Celebrity has its uses. It’s great for filling tables at hard-to-get restaurants, walking down a red carpet to see a “must-see” movie three days before Josephine Public, and receiving eyebrow tinting kits, sequined pillows depicting your own face, and Victorian fireplaces. Free, to your door. Yes, really. This is what happens when you have 400,000 followers on Instagram, like me.
On the other hand, celebrity is a real turn-off for Debbie if you’re dating. I wouldn’t dare dip even the slightest pedicured toe into the online maelstrom. I couldn’t risk it.
A famous friend confessed that she once went on a date with a stranger who matched an application in a dark inn. Big mistake.
Within seconds, the individual with dental problems and dandruff (completely unrecognizable in his profile photo) headed to the bathroom to send an unflattering text message to his 17 followers. ‘What the hell! Connect with a famous bird on TV (name inserted). LMFAO! Ha ha ha!’
Minutes later, the information, frantically tweeted and retweeted, had gone around the world eight times and the tabloids were on red alert.
A pap smear lurked outside to capture her haunted expression as she fled, after three swigs of lukewarm G&T, desperate to escape further details of Mr No-Thanks’s recent prostate procedure.
Celebrity has its uses. It’s great for filling hard-to-get restaurant tables, walking down a red carpet to see a “must-see” movie, writes Vanessa Feltz.
If I did the same, I know I’d wake up to the “news” that the app date and I are “blissfully happy soulmates” who “enjoy each other’s company.” Or, worse still, to sad revelations: “Vanessa’s family and friends are concerned that this three-time convicted felon, who abandoned his wife and seven children to win and dine at Feltz and has two Asbos and a history of drug trafficking, may not be the Prince. She looks for charm.
You understand. Tinder is forbidden territory. I am a mother and mother-in-law of two eminently respectable daughters and their spouses, pillars of the community. Do I want to ruin their morning muesli by exposing them to the embarrassing omni-media consequences of Bumble and Hinge’s catastrophic incursions? What do you take me for?
I know what you’re thinking. Isn’t there a special secret ‘celebrity app’ where dazzlingly famous people flirt and have clandestine fun? Don’t you need to pass a ‘celebrity test’ to qualify? Vanessa hasn’t heard of that? Of course I’ve heard of it! I’m not going to fool the soap star who described the site as “full of 18-year-old Russian prostitutes and David Walliams.”
I didn’t try because two nurses who were interrupting our conversation at an adjacent table collaborated to tell me not to bother. Both neighborhood sisters signed up with high hopes of rubbing shoulders with superstars and were disappointed.
One of them had too many drinks with a former broadcasting colleague of mine, known to be “happily married,” and regretted it. I decided not to try the rate.
I’m blocked. Either I simply camp out in the café at the British Museum or the smoked salmon aisle of Marks & Spencer and hurl light-hearted banter in the direction of friendly men, or I put myself completely at the mercy of friends/plumbers/colourists/kidney surgeons and beg them. that they would raid their acquaintance list and set me up with someone soon.
I’ve been alone for 22 months, except for one unfortunate four-month fling with a guy who managed to cheat on her and brag about it to my best friend’s brother despite attending dawn synagogue services seven days a week. .
Never was a man so strictly kosher and did so with so much energy. It was fun. I was willing to overlook his liberal use of auburn hair dye and his deceptive insistence that he was constantly mistaken for Al Pacino. Sixteen weeks later, his nocturnal meanderings were the talk of my entire neighborhood. Bye bye. Curl and dye.
Feltz split from her fiancé Ben Ofoedu early last year after a 16-year relationship.
As time goes on, I’m guilty of subjecting close friends to indelicate interrogations: ‘Come on. You haven’t introduced me to anyone since that mortal actuary who spat in his own soup. What, you can’t think of anyone? Think more! Think about divorce and death. There must be a widower hanging around. Someone who needs comfort. Destroy your brain. Ask your podiatrist.
I realized I’d be better off rowing when my kind-hearted cousin pacified me by saying, ‘Well, I know someone whose wife is in intensive care. She’s been sick for years. If she dies, I will take you with me to the shiva (Jewish wake). You can bring one of your lychee cheesecakes. You never know.’
As I write this, I could describe myself as fresh from another dating disaster if the word “new” wasn’t so glaringly inaccurate.
It happened two nights ago and I’m still pulverized, diminished, and a little more desolate than I ever want to feel. The guy came highly recommended by a friend of a friend of a friend. In other words, the kind friend who bothered to organize the event did not know him personally. However, checking boxes ahead of time was great. He was 64 years old compared to my 62 years and was a distinguished lawyer. He was willing. I was willing. Why doesn’t a spark light?
Moving forward with dating after a couple of painful failures requires doses of optimism. You have to trust that the next guy will exude a hint of humor, look more longingly at you than his apple crumble, and exude enough pheromones to float your boat. You must believe that every fatuous farting frog brings you closer to your perfect prince.
If you lose that faith, you are finished. You will throw in the towel and be abandoned on the couch looking Strictly in painful solitude until your last earthly breath. Let’s face it, you wouldn’t subject yourself to the onslaught of waxing, blow-drying, applying false eyelashes, agonizingly wearing stilettos, spraying prodigious perfumes, and delightful small talk if you didn’t nurture a glimmer of hope. that the next date could miraculously turn out to be the one.
That’s why it’s a huge blow when, like my date Saturday night, a man lumbers to the door, says something disparaging about the house, doesn’t smile, make eye contact, or say a word about your fabulous dress. , your freshly combed hair or gorgeous cleavage, turns on your heels and plods towards the car, breathing heavily and focusing forensically on the satnav. I sat there as he drove us into heavy traffic and unleashed his frustration on me as if we had been unhappily married for half a century.
When I tried to calm him down, he said sweetly, ‘I don’t care if we lose our table.’ London is full of restaurants. We can go to another one,’ he was furious. ‘You don’t care?!’ He complained about the time it had taken him to drive from his house to mine, about the onerous burden of his legal cases, and talked about rape, alcoholism, and limbs so severely amputated that “there was no stump.” No stump! in a pre-dinner conversation.
He barely hid his fury at not having ordered the paella for two. I hate paella and I didn’t want to share a continent with him, much less a jar of bad rice.
The final ignominy came when he stopped in front of my house and reluctantly said, “I’ll open the door for you.” Eager to escape, I shouted, ‘No need!’ He said ominously: “It’s a heavy door.” “I’ll be fine,” I insisted. He was right. It was a tremendously heavy door.
Elegantly freeing myself with the bag in one hand and the keys in the other was agony. I was afraid the door would cut off my limb like the aforementioned amputee.
If I had an ounce of common sense I would say: ‘Never again!’ He hangs up my black lace balconette bra and matching thong and I give up.
I have not done it nor will I do it.
I keep thinking Mr. Delightful is waiting for me somewhere. I still need and want someone to turn to and say, ‘There’s a fox in the garden,’ when there’s a fox in the garden. I’m not ready to give up and spend the rest of my days alone.
In fact, there is another date in sight. I have a glimmer of a good feeling about this one. You never know.