It was a pleasant Thursday night in a popular Dublin pub. I’d been asked to check out a new speed-dating concept for RTÉ’s Capital D programme – ‘wine dating’. Unlike your bog standard speed-dating event, this evening promised to introduce me to both men and wine of various styles and vintages. Well, I can think of worse combinations…

Before I arrived, I’d been feeling pretty wary of the whole thing. The last singles do I went to had been an unmitigated disaster – a truly excruciating evening, filled with desperate divorced dads. Not my idea of a good night out, I’m afraid.
This time, I was pleasantly surprised. Walking in the door, I could see plenty of decent looking blokes mingling around. Unfortunately there was also plenty of female competition – very attractive competition at that! Damn! But in for a penny, in for a pound – I launched myself towards the bar and made nice.
When the event kicked off officially, I was directed towards a table I was to share with another woman and two men. After ten minutes of taste testing (the wine), we’d be given a new round of men and wine to sample, marking our choices of each on the back of a card. Clever.
An hour or so in and I was having a great time. This was the sixth guy I’d talked to, and this was – ooh – the third time I’d been told that I didn’t look like the kind of girl that needs to speed date. Sure, my latest suitor might just have been trying to be agreeable, or saying what he thought I wanted to hear. But so what?
At the very least, he thought I was shaggable. Very shaggable, even! Which is always nice to hear. More importantly, however, the guy delivering this compliment was truly a beautiful specimen of masculinity. It was like chatting to the love child of Keanu Reeves and James Dean. Hello, pretty boy!
Anyone who has been speed-dating knows it can be a hit-or-miss affair. You might get lucky – even very lucky – but I wouldn’t bank on it! The trick is to keep an open mind and treat it as a bit of fun. But here’s the thing I don’t understand – whether you are looking for true romance or a one-night stand, surely it helps to flirt?
Certain people, just like certain wines, you’ll take to straight away. Others are more of an acquired taste. That’s where flirting comes in. Me, I may never make it onto any list of Ireland’s Sexiest Women but when I need to lure attractive members of the opposite sex, I have no problem using all the tricks at my disposal – including smiling, positive body language and even a soupcon of wit for a start. And if that combination doesn’t work, well then, a low cut top always comes in handy!
Unfortunately, it has to be said that most Irish people – well, Irish men over 30 any way – are pretty clueless when it comes to flirting. Honestly, you’d think that with the slew of How To manuals out there, they’d have figured out the basics. Alas, that’s not the case.
But even if charming the birds from the trees isn’t your strong point, surely a little bit of common sense should tell you that certain things are guaranteed not to work? For example, it doesn’t take an expert to figure out that being hostile, stingy, badly dressed or plain old drunk-and-disorderly is unlikely to win anyone’s heart.
The first guy to turn me off was one who asked if he was obliged to pay for my drink. No, he wasn’t. I’m well able to afford my own alcohol, and anyway the wine was included free with the event. But that’s not the point. Tight-fisted over a fiver? I’m never gonna love ya, and I sure don’t wanna shag ya.
The second to make me feel I was in the wrong place was a gentleman – and I use the term loosely – who’d arrived along wearing a crusty jumper. Seriously. I couldn’t believe it. What gives? Hell, I’d gone to the trouble of waxing my legs! The least he could have done was wear clean clothes. Next!
But worst of all, was the aggressive drinker – almost certainly an alcoholic. He wasn’t very friendly to begin with and so, in desperation to get a conversation going, I asked what he did for a living. Fair enough, perhaps that wasn’t the smartest question and I realised later that it could have been interpreted the wrong way. However, his reaction really threw me. “Here, do you want my wallet? How about my credit cards?” he asked, while knocking back his wine. And mine! Humph! Piss off!
Humanity is endlessly fascinating, isn’t it? Why would anyone go to a speed-dating evening and behave like that? I have no idea – except to assume that this is more or less the way he behaves the rest of the time, and he’s so used to being a boor that he can’t manage anything else. Thankfully, however, his type were in a minority.
In fact, as the evening wore on, I was beginning to suspect that I was being set up because every second guy I met was pretty cool. I may not have been swooning in romantic or sexual ecstasy – I was saving that until I got home – but had I been on the look-out for a bloke, I was being presented with some decent options. Had they all got together and come up with a cunning plan? Perhaps the jerks had actually been really dedicated wingmen – selflessly agreeing to show off their friends in a good light?
Either way, there were genuine pearls amongst the swine. I got to meet a suave and sophisticated older man, the aforementioned gorgeous pretty boy, a charmer my mother would have loved and a well fit – in both senses of the word – mountain bike enthusiast. Nice…
Being Irish, none of them were much cop at flirting – hence the repeated “You don’t look like the kind of girl that needs to speed date” line. But I didn’t mind. At least they tried.
Flirting isn’t rocket science and it helps to make an effort, any kind of effort at all. OK, so I wasn’t going to be handing out prizes for originality – but I’m sure as hell not going to object to flattery, any kind of flattery, even totally insincere flattery. And I don’t know many women who feel differently.
It may be good for a girl to have some standards, but when confronted by really sexy men, she can always decide to misplace them. At least just for a little while…