Mr #46 - Napoleon Cokeparte

The preamble:
Mr #46 had exchanged a few emails over the course of a couple of weeks, and I was not only impressed by his sense of humour, but also his enthusiasm for fancy dress (namely a Transformers costume). He also wrote and texted in full Queen’s English, with not a sniff of a LOL in sight, and even though he spoke a bit too much about the weather over text than I’d usually tolerate, I thought it only appropriate to meet the chap for a drink. Did I also mention he was handsome? Well, he was. That helped, what can I say, a girl's not made of stone!

The man:
Age: 34
Profession: Runs his own software company

Random factoid: He once crashed into Wolf from Gladiators whilst snowboarding.

 The date:
In a rare occurrence in my experience of going on dates, Mr #46 had a firm idea of where he wanted to go on our date, a certain underground bar in Covent Garden. So my new fringe and I pottered along to see what Mr #46 had in store, and as expected, he was propped up at the bar with a beer in hand. 

My first thought was how he was much more handsome in real life than in his pictures, which was a welcome surprise. But as with all things, there was a catch. His height. Yup, same size as me, a sniff off five four. That was definitely not mentioned on his profile. But instantly his compensatory confidence spoke volumes, and I knew straight away I was on a date with textbook Short Man Complex. 

He leant over the bar to summon service from the staff in a over-exaggerated, slightly embarrassing wavy-and-shout fashion, and it turned out he always went to that particular bar because he provided them with their software. They all knew him. ALL OF THEM. They must also have all known we were there on a date. I suspected he probably did this a lot, as it was a very slick routine, "the usual, barkeep", the banter with the staff. 

Once he’d finally sorted me out with a drink, we went over to perch on some stools in the corner where it was quieter. I mounted the high stool in one go. Mr #46, however, struggled to get his low-slung bum on his, and three laboured attempts later, he was finally fully-installed. What then happened was quite possibly one of the most bizarre dates I have ever been on, and I want to share with you as many details as I can possibly remember. 

Pretty swiftly I realised this guy’s confidence was chemically-assisted. All the telltale signs were there: the nose tweaking, the sniffing, the chewing off his own pretty face and the frequent trips to the toilet. He was drinking shorts (pun delightfully intended). No-one’s bladder is that small, not even Napoleon’s. And as a result, I hardly got a word in edgewise all night. There was no way on God’s earth I was going to be allowed to show him even a little bit of my personality, as the room was so full of his over-inflated ego, mine was being kept outside behind a velvet rope by the metaphorical bouncer. 

In terms of conversation, well, the one half anyway, he covered a broad range of subjects: how he’s started up his own IT company which was going to be massive next year, how he underpays his staff, and how he won’t take on anyone new as ‘each new member of staff is £20k less in my pocket’. Right.

I was briefly allowed to tell him about my housing situation, which he promptly hijacked by number-crunching the inflation levels on my rent, potential mortgage prices and by offering me a fraudulent work contract to help me get a mortgage. Charming. 

Staying on his favourite subject of money, he pointed out he would move closer to London, but £700k was ‘a little too much for him to pay to live where he wanted to’ (after I’d mentioned my seemingly measily dreams of getting on a shared ownership scheme for less than a tenth of that), and told me about an ExCel spreadsheet he’d made of his wishlist for what he’d spend his money on with certain targets, ranging from £500k to £100 million. FYI when he gets to £100 million, he’ll buy his own private mountain so he can ski down it. And maybe a helicopter to drop him off. Perish the thought he’d break his own neck whilst ski-ing on his own private berg! 

Financial ambitions aside, he then went back to his other favourite subject – himself. He told me that he was a break-dancer, before demonstrating some basic popping and locking moves from his stool (presumably too scared to dismount in case he couldn’t get back up again). Despite my egging him on to do the Worm in the middle of the floor, he was adamant a shoulder injury and ‘the wrong shirt’ would restrict him, so he declined. 

He bragged about his auditions for a number of game shows because he wanted to go on for the ‘free money’ (none of which he was selected for, I might add), regaled me with his Heath Ledger as The Joker and Yoda impressions, his knowledge of the entire Marvel comic franchise, showed me pictures of him drinking an entire bottle of Jaegermeister through a straw and a ‘hilarious’ anecdote of how he once woke up drunk and topless in the back of a Transit van. 

Soon it was my round, so I popped off to the bar to ask for his usual ‘special’, for which the staff refused to let me pay. It turned out, we’d been getting drinks on the house all night. When I took his drink back to him, a very expensive rare rum, diet Coke and ice in a 12oz glass (it HAD to be a 12oz glass. Just because...!) he sat and counted the cubes, and was put out that they’d ‘fucked up’ his order and given him 7 ice cubes and not 6. When I queried it and offered to remove a cube for him, he hurrumphed and said it just made the mix all wrong. 

Mr #46 then decided to go and get us some crisps, so he scampered off to the bar and shortly returned with...a glass full of foam bananas and flying saucers, which he then proceeded to gum his way through. As if Class As weren’t enough to make him talk, he now had half a pound of Haribo in his system. Good-o!

He then moved on to bragging about the time he ate seven and a half racks of ribs, an impressive feat, but not as impressive as the detail he then went into as he described trying go for a shit the day after. He even used the phrase ‘it started off as a one trouser leg off affair, but then it became a brace yourself against the stall walls kind of thing. Childbirth could never be as painful as that, at least women are designed to accommodate something that size’. Er, what the holy fuck??? 

Whilst this was all going on, a drunken birthday party were dancing around near us, and I could tell Mr #46 was itching to get on the dance floor to demonstrate his breaking prowess, and I started to feel bad for restricting him despite giving him full permission to shake his tail feather. 

We carried on chatting, but his dialogue was interrupted first by Mike and the Mechanics coming on the jukebox and him insisting on pausing the conversation so he could whistle along for the solo, and then, my favourite, pausing the conversation again to sing along to Peter Andre’s Mysterious Girl. He knew ALL the words (including the rap). Then suddenly, as if he body was suddenly sapped of sugar and narcotics, he slumped over on his stool, sat there in silence for a minute, announced ‘right, I’m over this’ and apparently that was it for the night. 

We headed off to the station, he rattled off all of his available train times like some sort of savant, and at the station he literally said a half-arsed bye, didn’t even look me in the eye, and ran off to get his train.

 Memorable Quotes:
‘There’s this toilet in Marbella...’ The beginning of a cracking anecdote if ever there was one...

‘I’m like Rainman’

‘My mate was given an island for his 21^st birthday’

‘What was the music like when you went to the toilet?’

Events of note:

Everything. Just everything. I just wished he’d got on the dance floor and properly busted a groove. Although I did particularly like the look on his face when I highlighted that everyone looked like they’d come straight from work, and he looked a little crestfallen as he insisted he’d gone home to change and put on a shirt and shoes especially. Face it mate, you still look like an office worker.

The Verdict:

Once again, this is a bit of a no-brainer. No. But to be honest, I can’t imagine him wanting to see me again either considering I was hardly allowed to breathe a word, and he probably thought I was the most boring date in the world. But if I have to turn into a Lil Miss Cokey-Blownose to win his affections, I think I’ll stick to my rum and ginger beer, thanks. And the moral of the story? Drugs are bad kids, m'kay?

Mr #45 - The Real Greek

The preamble:
I hadn't been messaging Mr #45 very long before we agreed to meet, but I found him rather intriguing. He was very easy on the eye and enticingly moody-looking, with an artistic streak and an alluring profile, and I was keen to get to know this hopefully tall, dark and handsome Greek stranger. So when he suggested meeting for a drink, I jumped at the chance.

The man:
Age: 31
Profession: Illustrator

Random factoid: Has survived no less than 15 earthquakes when he lived in Greece.

The date:
The first I knew of Mr #45 was when he appeared in front of me at point blank range outside Boots inside Victoria station. He was relatively tall, reasonably handsome, and definitely moody. There was little to no small talk en route to the pub despite my attempts to crack out the fail safe questions, although he was the consummate gentleman in holding open every door for me as we went along. 

Once at the pub, we had to stand at the bar for about 15 minutes, and this bugger was not talking. At all. After about 5 minutes of decent interrogation, he wasn't giving much back, so instead I just stood there at the bar with him, behaved myself and shut up. 

Once equipped with drinks, we headed outside to find some seats. I plonked myself down at the nearest table without thinking and expected my date to do the same. But what then ensued was a rather lengthy debacle by which he inspected every single chair in the vicinity (and I'm talking about twenty here) until he found the cleanest one. Once he'd selected his chair of choice, we then had to move tables on account of a tiny bit of bird shit at the other end. Warning sign number one. See, I live with two parrots. Anyone that frightened of avian faeces probably wouldn't feel too comfy in a room with two of them that poo like clockwork (albeit normally in their own cages but occasionally on visitors to let them know who's boss). 

Once we'd sat in our final positions, we resumed the chatting. It took Mr #45 a little while to warm up, but once he got going, boy did he get going! I could hardly get a word in, and for me and my garrulous gob that's quite an achievement. He talked about his work as an illustrator, his previous jobs as doorman and railway worker, his extra work (nay background artiste work dahling) on such blockbusters as Johnny English, and his heady ambitions to become a regular extra in something like EastEnders or Hollyoaks (methinks he should go on a date with Mr #44 - they have a LOT in common!). 

He told me about his childhood friend who used to ritually slaughter local cats and hide the bodies, how he once saw a policeman have his eye gouged out with a broken bottle and bitched about how poor the rail replacement works are. He then decided to show me some of his 'etchings', and credit with credit is due, he's a very talented illustrator, although if we're being REALLY critical, his portrait of Captain Jean-Luc Picard was a tad over-generous on the cranium, and he did look rather like a Conehead. 

Over the course of the date, Mr #45 had gone from monosyllabic and moody to chatty and arrogant, and throughout the talking and drinking I became hypnotised by this grey bit of gum circling the inside of his mouth with cow-and-cud-like rhythm. Anyone who knows me knows what a mahoosive pet peeve open-mouthed mastication is of mine, and I could not take my eyes off it. At one point I willed it to leap down his throat just so I could get a word in. 

The only facts he gleaned out of me over the course of the date were where I lived (Whitechapel - you already knew that from emails), my job, and the fact I owned parrots (something I had to crowbar in there). I had to make a tactical trip to the bathroom after one drink, and by the time I returned he was yawning his gum-ridden chops off, and suggested we called it a day. Fine by me! And then, as we stood up to leave and I was finally able to see him in his full glory I saw them. Mustard-coloured shoes. Fucking mustard-coloured shoes. Three words my friends: straw, camel and back. 

We walked back to the station, and at the Tube entrance he kissed me on the cheek and said 'let's do this again sometime'. What, so you can talk about yourself all over again? No thanks. Sadly what came out of my mouth in that split second made me hate myself, as without thinking I blurted 'yeah, sure', and then pretending it hadn't happened I hot-footed it off down the escalator. Error. Bad CTS.

Memorable Quotes:
'My mate...the one who killed the cats...he has diabetes now and is like a balloon. Even the Army won't have him.'
'You have parrots? Why? Birds should never be kept as pets'. Uh oh...

Events of note:

During my only bathroom break of the evening, I ended up assisting a woman with the most spectacular mullet I've ever seen with a rather embarrassing coffee spillage on her revolting magenta shirt. I didn't have the heart to tell her that the coffee had probably done her a favour. I wish I'd taken a photo, just to mark the occasion.

The Verdict:

Oh dear. So much for the tall, dark and handsome cliche. Turns out his moody pictures were indicative of a very moody man, and a man who would probably have had just as much fun on a date sat in front of a mirror, like a giant bald budgie, pecking at his own refection and chattering to himself. And speaking of birds, anyone that anti my two favourite little feathered beasts is never going to be a genuine contender for my affections. Love me, love my parrots. That's the deal. Deal with it.

Mr #44 - Telly Addict

The preamble:
Mr #44 and I have been texting on and off for what seems like forever, but in truth I think it was around Christmas when he sent his first fateful message. His dating profile was minimalist, but he appeared to be a very svelte, elegant and handsome Indian fellow from his profile (like he was modelling for an catalogue company - lots of choice knitwear) and he sounded pretty keen, so we exchanged numbers.

But 4 attempts to meet later his texting was getting a little irritating, and I think he may now hold the record for the most uses of the word 'babe' in the course of our messaging history, which regular 52 First Dates readers will acknowledge is a real pet peeve mine. We'd been messaging so long, and he was trying to spark up text chats during work on such a regular basis, I decided we really should meet once and for all lest we ended up texting until Hell froze over. So finally, after months or sporadic and partially irksome messaging, we arranged the date. 

He chose the venue, and it was in a brand new pub...right in the middle of Kings Cross station. Hmm...

The man:
Age: 38
Profession: IT developer

Random factoid: Used to be an extra, and has starred in such commercials as McDonalds, Barclays and Halifax (he was one of the people making up the giant X).

The date:
I bowled up to the date a bit late on account of being distracted by beverages with workmates, and the first thing that struck me about my date, when I eventually identified him, was that he looked nothing, and I mean NOTHING, like his profile photo. He was about a foot shorter, a foot wider and none of the luscious hair previously depicted in his photos. There was also a distinct lack of knitwear, and he was clad head to toe in a very crisp business suit complete with novelty cuff links. I, however, had turned up in jeans, converse, shirt and waistcoat and headscarf. It rapidly occurred to me that we were by far the oddest couple in the bar (which was surprisingly nice for a venue slap bang in the middle of a train station), and anyone looking at us would have instantly spotted that we'd met online, as we were, most probably, the oddest couple in the actual world. It was almost laughable. 

Mr #44, however, was very cheery and polite, so we grabbed some drinks and set about possibly the most elusive date of the quest. Pretty much the first thing Mr #44 brought up was the subject of online dating - it turns out he was new to t'interweb dating having escaped an arranged marriage, and I was the first person he'd met. He seemed baffled that I had told people about the fact I did online dating as he found it embarrassing. I, obviously, underplayed my involvement for obvious reasons. 

We spoke at length about his all his older siblings had been married off in an arranged fashion, but following the death of his mother, his father had chilled out a bit and let forced nuptials slip for the sake of his youngest son - pretty intense for the first 15 minutes of a date! He then started probing into the circumstances surrounding my singledom, and before I could protest my innocence he launched into how he'd tried to rekindle the love of his life a couple of months ago, but she'd knocked him back, and going online for dates was his rebound mechanism. Good-o! 

Anyway, once the deep and meaningfuls had been covered, the lighter chat got underway. I did have to question the inconsistency between his photo and the reality as it was such a drastic difference, and he claimed that his photo was from 5 years ago. And actually it probably was from 5 years ago...from someone else's Facebook profile! 

It turned out he's quite the telly fan, being a massive EastEnders fan, and a connoisseur of all things Take Me Out, Britains Got Talent, X Factor and The Voice. He spoke with great adoration for a little known character called William on the latter (or Will.I.Am to everyone else in the world). 

Once on his favourite subject and he'd relaxed a little, there was no stopping him! He then revealed his love for old school movies, and he had an almost Rainman-esque knowledge of Carry On films. He then moved onto his various talents, of which creating council tax databases, drawing and dancing were but a couple, and he recreated with glee and gusto his audition dance to be part of the Olympics opening ceremony dance. He'd made it through to the second round, and was pretty confident that his skills would be seen by the entire globe, so when you watch the opening ceremony, keep an eye out for the Indian guy from the background of a McDonalds advert who looks nothing like a tall, slim handsome catalogue model throwing some rather spectacular shapes. 

Mr #44 was a fidgetty sort, and the more he spoke, the more he involved himself with some rather off-putting under-the-table scratchings which increased as the evening went on. But he was really entertaining company, but I have to admit I was relieved that the babe-infused textings might finally be over.

Memorable Quotes:
When I returned from the facilities - 'what did you think of the toilets?'

'You have perfect eyebrows'

'George Clooney, he's such a heart throbe, I think he's the ultimate heart throbe'. (note - I have not misspelt this quote)

'On Saturday night, I love to get takeaway, and sit in and watch TV all night at home. In my 3 bedroom house.'

Events of note:

After declaring his skills at being able to draw 'with a pencil, on the papers, bare-hand', I challenged Mr #44 to demonstrate his skills, and demonstrate them he did. This is what he did. I think I should point out that although, this is pretty much exactly what I look like in real life (and yes, I am just as sketchy...)

The Verdict:

Bless him, Mr #44 was excellent value, and he absolutely has a heart of gold. But I don't think I've ever met someone so drastically different to me, and although it made for a good write up, I was never destined to move to Romford to spend my Saturday nights in eating fried chicken and watching talent shows. 

Within 10 minutes of my getting on the bus, he'd texted to try and arrange another date. I'd dozed off on the bus before replying, and half an hour later when I awoke to get off at my stop, he had messaged again pressing for an answer. I graciously declined, but I wished him well on his quest as I'm pretty sure there'll be a chicken-loving lady out there somewhere for whom Essex and X Factor are the absolute dream. But not me. That said, that chicken burger was rather lush...