If your quest for love has so far proved fruitless and you feel that time is running out – how about spending a night speed dating? You could meet a dozen potential matches and still get home in time to peruse the personals before bed.
The clock is ticking. Speed dating means you only spend a few minutes with each of your dates, so every second counts.

It works like this: an equal number of men and women meet at a café, pair up and chat for a predetermined number of minutes, then when a bell rings it’s time to move on to your next mini-date.

A grown up version of musical chairs? Well speed daters say it saves time and provides a safer way to meet – no more waiting for the evening to end when you’ve worked out in the first couple of minutes that your date’s a dud.

After you’ve speed-dated everyone in the room it’s time to come up with your wish-list. You write down who’s hot and who’s not and if your top picks feel the same about you then the organisers will pass on contact details.

Rate your date! If it goes well for both of you romance could be round the corner Speed dating, unsurprisingly, comes from the States. It started in January 1999 as a scheme for L.A. Jewish singles to meet. It quickly broke out of that community and has become the hippest way to look for love.

The appeal is that you can meet a lot of people very quickly, which traditionally could have meant months of dating. It is also in some ways less demoralising than regularly trawling singles columns or dating websites. David, a speed dater from the South East, says, “I think it’s for those people who are cash rich time poor. It’s a very good way of meeting a large number of the opposite sex in a fun environment and in a condensed period of time. I would definitely do it again and encourage a friend of either sex to come along and give it a whirl”.

Luci, another speed dater, says, “It’s a great way to meet new people but a gamble as to whether you’re going to meet anyone”. However efficiency isn’t everything. If your life means that you find it difficult to devote time to finding love, will you have enough time to nurture love if you find it?

Speed Dating Rules

• Respect the bell – when it’s time to move on, move on.
• Be polite.
• Don’t ask judgmental questions about age, occupation or where your date lives.
• Don’t exchange phone numbers.
• Meet everyone – No ducking out to avoid an unlikely prospect.

If speed dating represents the modern solution for the “cash rich; time poor” to find love, does it also mark the death of romance, or just another evolutionary step in human courtship? Speed dating may be the new way to meet, but after that first date it’s down to more traditional methods of dating to ensure love blossoms. Then it comes down to care, consideration and time. The challenge is whether speed daters can find time for another in their busy schedules. Perhaps there will be a growth in speed relationships where you don’t ever to have to spend more than a few minutes at a time with your “partner”.

In the mean time your three minutes start now – Good luck, find your dreams!

Having been, ahem, ‘on the shelf’ for some months and being an adventurous chap, I thought I’d try my hand at this old speed dating lark that has recently taken the country by storm.

Unsurprisingly our outgoing and inhibition-free American cousins invented this unique, new method of finding the perfect partner. Recently it has caught on big time in the UK and Speed Dating events are now being held up and down the country with increasing regularity.

At a typical Speed Dating event an equal number of singletons of the opposite sex get to meet each other in an informal and relaxed environment. Ladies are seated at numbered tables and the men are paired off with them at tables of two.

The couples then get four minutes together to get acquainted ask those vital questions and make an impression. As the evening progresses, the Speed Daters make a note of who they might like to see again.

If anyone they selected also likes them, they are notified by email shortly after the event with the full details of their admirers. Hopefully a full diary of promising dates will ensue! At the very least, daters will have met new people and enjoyed a night of fun and flirtation. “What’s the worst that could happen?” I thought to myself as I tentatively made my way to Edwards bar in Swindon.

The intimately lit, comfortable upstairs bar has been exclusively booked for the event and was the perfect relaxed environment to put you at ease. After the organiser checked everyone in and ran through the drill, I sat down with the first of my ‘dates’. Four minutes is probably just the right length of time to spend chatting to someone to decide whether you’d like to see them again. It certainly went very quickly and I didn’t once find myself wishing the time away with any of my fellow daters. On the contrary I was struck at how normal, well-adjusted and interesting almost all of them seemed to be.

I suppose in the back of my mind I expected some of them to be, how shall we say, aesthetically challenged, socially inept or laden with baggage. But then why should they be? I guess it’s just a silly stigma a lot us have in thinking that the lonely-hearts circuit must be the preserve of the terminally sad. In the 21st century it’s certainly not.

In this busy, stressful day and age, many people simply have no time outside of demanding careers to meet that certain someone. Others may find pubs and clubs intimidating and distasteful or time and again miss the signals which say someone is interested in them.

It soon became clear this selection of ladies came from all walks of life. As I moved from one table to another, I met a nurse, two accountants, a yoga teacher, a stained glass artist, a primary school teacher as well as a girl who quite cheerfully revealed her job entailed working in a clinic lancing the boils off the feet of diabetics! “Just a bit too much information love”, I thought to myself as I pondered whether perhaps this extremely attractive young woman’s malfunctioning inner monologue is the reason she’s single!

I did find it slightly hard to think up new and interesting questions for successive girls when after the bell sounds to move to the next table you are furiously, not least covertly trying to scribble down notes about the previous one. When you’re meeting 16 possible matches in such a short period of time you have to jot something down in order to jog your memory when it comes to selecting (via the company website) who you’d like to see again the next day.

So, after nearly two hours with a short break in the middle, it was all over. Being the fussy type, I’d only ticked one or two girls I wouldn’t be averse to seeing again. My Speed Dating expectations had been low but as it turned out, I had an interesting, pleasantly unusual evening and met some interesting new people.

Finding true love at an event such as this may not be wholly realistic but it’s got to be better than a random liaison in a night-club, which for years seemed to be the typical way to meet a new partner…

Anna – This is cool! A first scan around to check out the evening’s talent reveals women chatting away on hareem-style sofas and lots of men on their own standing around looking a bit shifty.

Stephen – … I’m standing here desperately trying not to look shifty. Time for the action to start – it’s pretty straight forward, the girls hold court on comfy sofas and the lads start at a designated table number – you have four minutes to have a chat and hopefully make an impression.

Anna – My first date sits down and we get chatting. “So have you done this before?”, he asks. By the end of the evening I’d heard this question so many times I was contemplating holding up my answers on little placards.

Stephen – Everybody is asking me the same questions. Think of those Fresher’s week stalwarts – ‘Where are you from’ and ‘What did you get in your A’Levels?’

Anna – The four-minute limit obviously has its benefits for aborting ‘mission impossible’ conversations… but on many occasions I find out really juicy tit-bits just before the bell goes “…and I hold the world record at skydiving dressed in a chicken outfit …. RING RING”.

Stephen – Actually, this is quite fun when you get into it. Un-nervingly though, after the bell goes, you scribble down some notes about your date – it’s a bit like when you’re in a job interview and you suddenly say something that makes the interviewers scribble frantically – is it something good you’ve said, or have you dropped a massive clanger?!

Anna – After a half-time break, it’s time to ring the changes. With my new picture phone I impress with photos I took at last Saturday’s Darkness gig… but I can see that not every man here would be enamoured with nouveau
glam-rock. So it’s on to more direct questioning. “Football or rugby?, Ant or Dec?” – and it seems to work nicely.

Stephen – Top tip is to definitely prepare a few of those off-beat questions – we thought better of ‘Have you got your all your own teeth?’, but the ‘And/Or’ game could be useful to instantly work out someone’s personality – try ‘The Darkness or Britney?’, ‘Asda or Waitrose?’, Radio 1 or 2?’, ‘pants or thongs?’ (as a tie-breaker if things are going well!).

Anna – By the time ‘Mr 19′ is leaving, I’m absolutely exhausted. Sitting talking about yourself over and over again is not as easy as it sounds. But surprisingly, everyone stays on until the bar closes. If nothing else. This is a great way to meet friends.

Stephen – Well that was quite fun! Everyone’s very relaxed, chilled out and not taking it too seriously. Of course the crunch comes in the morning when everyone logs on and clicks on who they are interested in seeing again. And that’s when the fun starts…