Speed Dating

'Okay, tell me...

If you could host a dinner party and invite any three people, dead or alive, male or female, who would they be and why?'

'Ooh, that's a tricky one. Umm, maybe Satan? Yes, Satan and Mahatma Ghandi. It would be good to see what sort of conversation would develop. Umm, and the third one...Britney, because of the whole gay thing'.

Sure enough, what the man had described was a dinner party I'd never attend. Ever.

That said, my questions were definitely the best ones being asked. And that's not my own assumption, no, that's what people were saying. An awful lot of people in fact. 40 single gay men to be precise.

Yes, it's contrived, yes, 3 minutes really is a very very short time, and yes there are occasional odd balls, but all in all, I had a really fun and engaging time at last night's speed dating event.

The trick is, I'm sure, to harbour low expectations. Truth be told, I expected ten people, all of whom weren't particularly good looking and three minutes of erms, arrs and enforced conversation.

What I got was 40 men, some charming, a few incredibly sexy, some high fliers (Architects, Bankers, Men In 'Finance', Lawyers, An (incredibly hot) Opera Singer) and most if not all, incredibly friendly, with whom 3 minutes felt like a few seconds.

This is how it worked:

You are given a badge with your name on it and a number. All the odd numbers sit on the table that has their number on it. All the even numbers sit at the table that has a number which is one lower than their even number. You have a three minute date and then they blow a whistle, at which point, the even numbers move clockwise to the next odd number along. Odd numbers (myself included), stay stagnant throughout the whole thing.

Each person is given a scoring card where there is space to write down each man's number, name, whether you want to seem them again or not and whether you might consider them for purposes of friendship.

After each whistle, you have roughly two seconds to fill the form in before the next even number is upon you.

All in all, I had 20 dates. And this took us up until 10pm. Of course, being all men, there are 20 guys with whom I won't have had a date and therefore, during the breaks (of which there were two), people were encouraged to speak to people who were the same sort of number as themselves. If I liked the look of an odd number I'd have to make an effort to go and talk to him during one of these intervals.

The following day you log in to the dating website and enter your results. If you have any matches, whether 'friends' or otherwise, you'll be notified and granted access to their email address and profile. The rest is then up to you.

Now to my questions:

Apart from the above one (which gained the most insightful responses - although, i should add, not a single gay man wanted Mother Teresa at the dinner party), I asked:

'If you could do anything right now and there were no barriers whatsoever, what would that be?'

a) 'Fly' ( a very common answer I discovered) - fly to Mexico. I, too would have flown, flown out there to find Brad Pitt and Gael Garcia Bernal, taken them up into the sky and demanded an orgy. I mean, where would they go otherwise?

b) 'I'd pull that guy over there with the Tshirt on that says 23, and shag him. Right now!' said a barrister during our date.

c) 'I'd follow the route of the Oriental Express and fly along that, stopping along the way.

d) 'I'd grab somebody fit, go to the nearest Sainsburys, into their store room and shag them up against the bread'. (He did find this funny)

And then the question I saved for the ones i thought might be able to handle it:

'If your BoyF came home and said to you that he wanted to have a threesome or partake in an orgy, what would your immediate reaction be?'

a) 'Fuck off! That's what my immediate reaction would be', said perhaps the most attractive Maori guy I'd ever seen with the least annoying Kiwi accent (Hooray!) 'although, I would want to know what made him say that or want that'. I did say yes to this guy however I feel this question may have taken him aback/offended him. Ah well, time will tell.

b) 'Why only a threesome? Can't we have an eightsome?' - my sort of guy!

c) 'If he wants an orgy, there's clearly something lacking in our relationship and if we can't please each other then we need to question why it is that we are even together. I would say no and feel gutted.' - Pah!

The thing I don't understand is, why on earth do people assume that one person's desire to have a liberated and unapologetic sexual existence automatically renders the relationship unstable or their partner unsatisfying? Surely it's possible to want somebody just as much the entire way through put also want to use other people as a sexual object to increase your pleasure?

I was shocked at the number of men who felt that the ideas of an orgy or a threesome, when presented within a relationship, were indicitory of a relationship flaw. Only one person said that they would encourage it. The rest were truly repulsed and saw it as a personal attack.

The desire to move outside the conventional sex scenario doesn't always mean you are unsatisfied with your current partner, does it?

In relation to the dinner party, one guy suggested that he'd like to invite Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. Another man said he'd invite his family as he doesn't see them enough. That's fine, I said, which three of them? Well two are twins so they count as one don't they? 'Nope, not for the purposes of this (mental note - this wasn't Big Brother!), at which point he declared the question unanswerable.

On a separate note, I did hear one man ask his date what he'd want put in his coffin once he'd died. *Raised eyebrow*

Although, if it were me, and despite the fact that I want to be cremated, I'd say a packet of vibrating condoms and some lube - just in case I get lucky.

Yes = 7 people
No = 23 People (17 of which I didn't even meet)
Friends = 10 People

Stay tuned...