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Your support makes all the difference.I would like to say that I wasn't nervous. Two days beforehand, I was oozing confidence. Friday night, and I find myself reduced to a gibbering wreck. Fortunately I am not alone. I'm in No Jackets Required, a trendy Battersea wine bar, surrounded by 60 other stuttering cavaliers who have agreed to take part in the inaugural meeting of Sleepless Nights - a newcomer to London's blind-date circuit.
The place is swarming with twentysomethings, most of whom are eager City types. After half an hour the young crowd is sent off at random to one of 14 dinner locations where tables have been booked in the name of Mr B. Date. I am given a carnation and told to 'display it prominently as some girls are shy and will go home if they cannot find you - some may even go home when they do find you'. Mine is a fitting yellow.
I am accompanied to the same Italian restaurant by Sharky who had to 'peg it here' after a 'late American deal'. We sit at separate tables. Blond-haired Ms Date turns out to be working for a Swedish investment company. Ten minutes later we are in full flow, gulping down the house white and getting on well enough. . . until I catch sight of Sharky. He is cracking open a bottle of champagne and holding hands across the table. A few blinks later and they've left the chatting stage altogether.
Feeling inadequate I drag my date back to the wine bar, where a hundred blind daters are exchanging phone numbers or consoling themselves with more drink. As I make to leave, Sharky arrives alone. He shrugs. 'Plenty more fish in the sea.'
'Sleepless Nights', 74 Cambridge Mansions, Cambridge Rd, London SW11 (071-394 5499), pounds 10 per person
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