This series of First Dates is working to a strict formula. You take the poshest single person you can find - a person so posh that Mark ‘Made In Chelsea’ Francis would run from them, screaming ‘they will uncover my oikdom!’ - and sit them down at the bar for a nervous Negroni or lip wincingly astringent dry sherry, according to personal preference. The posho du jour is Milo, who has, as his fellow fancy dater Jelly puts it ‘a posh dog’s name’. Milo is a posh dog walker, and Jelly correctly surmises that if you work for a dog walking business - even if it’s your business - you probably can’t afford to live where Milo lives, in Fulham. He’s at home with his Mum and Dad. My inner bitter, broke socialist is secretly quite pleased that a person could be as posh as Milo, and have to live with their parents instead of having their parents simply buy them a house.
Bruce, 58 (and almost certainly the sort to declare himself ’58 years young!’ while taking your hand in both of his and pumping like he’s trying to open a tricky sash window in a rented holiday cottage) is back after an unsuccessful stay at the First Dates Hotel last summer. He’s been matched with Yvonne, who likes ‘a bit of banter, a bit of gorblimey’ and she gets plenty of blimey for her buck. Bruce is a binman, or a ‘cleansing and hygienic services operative’ (the anxious British professional classes having more words for binman than the Inuits have for snow based cliche) and only runs out of chat when Yvonne starts a mysterious rant about refusing to eat frozen vegetables. She doesn’t ask what we’re all thinking - how is Bruce almost 60, and encountering his first room temperature leaf?
Now, most daters are warned against the dangers of being too picky and specific, and not being open minded enough about potential dates. However, no-one has had that conversation with 23-year-old rugby player Jordan, who is after ‘a young Amanda Holden’. Come on pal, the only young Amanda Holden is currently knackered after a long run of Saturday nights hosting BGT (let’s be real - she does not age!) Yet, lo and behold, the production geniuses - or Love Santas, as I think we can call them - have rummaged through their casting sack and produced Imogen, who looks spookily like Jordan’s crush! Even though her slightly surprised expression suggests that she’s not absolutely sure of the difference between La Holden and Lorraine Kelly. Imogen’s accent has a slight northern lilt, but she’s afflicted by that problem that many of us face, where you have a wine and you’re compelled to start speaking like the person in front of you, and Jordan sounds like he’s from somewhere just above Bolton. He doesn’t mind - he’s decided she’s the one before she’d got her coat off.
Next, glamorous Nicky, the part-time helicopter pilot and astronaut in training meets motor journalist Daniel, but it’s over before it begins when she makes a reference to being in the sky, and he asks her if she’s an air hostess. He didn’t even say flight attendant! Nicky learned to fly after surviving cancer, and her dinner chat is more or less a TED talk. Daniel orders a burger, which is tantamount to showing up to the date with mayonnaise on the crotch of your jeans. Poor Daniel.
Our final couple is Junior, a man of sophisticated tastes and uncontrollable hands and arms - I fall in love with him when he tips his drink all over himself before the date starts, and manages to do it again before the food arrives - and Mark, who I fall in love with at the end, when he puts his pin into the card machine and exclaims, in shocked cheer ‘Oh, it’s approved!’ Junior loves fish, Mark will eat a fish finger, or a prawn in a salad ‘but not a big prawn’. These two have the biggest laughs and the most poignant moments, as we learn about Junior’s moving coming out experience and Mark’s Dad’s suicide. Hold your loved ones close, no matter how many condiments are in their jeans.
At the end of the night, Junior and Mark are planning to give it a go - as are Bruce and Yvonne, and Imogen and Jordan. Hooray! And Junior, you might not kiss on a first date, but we totally saw that smooch…
Love’s young-ish dream
Hooray for Bruce and Yvonne, who are flying the flag for hope, Dad jokes and sweet sincerity - let’s hope that they’ll stay together long enough for at least one argumentative supermarket shop.
Giving love a bad name
Maybe it was nerves but Daniel, how did you fail to ask Nicky so little about herself that it was down to the wait staff to reveal her exciting astronaut plans? Nicky, if you want to do an inspiring talk for the YouTube crowd we’re right here.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.