We start with posh, pretty, horsey, mumbly Hebe, who reckons that her childhood interest in riding is what’s left her struggling when it comes to finding love. It might not help that her Mum bought her a traumatic sounding 3D pop-up sex education book. If you don’t like being surprised by unexpected penises popping up on the page, you’re not going to like Tinder. Hebe, love, you’d have no trouble meeting men if you’d only learn to speak clearly and annunciate! It’s not your love of shots that’s putting them off! It certainly isn’t bothering wine merchant Charlie, who orders a pair of sipping tequilas on arrival. ‘I’m a party guy - if there’s a stage, I’ll be going on the stage,’ he explains. I bet that goes down well at the wine conferences.
We learn that Charlie lives in posh Baron’s Court, and Hebe lives in Clapham South, which has the highest concentration of white men in polo shirts and flip flops in the Western world. If they don’t fall in love, London will implode. As well as the horsey connection, we can tell that Hebe is posh because her Mum is obsessed with her date’s lineage. ‘Mum, I don’t have his surname, I can’t ask him, it’s weird, she hisses during the obligatory toilet phone call. We learn that Charlie is a two-time world cheerleading champion, which is going to make him much easier to Google. Charlie’s family live on an estate in Warwickshire - let’s assume that it’s not the kind where he has to worry about locking his bike up, but there’s a strong chance that his tyres might get punctured by an inquisitive pheasant. Hebe is so good at horse riding that she nearly competed in the Paralympics at Rio. ‘What’s, er, wrong with you?’ asks Charlie, awkward as a man who’s just realised he’s at the wrong funeral. Hebe’s comic timing is masterful. ‘I have no legs,’ she deadpans. (She has congenital talipes equinovarus, and when she was born, doctors thought that she wouldn’t ever be able to walk - so her riding achievements are incredibly inspiring.)
Next, it’s Earle, a leisure centre manager who once made parts for Concord, and half-jokingly claims that he invented the concept of men’s moisturiser. The black guys at his school who’d be applying baby lotion after the showers in PE, and even though there was much teasing at the time, it caught on. It’s hard to argue with that, although one wonders whether he is now policing the post shower skincare regimes of his current customers. He’s on a date with the glamorous Precious, who was once in a band called Eruption. I definitely recognise the clip from a BBC4 documentary about how music was better in the seventies, before it was ruined by Autotune and electricity. Precious has sung with Elton John, and, um, Cliff Richard. Earl is understandably captivated.
We meet Sean from Bristol, who makes a big deal about his cat, Mabel, and his date Janna, who has five, ‘and one at work’. Eh? Does she direct Whiskas ads? What does she do with the poor work cat when she clocks off for the day? Does the cat get the bus home and microwave its own Waitrose Cannelloni? Sean’s questions are even more basic than this, as he spends a good five minutes asking whether the first ‘a’ in her name is actually an ‘e’. ‘Jenna?’ ‘Janna.’ ‘Right…Jenna?’ Janna has been stood up three times in a row. ‘Guys are worried that they’re going to miss out on some easy piece of cheesecake.’ I’m not sure whether my heart is breaking for her, or whether this isn’t a metaphor, and people in Birmingham do hand out free cheesecake at random, and whether we should all go there immediately. We discover that Sean had a traumatic childhood, with an absent father and a series of shitty substitutes. ‘We moved a lot…it got to the stage when I stopped unpacking my toys and started leaving them in the bags.’ Then Janna goes fully George Galloway and tries to seduce him by purring like a cat.
Pub landlord John immediately marks himself as a bellend by ordering a Refresher Bomb and having to explain what it is. ‘It’s like a Jaegerbomb, but with blue aftershock in the middle.’ Are we still drinking blue aftershock? What else is coming back? Pedal pushers? Songs that start and end with a creepily crooned ‘Craig Daviiiiiid all over youuuuuuu’? Lovely Greg arrives and says he’s looking for love, ‘not someone who likes you but announces that they want a threesome with someone who lives three doors down’.’ It’s that old joke ‘You can still have sex at 84 - which is annoying for my neighbours, because I live at 86!’ John goes out for a cigarette, and rudely is gone for long enough to watch two and a half episodes of Game Of Thrones on his phone. Even more rudely, he tells Greg he doesn’t fancy him, makes him leave and then stays to eat his steak! Even Fred coming over to tell John off doesn’t shame him. ‘I’ve got to have my dinner,’ he says, shoeing him away. I guess that in a whole series, there’s always going to be one bastard who just turned up for the fifty quid meal allowance.
Finally, we meet Laura from Bury, who might be the most beautiful human who has ever appeared on British telly, and another Charlie, who is instantly the worst because he turns up with a guitar, says he’s been ‘jammin’’ and sings No Woman No Cry to Laura, and says ‘ting’ not ‘thing’ even though he speaks as though he went to the sort of school where the boys got shipped in for discos at Cheltenham Ladies College. (He goes on to serenade her with Ronan Keating. I mean…) However, Laura is totally into it. ‘Why would you spend sixty quid on a night out, when you could go on an adventure to Giant’s Causeway!’ he exclaims. Because, Charlie, the pub at the bottom of my road does chips, and I’d worry that the chip shop would have shut by the time I arrived at Giant’s Causeway.
We discover that Charlie and his brother are adopted, and his brother committed suicide, and I feel incredibly mean and vow not to make fun of Charlie for wearing two necklaces in the video clip at the end. Also, Charlie and Laura have gone on a ‘spontaneous’ trip to Italy, since their date, and I’m deeply happy for them, even though I know Charlie would have done an airport check in on Facebook, writing ‘Just off on a spontaneous trip to Italy with this totally random chick I met in a bar! Laters guys!’ Hebe and other Charlie are dating, and Precious and Earle are getting serious too! And John is still slowly destroying his stomach lining with sugary blue bleach! Which makes this the most successful episode yet!
Rollercoaster of love
My surprise favourite daters were Laura and Charlie II, who redefined the concept of ‘a lid for every pot’. If you can find love by playing Ronan Keating covers in a restaurant, it means there’s someone out there for everyone.
A steak through the heart
I hope that Greg finds someone really, really lovely, and that John gets banned from every single kebab shop within a 20 mile radius from his house on the grounds that he is a cruel and callous bastard.
Like this? You might also be interested in…
Made In Chelsea’s Jess Woodley Tells Us About Going On TV’s First Dates
First Dates 8.6: The Sound Of Music, The Scent Of Cow Poo, And A Super Hot Oven Cleaner
Follow Daisy on Twitter @NotRollergirl
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.