No Joe for this mo

Had an after-work meeting with my number one lady friend the other day and as I finished work earlier than her, I hotfooted it over to her Soho ad agency to meet her. I got there a little sooner than I should, so I mooched around in the super-white reception area trying not to look too much like I didn’t belong.

While I was feigning interest in all the reading literature, an especially dashing young chap with good hair and a nice smile came striding out of the office, past me and out of the building. He was one of those men who makes you forget your own name for a brief moment because all you can think about is how much he looks like walking sex.

Just as I picked myself up off the floor, my number one lady friend arrived and we headed off together for a night of debauched drinkery. While we were out I described the office hunk to her to see if she knew who he was, what his status was and when I would be able to go on a blind date with him.

‘Oh my God, do you mean the bloke in the blue shirt?’ she squealed. ‘That’s Joe. I’ve been meaning to tell you about him for months. I knew you’d fancy him. I only found out today through the grapevine that he is in fact a mo.’

‘Tell me everything,’ I said.

We discussed Joe for most of the evening and I bullied her into agreeing to send him an email the following morning along the lines of ‘my friend fancies you’. Playground tactics maybe, but they barely know each other and the chances of me being there just as he finished again were fairly slim. She wasn’t particularly keen on the Cilla Black idea, but I rightly pointed out that he was too delicious an opportunity to miss.

The next morning, luckily as it turns out, their email server was down, so she had to wait until she bumped into him for a face-to-face chat.

‘Joe,’ she asked tentatively. ‘Do you live in Hampstead?’ Now this might not sound like a genius chat-up line, but she has used this approach to many men and it always gives you an opening to a discussion.

‘No,’ he replied.

‘Oh, it’s just my friend who came to meet me last night was sure he knew you and thought maybe he had seen you in Hampstead as that’s where he lives.’

‘No, I haven’t been to Hampstead for a while,’ he said (still not jumping in with ‘but I remember him from last night and fell in love with him instantly’.)

‘But,’ he added, ‘my boyfriend does live in Belsize Park, which is close, so maybe he has seen me around there.’

‘Perhaps,’ she said.

And with that crushing defeat, her matchmaking career was over before it had even begun.