Bad dates! We’ve all had them……So when I was asked to talk dating to mark the launch of a new Take Me Out game, I figured why not share with you one of my “no lighty no likey” dates.

I had my worst date last year when I first started dabbling in online dating. In attempt to throw myself out of the frying pan and into the fire, I threw my “DATING SUCKS” caution to the window and allowed myself to go on a few dates. As Vivienne would say in Pretty Woman “Big mistake. Huge.”

This particular date I’d been speaking to via Plenty Of Fish (otherwise known as Plenty of Freaks) and we had exchanged phone numbers after a few days.  After spending around a week texting back and forth and having that terrifying first “online dating” telephone conversation (where you cross your fingers that the person you’ve been texting doesn’t sound like Joe Pasquale) he asked if we could meet  for coffee one evening after work. All sounds good, right?

First off, he was late, because (as he regaled to me upon arriving) he had have to wrestle a guy off of a girl at the bus station, to which he proceeded to ask me to gaze into the inside of his mouth to see whether his filling had fell out. Aside from that, all was going okay-ish until he suggested we move on elsewhere. Elsewhere was Game – yes, the store that sells computers and consoles. He wanted to speak to his friend and pick up some train tickets – would that be okay? “Sure” I nodded although I felt a little like a 15 year old girl stood around waiting for her boyfriend whilst he looked at computer games. As I browsed the shelves for about twenty minutes reminiscing on such classic games as Sonic and Spyro I began LIVE TWEETING my bad date. “LEAVE THE SHOP NOW”, “You have to just walk out of there, how rude” were the replies.   BUT, despite already being ignored on this rubbish date, Little Miss “Too Nice For Her Own Good” over here couldn’t do that, I’d probably just send him a polite “it’s not me, its you, you’re a bad dater” text at the end of the night and have done.

We eventually leave Game (him luckily without a Playstation controller lodged in his behind) and begin to walk to a bar nearby that HE suggested. On the way there his mobile starts to ring… insert dramatic “I’m sorry, let me just get this”…

“What?  Are you serious?  Is anybody hurt?  Oh god, I can’t believe it.  Yeah of course… yeah… I’ll be right there.  No, it’s fine.  Give me 10 minutes.”

“Something bad happened?” I asked.   And yes, something bad had happened.  Apparently.  CONSEQUENTLY his house had been burgled, glass everywhere, they don’t think anything was taken, but he had to go.  Right. That. Second.  Despite “something bad happened” he still tried to kiss me before he took a sprint, TRIED being the operative word.

If there’s anything more disheartening than your date running to the hills, it’s the date you didn’t even like running to the hills when you were considering doing the same thing yourself but were too damned nice to be so cruel.

He may have been a liar, but Oscar nominations go to him for the follow up to his escape plan.  After his 1000m Olympic style sprint I received multiple messages to advise me that the forensics unit were dusting for fingerprints and lifting DNA samples. One thinks that someone has been watching a little bit too much CSI and will also be spending a long time watching Babestation type channels for kicks.

Did I forget to mention that this guy was a ginger Robbie Williams tribute act who had had Robbie’s tattoo’s actually tattoo’d onto himself because inking them on for every performance took too much time? I should have seen the warning signs.

Let me know your worst dates in the comments – it’ll be nice to see that others have had similar (or worse) date disasters.  Please.

*collaborative post