There was more evidence in First Dates (Channel 4) that beautiful people are less interesting than less beautiful people. Well, they’ve never had to be interesting – they have beauty. (I count myself among the rare exceptions, incidentally.)
So Frankie and Muhala – both dancers, both fit as butchers’ dogs in every sense, both immediately and obviously extremely attracted to each other – have almost nothing to say to each other. Their entire evening’s conversation could be boiled down to: “I want you for dessert.” “I’ll have the same.” And that’s what they have, the special. Taxi – just the one needed – for Frankie and Muhala.
It’s interesting only in an animal behaviour way; a voiceover from David Attenborough wouldn’t have felt out of place: “The female strokes her hair to show him that she’s receptive to mating.”
Way better, from a television point of view, are Scott and Natasha. He is, in his own words, “short and a bit on the old tubby side”. He used to be a jockey, now he works at a bookmaker’s, and still lives with his mum at 45. He cackles like a kookaburra at his own jokes, and is open about his loneliness.
Natasha, property manager and firework display coordinator, is also, she admits, “loud and brash” and laughs a lot, also mainly at things she’s said. Perhaps lonely and vulnerable, too, I would guess, though she hides it behind bravado and no-nonsense assertiveness. She spends a good part of the date outside on the phone to one of her tenants, leaving Scott to text his mum that the date is going OK.
But it’s not really going that well. It’s not a total disaster of an evening, and they do manage to have a bit of a laugh, but it’s clearly not leading anywhere. Scott wouldn’t mind – I think Scott wouldn’t mind anything or anyone – but Natasha’s not keen, and I suspect it might have something to do with Scott’s height.
It’s almost unbearable to watch: tragic and unfair, squirmy and, yes, funny. Also, representative and true. It’s been a while since I did any of that, but I remember dating being much more like Scott and Natasha’s experience than Frankie and Muhala’s.
