Avoid Blind Dates Like the Plague

Straight people assume that if you're young (ish - recently 27) gay and living in London, you're having the time of your life.

Saturday nights milling around Old Compton Street, getting chatted up by dozens of moxuals, falling into Shadow Lounge after one too many Flirtinis and ending the night by taking home a Latino lovely called Luca for some hot man on man action.

Well, some of those things have happened - remember me, Luca? You still have my watch - but life as a twenty-something homo in the greatest city in the world isn't as glamorous as my straight friends seem to think it is.

While I'm all for some casual fun, I'm really just looking for what my straight female friends are looking for; that rarest of beasts: Mr Right. He's got to be pretty strong to put up with me, but I'd treat him well and he'd experience some very flexible moves.

My friends know how I feel and they have, bless them, tried as best they can to help me out.

When I say 'help me out', I actually mean 'set me up with the most ridiculous men ever born'.

The most recent example of Horrifying Blind Date Hell was a certain young chap called Sonny. The set up was the same as usual: my female friend had a friend and she had a gay friend and wouldn't it be great if we all got together for a light-hearted evening to see if the two of us hit it off etc, etc.

As it turns out, he was as mad as a box of frogs and twice as boring. The evening was one big disappointment and it came to a head when he fell over drunk in the club and started to do what he would classify as break dancing, but what I would call 'having a wild turn'.

I sashayed away from him and gave my friend a stern look. She was no match for Cilla Black.

Straight people. Why do they assume that a gentleman of the lavender persuasion will fancy every homo on the planet and can turn a blind eye to a personality disorder?