I went on First Dates. I wish I hadn’t

I blame Brexit. In the aftermath of the 2016 referendum, when the whole nation was still in the throes of a collective nervous breakdown, I succumbed to the prevailing mood of madness and went on a TV dating programme. No, it wasn’t Naked Attraction, the Channel 4 show in which participants strip down to reveal all to their prospective partners, but a rather more restrained show on the same channel called First Dates. I hadn’t actually even seen the programme when I noticed an ad in The Spectator appealing for single middle-aged people.

My 18-year relationship had recently ended, I had moved to a new town, and like Britain freeing itself from the EU, I felt ready for a fresh beginning. I wasn’t really expecting to meet the love of my life on a reality show – my motive was more akin to taking a leap in the dark for the sheer hell of it – like signing up to a parachuting course or a bungee jumping weekend. So I applied, against the strong advice of a friend who worked in TV. He said such shows were inherently exploitative, and that I was making a foolish mistake. Having worked in television myself I was well aware of this, but in the grip of what T.S. Eliot called ‘the awful daring of a moment’s surrender which an age of prudence can never retract’, I went ahead anyway.

I was invited to the first of two interviews to test my suitability for the show. My first interlocutor was a genial Irishman, and one of the questions he posed was ‘What makes you cry?’ Apart from an annual weep on Remembrance Day, the thing that most often pricks my eyes with tears is a phrase from the letter that Oliver Cromwell wrote to his brother-in-law Colonel Valentine Walton immediately after his great victory at Marston Moor in the English Civil War. The first page of the letter is devoted to telling Walton how ‘the godly party principally’ had won the battle. It is only on the second page that Cromwell gets round to informing Walton that his son had been killed by a cannon ball that broke his leg, compelling a fatal amputation. The future Lord Protector, a master of English prose, then writes beautifully ‘Sir – there is your precious child full of glory to know sinn nor sorrow any more’ which for some reason always makes me well up.

Only after blurting this out to the Irish producer did I recall how hated Cromwell still was in Ireland for carrying out the massacres of Drogheda and Wexford – too late! But despite this gaffe, I progressed to a second interview with another producer called Wendy. This woman matched my ideal: not only stunningly beautiful, but sexy and sympathetic too. She asked: ‘What kind of woman are you hoping to meet on the show?’ Quick as a flash, I responded, ‘I’ve already met her Wendy – it’s you!’ Clearly put out by my corny naivety, she primly replied: ‘I’m afraid that we’re not allowed to date daters’. The interview ended.

Despite (or because of?) such hopeless idiocies, I was invited to appear on the show, and duly signed a long legal document handing over my rights to the programme. The show’s format entails meeting your date at the Paternoster Chop House, a restaurant near St Paul’s in central London. You are then filmed as you eat a meal together, and finally interviewed – both separately and then together – to discover how the first date had gone. Never having seen the show, I was unaware of all this and plunged blindly on.

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I next saw Wendy on the day the programme was recorded. Harassed and sweaty, she seemed embarrassed to meet me again, and the first faint suspicion dawned that I was being set up. In the green room before filming, I made small talk with the young men awaiting their own editions of the programme. The atmosphere was boyishly joshing, like a rugby changing room before a match, with a sense of eager excitement as we speculated on what our dates would be like.

At last, I was filmed striding across the square to the restaurant where the Maitre d’, a French chef called Fred Sirieix, meets and greets you, and points you in the direction of your date who is waiting hopefully at the bar. I took one look at the poor lady and blanched, and perhaps she did too, although her first words to me were ‘Aren’t I the lucky one?’ Let’s call her Valerie. She was a good decade older than me whereas I had specifically told Wendy that I wanted to meet someone of my own age or slightly younger. As for mutual attraction, I felt an affinity with the Prince Regent, who on first meeting his arranged bride, Caroline of Brunswick, asked an aide, ‘Harris, pray fetch me a glass of brandy – I am not well’. My own choice of tipple was a kir royale, and I asked the barman to make it a double, while Val and I had our first tentative conversation. It was hardly a meeting of minds. Val was a Tory councillor and a keen Remainer, while I was a former Ukip parliamentary candidate and an equally passionate Leaver.

Despite being in a chop house, I chose a Dover sole, which was an error as I was filmed plucking fishbones from my teeth as I tried to maintain polite chit-chat with Valerie. Halfway through dinner I was summoned into the gents and eagerly quizzed on how the date was going. I could only say that it had all been a terrible error of judgement and that I wanted the whole thing to be over ASAP. After coffee, I made my escape attempt. I stalked off across the square, fully intending to quit and not go back. Unfortunately I was hotly pursued by a young gofer with a clipboard who argued that if I left I would be humiliating Valerie. Against my better judgement, my gentlemanly upbringing prevailed against common sense, and I allowed myself to be led back: a lamb to the slaughter house.

Then came the interviews. I was still quite angry at the programme for having deliberately paired me with a partner unsuitable in every way. I had already lost several intolerant Remainer friends because of being a Brexiteer, and I thought that Wendy and the Irishman must have decided to punish me for my views by mixing fire and gunpowder, hoping that the resulting explosion would make good telly.

I made this plain in my single interview. However, when I was joined by Valerie, I bit my tongue and held back as I didn’t want to hurt her. She, for her part said that she was confident that we would meet for a second date. Mercifully, the show was then rounded off by my handing Valerie into a taxi as we bid each other a fond farewell. The very next day I went to stay in the country to comfort a friend suddenly bereaved by an unspeakable family tragedy. I walked into a room filled with half a dozen strangers – all women – in mourning. I tried to lighten the atmosphere by describing the events of the previous day in a comic way with me cast as the principal fool of the piece. To cut a long story short, across the course of the following week, a romance developed with one of the women – which made my coming appearance on First Dates all the more of a painful embarrassment.

I tried to get Channel 4 to cancel my show, pleading the adverse effect that broadcasting it would have on my mental health, as well as on my new girlfriend, but unsurprisingly they refused, citing the contract that I had willingly signed. They did, however, offer me the services of the programme’s consultant psychiatrist to alleviate my distress, which I declined. The Daily Mail, where I had worked, got wind of the story, and wanted me to spill the beans to damage the lefties on Channel 4, but not wishing to become more of a national laughing stock than I was already, I also declined that offer.

The show was duly broadcast on schedule. I watched it once, through my fingers and from behind a sofa. The worst part was thinking of my family and friends seeing me making an arse of myself, but they kindly assured me that I had come over as a gentleman. It wasn’t really the result of Brexit, of course, but rather a vainglorious moment of self-immolation at a particularly low moment in my life. I have no one to blame but myself, and though I have always thought the habitual English secrecy about sex absurd, on this occasion I should have kept my private life private. My advice to anyone tempted to go on a reality TV show is simple: don’t.