Modern British dating is a car-crash – and Cilla Black is to blame

Who broke Britain? Welcome to The i Paper’s opinion series in which experts and writers debate the issues that concern them about modern Britain.

• You won’t know James Bevan, but you should know what he did to this country
• Boris Johnson wrecked Britain. But this man left even deeper scars
• The arrogant superbanker whose stunning hubris brought Britain to its knees
• The hardcore socialist whose ruinous idea is why Liz Truss became PM
• The ‘Red Tory’ behind one of the most anti-feminist ideas in British politics
• Martin Lewis: the money-saving expert… who accidentally cost Britons billions
• The cooking revolutionary who overthrew traditional British dishes

Saturday evening television in the 1990s was a place of sex and violence, of Lycra and bar stools, of visible male nipples and eye-watering innuendo. I am talking, of course, about the iconic line-up of Gladiators, followed by Blind Date. One was a shiny-floor extravaganza of bruising conflict, swaggering ego, wild adrenaline and possible injury. The other was Gladiators. And it was the former that got us into this mess.

Modern dating is hell. Dating sites, algorithms and apps have left us shipwrecked on an island of commitment phobia, instant gratification and delayed maturity. It is possible to interact daily with hundreds of strangers and find intimacy with no one.

It would be churlish, of course, to lay the blame for this hopeless turn of events squarely in the skirt-suited lap of former Cavern club cloakroom attendant and singer of “Anyone Who Had A Heart”, Cilla Black. But there is an argument to be made that the monetisation of dating by London Weekend Television cracked open the door to the phenomenon of modern British dating. And ruined everything.

Dating, as a word, was the stuff of American sitcoms when I was young. To find love in Britain, we knew, involved getting shitfaced, getting off with a stranger and then maybe getting to know each other the next day over a shared towel and mug of hastily-made tea.

British people didn’t date; they pulled. They sloppily moved in on a crush during after-work drinks, or bumped across dancefloors, or gazed longingly across bus aisles or stumbled into a snog on the walk to the taxi rank. Maybe someone introduced you to their older brother, or organised a dinner party marked by crisps and lasagna, or told you that their mate fancied you. But we did not date.

Then came Cilla. Launched in 1985, the original Blind Date combined pantomime filth with strict heteronormative performance.

Those painful, disconcerting sex auditions held over coffee or in galleries or while walking along trolley-strewn canals did not happen. We did not arrange semi-formal conversations over a single drink, slipping into job interview answers and typing feverishly during a trip to the toilet. You got drunk or got courageous and got off with each other.

Three contestants sat behind a screen and answered fairly banal questions from a single contestant of the opposite gender, with a formulaic mix of self-aggrandisement, weak jokes and lurid innuendo. Think (and be warned, reader): “As a self-employed plumber, my ideal Saturday would be spent using my massive tool to tinker with your pipes.” Or, “As a chartered accountant, my greatest hope would be to fill my box with your lucky number.”

The audience would squeal, Cilla would wink and eventually Our Graham would give a lugubrious “quick reminder” before the unchosen applicants would parade past their interrogator and the MDF screen would creak back to reveal this hapless pair of lovebirds to each other.

With the foundation still thick on their faces, the two “winning” contestants would then pick a holiday from a fanned out hand of envelopes, rather like a gambler selecting their fate from the hands of a croupier in a suburban casino.

Sometimes it was an all-expenses-paid break waterskiing in Barbados, and sometimes it was a wet weekend in Bournemouth. It almost always failed. The return visit to the studio, where the couple perched on a sofa and watched recorded VTs of each other summarising the date, almost inevitably ended with an anticlimactic admission that Cilla did not need to “buy a new hat”.

Over the original 18 years of broadcast, just three couples got married, a hit rate significantly lower than the chart positions of Cilla Black herself. This wasn’t the pursuit of love. It was the commodification of attention and affection in order to make shareholders a tidy profit. Sound familiar?

Digital dating platforms offer choice. Firstly, the site or app itself: do you want to pay, are you looking for someone with a particular kink, or job or orientation, do you want photos or messages or discretion? Secondly, there is the choice of dating pool in which you’re fishing. Are you wedded to a particular location or age range or ethnicity or gender?

Then there is the endless choice of what information you present to your public. How do you answer the questions? Do you talk about commitment? Have children? Hate children? We are told, usually by advertisers, that people love choice. That choice brings with it variety, quality and power. We are advised that choice is the route to freedom. What bollocks. Choice is paralysing, overwhelming, confusing and, in some cases, the opposite of helpful. Back in the late 80s and early 90s, as Cilla Black was sashaying across the Blind Date set, your dating pool extended to friends, friends-of-friends and strangers met during the course of real life.

The promise of Blind Date – that love was a competition that could be won or lost and that the answers to the question of love could be found among total strangers – has now leeched out into a national mentality. The algorithmically generated, semi-addictive, thumb-twitching flash through hundreds of blue-lit profiles and thousands of imagined lives followed. Britain’s new, changed mindset is one that values novelty, attention, choice and performance over long-form, honest and flawed interactions. And we are all the sadder for it.

So when I look at someone to blame: Surprise, surprise, Cilla, I’m pointing the finger at you.