Being ‘Queen of the Cillas’ (i.e. I bloomin’ love match-making) you would think that I’d enjoy being set-up myself. Well, my flirt-flavoured fizz-bombs, brace yourself for wrongness.

Ok ok, ‘total wrongness’ is not 100% true. I do, on occasion, allow a chum to pair me up with a gentleman of suitable standing, and most of the time it’s pretty darned successful. I do however have one particular friend who is absolutely dreadful at it. In fact she’s so bad she could almost be considered the ‘Anti-Cilla’. For some daft reason I never seem to remember her failings in this area and continue to allow her to arrange my love life with endless ridiculous consequences. Not only do the men she matches me with invariably end up being complete numpties, she also gives me very little say in the arrangements.

The latest debacle ensued after she and I had a few small schnifters in a bar in which she knows the owner, Drew. He came over to join us for ten minutes towards the end of the evening. A lovely man with the look of a battered teddy-bear about him, I very much enjoyed those ten-minutes of chatter – from what my booze addled brain could remember – but at no point did my gizzards wibble or my pants fizz, so as lovely as he was, I wasn’t really interested in him.

Not that I thought this was a question I even had to consider! I had taken it at face value – a mate coming over to say ‘hi’ to a friend. Ho-no, apparently not.

The next day my pal called me and said ‘right, Drew has booked a restaurant table for you and him next Friday’– so start planning your outfit…’

‘Errrrr. You what?’ I replied. I was mystified. Had a portion of my noggin been removed in my sleep, maybe I’d been unconscious for large chunks of the previous evening, or perhaps a doppelganger was agreeing to random dates on my behalf?

Unbeknown to me the whole reason we’d been to this bar in the first place was so that Drew and I could meet. And once we’d left he’d texted her to say he considered me ‘a goer’ (!) and she’d told him to go ahead and book somewhere for a date…without even asking me!

Well, I already know that this evening is doomed to fail. I don’t fancy him in the slightest and the presumptuousness of the whole matter has already tightened my proverbial goolies. But given this is all down to my chum and her ridiculous ways I think I shall go out of my way to embarrass her, by being the oddest date in history; I’ll wear a pair of giant chicken feet for no apparent reason, insist he cancel the meal at the posh restaurant and take him to the dodgy 24hr take-away renowned for its ‘mouse-poo kebab and chips’, and talk endlessly about this lovely church I visited that would be ‘just perfect’ for our wedding…

If she wants to set me up with random friends without even bothering to ask what I think, then rest assured I shall pay her back – and what better way than by being a proper queer date! Drew is bound to go back to her and demand to know just what he’d done wrong to be set up with such a loon! This, my friends, is going to be a right good chuckle!

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