try hinting in your e-mails that you have socially unacceptable hobbies, like developing your own deadly strains of body odour and kleptomania – sadly they find this endearing. Eventually the only option is to tell them you’re dead, or convince them that you’re seeing someone else. All the more difficult a lie to spin when you’re still regularly logging onto the dating site, as most sites have an annoying feature that lists when you last logged on, on your profile. After this loop completes itself a number of times you decide to give up, online dating clearly isn’t for you. Your membership is going to expire today, there’s no point in wasting any money and renewing it. Oh well there’s more to life than being happy you reason.

One hour after your subscription expires, a new message pops in, you can’t read it but you check the sender. It’s your true love, they’ve finally replied. But now you can’t read the message, your subscription has expired. Hurriedly you reach for your debit card, eager to tap in the 16-digit card number, just so you can read the marriage proposal you’ve clearly received. You go for the worst value for money option, the one-month subscription, you won’t need a longer subscription – this is the love of your life after all. With your payment approved you hurriedly open their message, your heart is racing with excitement as you read the words “Sorry you seem like a nice person, but you really aren’t what I am looking for. Thanks”. Your world collapses in on itself, you experience the kind of disappointment usually reserved solely for opening Christmas Crackers and discovering the “prize” was a novelty one-piece jigsaw. Convinced there must have been some terrible mistake you reply “why aren’t I what you are looking for?”. A number of messages are exchanged before they block your profile and report you to the site administrator.

Still your disappointment has been slightly tempered, one of the other people you messaged a few weeks back has replied. You’ve agreed to meet up for a meal, that should be nice. It’s only a few days until your date and you keep looking back at their profile. You realise actually you’ve got a lot in common, they’re pretty attractive and you’re sure something special is going to happen between the two of you. Finally it’s the day of the date, you’ve made a supreme effort, much to the mocking of friends and colleagues, you’re wearing your best clothes, your smart shoes and you’ve spent ages getting your hair to look just perfect. What could possibly go wrong?

You turn up at the pre-arranged meeting point, eager to find your date you look around, there’s lots of attractive looking people but you can’t see the person shown in the pictures you’d been looking at. Finally you spot them amongst the crowd, except it’s not them as you expected, it’s a hideous cartoon parody of the pictures you’ve seen on their profile. You approach them, not sure whether you should make contact or run, but too late they’ve spotted you, and you realise the awful truth it is them. In that three seconds the extent of their “being economical with the truth” unravels as you realise that the photos they uploaded of themselves were taken at least seven years ago, before they put on six stone, before they developed male pattern baldness (even if they aren’t male), before they decided to have a tattoo across their face and before they suffered a terribly disfiguring car crash. Additionally their description of age and build are so wildly unbelievable that even Hans Christian Anderson wouldn’t have attempted to write such fanciful bulls**t.

Reluctantly you proceed to dinner with them, cursing yourself for not suggesting any other dating activity that would have been shorter such as a pint, a coffee or even a group suicide pact. As you begin dinner they suggest doing the full starter, main course, dessert option, whereas you’d hope you could have taken one bite out of your meal said your full and then left. As the conversation continues you realise that you have nothing in common, the only thing they can talk about is how exciting Lady Gaga’s latest video is, which you haven’t seen. They find it incredulous that you haven’t seen it, they’d be less shocked if you told them that you were a Mermaid and had to return to the ocean in the next five minutes before you dehydrate and die. The only other thing they can talk to you about is The Only Way is Essex, you realise that you are essentially on a date with a copy of Heat Magazine, except it’s costing you a lot more than one pound fifty and doesn’t have the one redeeming feature that you can wipe you’re a**e with it if you’ve run out of loo roll.

Worse still they haven’t asked a single question about you, instead they’ve spent the last hour babbling along about their pointless life, a life so disinteresting you want to rip your own windpipe out and fashion into a crude trombone just to give yourself something to relieve the boredom. When they do finally let you speak, no matter what you say their only response is to laugh inanely, like a hyena on nitrous oxide. Regardless of whether you utter a simple reply to what they’ve said, tell a joke, say a statement of fact, or even commenting that you have megalomaniacal tendencies and one day hope to destroy the world, all they can do is reply with that inane pathetic laugh. Despite all your best efforts to wrap up the meal as quickly as possible you can’t they wait out for dessert, don’t get any of your hints about having to leave soon or be up early the next day. Not only that but you’ve got food down your best clothes, they’re ruined, like your life. Finally the meal comes to the end; they have forgotten their credit card, so you end up paying. They then suggest going for a drink afterwards, inexplicably you lose your mind and say “yes”, what the hell were you thinking?

Five hours later, five hours of utter torture with someone you wouldn’t even want to spend ten seconds in a lift with, let alone a tedious evening of pathetic prattle about topics so low brow even ITV2 would turn its nose up at them you crack. You inform that you have to go and that you’ve had an awful night. They simple inanely laugh at you. As you leave you stupidly give the automatic response “See you soon” cursing your own idiocy. They then move in for a goodbye kiss, which you spot and try and manoeuvre yourself to force it into a goodbye hug, but you end up knocking a table over and embarrassing yourself. Still you’ve left, you’ve escaped the hell.

There are four potential outcomes of a first date, providing you didn’t kill either them or yourself during the initial encounter.

1. You both like each other – this is so unlikely to have happened that we won’t bother discussing any further.
2. You both hate each other – given the remoteness of option 1, this is the best option you can hope for.
3. You like them and they don’t like you – you send them a nice text saying you’d like to meet again, they politely tell you how awful it was and explain they never wish to see you again. You cry lots.
4. They like you and you don’t like them – this is the worst option, as then you have to send the awkward message saying you don’t want to meet. At least in option 3 you had the comfort of being bitter, now you have to be the ba****d, and there’s no comfort in that.

Clearly your date ends in option 4, but you speak to some friends about it, and they convince you it’s worth giving this person another try. After all maybe a spark will grow. Reluctantly you agree. The above scenario plays out again, except you feel even more guilty sending the text in Option 4 as now you’ve strung them along for two dates. At the end of it all, you’re poorer, bitterer and just as single. You continue trawling the website looking for more dates, but they all end as above, before long you’ve been on the website for six months, and all the profiles that pop up are just the same faces as before. All of you locked into a cycle of loneliness, depression, and false hope fuelled by the dating website’s empty promises.

And that’s how internet dating works, happy hunting!