Meet the man who went viral after a chance “Cinderella moment” at the Electric Picnic caught romantic imaginations and made him an online hit.
His name is Dave Collins, he’s a horticulturist with Dublin City Council - and he’s single.
Charming Dave’s warm reaction to a girl who tapped him on the shoulder in a crowd at the festival last weekend attracted more than 3.1million views on the video app TikTok and hundreds of thousands more on social news sites like Reddit and LADbible – with women swooning over his twinkly blue eyes and charisma.
Down-to-earth Dave, 43, says he is flattered by the kind comments, but it won’t go to his head.
He said: “I’m a pretty average-looking guy. I don’t think it was looks, it might have been more to do with personality.
“I’ve always been approachable: I’ll stop and talk and have the laugh with anyone. Maybe people liked it because I didn’t care: my natural instinct was to just have the craic and to ask her name.”
He added: “There were a few comments about being a silver fox and having a crinkly smile, or being Adam Levine’s older brother, so I won’t get too carried away!”
Maryrose Simpson took the video after she spotted him wandering around the site with only one lens in his sunglasses – and thought she’d found the missing one.
The footage shows her hand, holding a lens, making her way through the crowd in front of the main stage.
She says: “I think I found your glass” and Dave responds: “Do you want to see if it’s a match? Are we having a Cinderella moment?”
Women online went mad for the clip, with some saying the moment where two strangers click at a festival was like a real-life rom-com.
Dave didn’t know about his online fame until the niece of a friend spotted it trending online. He didn’t even know he had been filmed.
“For me, it had just been a funny moment of the festival. I didn’t know Maryrose before, and she wasn’t holding up a phonecam, so she must have been wearing a bodycam. I didn’t know I was being filmed.
“We were back from the festival when I heard, and it was a bit mad.”
