BLIND dating goes in and out of fashion. It used to be discreet and quietly shameful, then it clambered up into decency when the internet arrived. Broadsheet newspapers launched their own dating sites, allowing you to find someone who shared your own highbrow opinions, and it lent an aura of respectability to the whole thing. (Why, one isn’t going to meet a dodgy character through the Guardian is one? Rest assured there can be no such thing as a quinoa-eating pervert.)

But along came sites like Plenty of Fish and Tinder and the idea of the blind date dived back into the murk and became associated with the sinisterly-named “hook-up”. How would lefties find love now?

Respectable, silly or sinister, blind dating, is simply what you make it. Some use it to find sex, some use it for fun, for distraction, or in the hope of finding love.

I had a different approach. I used it as a quick-fix for depression, reasoning that going on a date would force me to bathe, brush my teeth and engage in conversation. Who knows, a new frock and a bit of chat might actually tempt me back into the world? I was dating in lieu of anti-depressants. Clearly, dating it is whatever you want it to be.

But it seems the contestants on Celebrity First Dates (C4, Friday) were determined to make it humiliating and petty, or perhaps make it a springboard back into public attention.

Each date was between a celeb and a “normal” person but this mismatch meant the usual frisson was absent from the show because the celebrities, Esther Rantzen, Richard Blackwood and a woman from Towie, had no intention of building a relationship, or even a sparkling conversation, with their dinner partner. The celebrity was obviously conscious they were being filmed, and was aware they had a public persona, however insubstantial, to upkeep and so they put on a show. They just couldn’t help themselves! This meant there was no charmingly awkward first-date conversation because the celebrity was determined to “perform”.

This performance aspect stripped the good, gritty stuff away. We were no longer watching a genuine couple on a nervous first date; we were watching some has-been make a pitch to get on Big Brother.

So we’re using dating to get on telly, to get rid of depression, to get some sex or get some retweets – is anyone out there doing it for love?


Life Stripped Bare (C4, Tuesday) used a sledgehammer to crack a nut. It was a social experiment to see if western capitalism is weighing us down. We have too much stuff, the show insisted, and perhaps we could live easily and more productively without it? That novelty corkscrew in the cutlery drawer, the diamante phone covers and the several hundred pairs of mismatched Primark socks: what would happen if you were suddenly stripped bare of all this frippery and nonsense?

That’s an interesting premise but Channel 4 had to take it too far, didn’t they, and strip away not just the person’s clutter, but their clothing and furniture too, and so the experiment about how excess is corrupting us became just an excuse to leer and snigger at naked people wondering where their sofa had gone.

If only the show had pared itself back and resisted the need to go all schoolboy-silly because there might actually be a lesson in how we manage when one seemingly essential component is removed from us. How would we communicate if our phone was taken away? We’d have to go and visit granny or write a nice letter to our sister. It’d be harder to cancel lunch with friends if we were feeling a bit down so we’d have to make the effort and go – and perhaps feel much better and more loved for it. Letters, cards and visits: life might subtly shift, and you don’t need to be naked to learn this.

But without stripping people of their clothes, the channel couldn’t adorn their website with images of a young, slim naked woman and, in the frantic, cluttered world they’re lecturing us about, how else could they make themselves heard?

Well, I learned one lesson from this show: there is indeed too much rubbish and some of it’s on Channel 4.

I’m a hypocrite when it comes to books. I love books, and my house and handbags are stuffed with them. I have my favourite second-hand bookshops and treasured libraries – and yet show me a book on Amazon for a penny and I’ll grab it. They say Amazon is destroying small bookshops and making libraries redundant, but if they can get a book in my hand tomorrow morning for a few pennies I’m there.

This makes me a hypocrite because I get almost dizzy with sentimentality when I remember childhood trips to the library, and I want all wee yins to toddle off to their own local libraries, going home laden with Tintin and Malory Towers – yet when was the last time I actually set foot in a library? Probably not for years. Probably not since I signed up to a little something called Amazon Prime. So I’m a hypocrite.

But children don’t have Amazon accounts (or maybe they do? I have no idea how the wee blighters operate) so unless they’re blessed with parents who have the time, money and inclination to lavish them with books they’re going to need their local library – they’ll also need it not be rammed full of squeaking DVD racks, mummy and toddler sing-song sessions, and computer terminals, but that’s a debate for another day. They’ll need a warm, quiet, welcoming place where they can pick up a book and be utterly transported into another world. This is particularly important for children from poor families, like me, who were brought up in horrible council estates where there is no ambition and even less hope, and where a great achievement is getting to the top of the council housing list for “a wee back and front door” – something the older women in my family were almost obsessed with.

Is this it, wee yins might ask? Have a baby and get bumped up the list? No one was offering anything different on our dismal 1980s estate, and but for the books at Rutherglen library I might not have known there even was anything different. Books showed a different way to live.

A different way to live? I know that sounds grossly sentimental but it’s true and The Secret Life of Books (BBC4, Monday) captured the trembling sense of wonder which good books can create in a child’s unfolding mind.

In the new series, the actress Samantha Bond reminisced about her love of Edith Nesbit’s Five Children and It and showed how this book, by combining magic and reality, was an inspiration for subsequent well-known stories such as Narnia and Harry Potter.

Normally, this series focuses on greats like Middlemarch or Jane Eyre so it was wonderful to see it turning its attention to children’s books because they are the stepping stones that lead young minds to Jane Eyre and away from tight, claustrophobic dreams of that wee back and front door.