Channel 4 broadcasts First Dates (Mondays, 9pm) in an age of sexual uncertainty, when no one wants to be accused of doing the wrong thing. This might be the last series in which the dates don’t sit either side of a glass window, communicating, like prison visitors, by telephone.
There seem to be two types of bad date: too down and too up. I’d place Eddy in that last category, a plain-spoken Londoner in his late fifties, who told his date the story of his wife’s death, of how she dismissed the rest of her family from her bedside and said she just wanted to be with him. “I said my words to her, ‘I love you, babes. You fought too long now, it’s time for you to go.’ She drew her last breaths.”
How tragic. How devastating. But then Eddy added: “You don’t want to be down for more than a couple of days.”
“Yeah,” said his date, “no more than you have to be.”
“Yeah, you need to get your arse going again. Get out there and enjoy life again.”
Really, Eddy? You don’t need to mourn for more than two days? When the date was over, this optimistic pair said that they might meet again. A part of me imagined him saying: “Not next week though, love, ’cos I’ve got to bury the wife.”
The best of the first dates show how much people need each other, even if they can’t quite find the words to express it. Jan Leeming, the former news reader, was so overcome with the chivalry of her date that she nearly cried – and so did I. At a time when – I am told – you can arrange sexual contact with someone online as easily as ordering a pizza, it’s wonderful to witness the old-fashioned meeting of two strangers in a restaurant, nervously trying to figure each other out and reach a point of mutual understanding over the most important question you can ever ask another human being. Not “Do you like me?” but “Who is paying the bill?”
Nine times out of 10, it’s still the man, which shows some things never change.
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