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Speed date non è solo viaggi x single : leggete "SPEED DATING IS THE NEW CURE FOR CHRONIC SINGLEDOM. BUT DOES IT WORK?"

My first of 19 dates in a two-hour speed dating whirlwind is a man who has clearly modelled himself on the Eighties charmer Ian McShane. Without the charm. The bell rings and his three minutes are up. As he stands and I inwardly weep with relief, he leers down and says: "Nice pair, by the way." Welcome to the bizarre world of speed dating, the latest American trend to hit the party scene in the UK, which takes a group of complete strangers, puts them in a bar, and gives them three minutes with each person to find love. Aish HaTorah, an international Jewish educational network, created speed dating two years ago and it took off in America as various entrepreneurs saw a market in changing singletons to find love in new ways. When Miranda, a character in Sex and the City, the seminal American comedy about finding love in the urban jungle, went speed dating, it led to a rash of copycat firms springing up over her.

Dating is an American word which has crept insidiously into British culture. It implies a formal courtship ritual involving dinner, flowers and very little frottage. In Britain, the traditional courtship ritual for twentysomethings goes something like this: you start by drinking a lot. You talk to someone vaguely attractive. You drink a lot more. Eventually one of you "slips the tongue", to use the phrase coined by a young generation of predatory males. The left-overs from the encounter are a hangover and, very occasionally, an e-mail address. Curious to see how the formalised American concept would work with an English accent (and, OK, maybe a little bit hopeful of finding a man), I found myself undercover in a bar in Clapham with nearly 40 other singletons. It could have been an ordinary bar except for the fact that everyone there was wearing a badge and a guilty expression. A short induction course and we were off, racing through 19 three-minute conversations ranging from the banal to the ridiculous. Usually banal, considering that the men were a fairly average cross-section of those you would meet in a series of nights out.
There was the objectionable one: in a snatched bonding session in the ladies', I learnt that his opening gambit to one girl had been "Do you want children?" When she replied that she would like them but perhaps not immediately, he said "Well, I've had a vasectomy." An awkward two minutes and 45 seconds ensued. There was the gorgeous but dull one. Later, the other girls confirmed that, like me, they had been taken in by his fabulous exterior only to be disappointed by his lacklustre mind. By far the most prevalent men attending the evening were the Mark Owens of this world: men whom women adore as friends but can't bring themselves to kiss, even when blind drunk. Did we want to see them again for a few beers? Yes. Did we fancy them? Never. At the end of each date, participants received a form on which they were required to tick "yes" or "no" to each one. Simple and clear-cut. But some of the men were worth seeing again for a few friendly beers, so another box entitled "sort of" would have been useful.

 

The Times -Three Minute Romance- 12 December 2002, TONI O'NEAL .