Back in the sepia toned times of 2009, before Tinder, before food trucks, and before Facebook became another section of our collective consciousness, dating was pretty tough.
Breaking the ice was the hardest part. Prior to matches and swiping, my tactic was to get drunk until I was confident enough to approach the opposite sex in a club, pub or party. Sadly, that level of drunk turned all conversation into slurred, indecipherable poems. I was caught between an awkward rock and a drunk place.
It led to some pretty desperate behaviour. And there was nothing more desperate than my attempt to get on Take Me Out.
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I was living in Norwich at the time, a young lad, only three and twenty years. I'd just come off a swelteringly fruity three months in Leeds, in which I'd managed to crush my whole social life into the size of a Snickers. And now here I was, in Norfolk, attempting to pick the nuts out of the mess I'd made.
I was really fat when I came back from the north. Battering mephedrone, crying over The Great Gatsby and eating Bran Flakes for dinner will do that. I hadn't had sex in about a year and a half. A year and a half. If you planted a tree and came back to it a year and a half later it probably would've had more sex than me. Fuck you, you fucking sexy tree.
Then I saw an advert looking for 'eligible bachelors' for a TV show. Being the kind of guy that will literally get punched in the face as a hobby I thought, "I wonder if that's the correct spelling of bachelors?' but then also, 'Yeah, go on then, I can't keep getting texts from that fucking sexy tree about how much sex he's had, I'll have a crack'.
So I went down to London for an audition. I have to say, these Take Me Out audition people were an absolute fucking state. I'm talking 'Jeremy Kyle meets the original cast of Battlestar Galactica' kind of state. I'm talking 'probably eats Rustlers microwaveable burgers for breakfast' kind of state. I'm talking 'Have you seen that new James Corden video in the car yet? It's SO FRICKIN' HILARIOUS' kind of state. You get the picture, boss-level troglodytes.
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So I go in, dressed in work clothes. I think I was wearing a cardigan.They told me to mimic what I'd do if I entered in from the little lift thing. I was embarrassed to have to do this in front of two febrile production assistants with smiles permanently chiseled into their faces, but whatever. Channeling Stone Cold Steve Austin when he enters the ring, I raised by arms above my head and clapped two invisible cans of beer together.
They're faces remained chiseled. They asked me what I was into. I said boxing, reading, writing, going out. They were like "Ooh what are you reading" and I said Dostoyevsky. They were like "Tom, we love you, you're such an intellectual badboy" - which is a thing they actually said. 'Intellectual badboy'. A term repellent enough to be scribbled on the last bit of paper to drift over scorched earth following the apocalypse.
So I got the ting. They sent people to come film me in Norwich. Three dudes, a director, a camera guy and an assistant tasked with picking things up and putting them down again. They filmed me in Norwich library reading old Russian novels like some Hank Chinaski of Chapelfield gardens. I then had to go to my local gym and pretend to spar with a dude I usually spar. He spent the whole session looking at me like I'd just drop-kicked his dog.
But the final boss of embarrassment was yet to come. Back in the day, I fancied myself a bit of an emcee. I did a few freestyles on stage in Nottingham once, got bottled and did a few more on Myspace. Somehow, they managed to find this out, so they made me go to a pub in Norwich which happened to be, like most pubs in Norwich, filled with old men waiting to die over pints of John Smiths. Then they made me freestyle in front of them. This was the M. Bison of embarrassment. The Doctor Robotnik of shame. The Bowser of discomfort.
The author, in the t-shirt representing his love for beer and packet
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Even so, I figured I'd aced the audition. If you've ever watched Take Me Out, you'll know that a boxing, book-reading, bar-spitting, (former) legal high enthusiast is just the sort of dish they'd send down the love lift. On top of this, I'd worn an amusing t-shirt that was an archly knowing reflection of my devil-may-care attitude; the kind of thing that screams 'I will easily be cajoled into making sex euphemisms by Paddy McGuinness.'
And just as the director was getting into his car to leave at the end of a 10 hour day of filming, he goes to me:
"Tom, what does your shirt say by the way?"
This was it. My ticket to Fernando's.
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I summoned all the air my lungs could hold, and replied, "Beer and packet." (I emphasised the word packet)
His face sunk. With an ashen complexion, he said: "Oh, I thought it said beer and cricket."
And with that, he got into his van to drive three hours back to London. I never heard anything from anyone at ITV again.
Words by Tom Usher
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Featured image: ITV
Featured Image Credit:Topics: Dating, Take Me Out, Tinder