Four minute magic| About 'Slow Dating' events... | - Slow Dating holds events in Leicester once a month at the Original Four night club.
- The cost of the evening is £20.
- The number of people varies, but there are usually between 15 and 20 men and women.
- The next event is at 7:30pm on 19 October 2006 and places go fast so book early (see the web link on the right for details)
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The theory behind speed dating is that you can tell in the first three or four minutes of meeting someone if youre attracted to them or not. Event host Jamie told me more about speed dating...An equal number of men and women are sat down at tables to have a chat and get to know each other, and after four minutes the host rings a bell. Everyone then writes down the name of the person they've been chatting to on their 'speeding ticket' with a few key facts to help them remember the person (hopefully 'teacher, 36, funny, likes mountain biking' and not 'boring, bald, unidentifiable strange smell') and ticks their name if they'd like to see them again. The women stay where they're seated but the men get up and move to the woman at the next table to begin the 'getting to know you' process all over again.  | | Event host Jamie |
At the end of the event, everyone logs onto the speed dating website and ticks the names of the people they'd like to see again. If you've ticked a person and they've ticked you, you'll each be sent contact details for the other person and you can arrange to meet up again. 20 first dates…Well that’s the practical stuff, so if you add three large glasses of wine, a vodka and diet coke, my friend Emma and a host called Jamie (who seemed determined to make it as obvious as possible that I was attending the event for my job), then you've pretty much got my experience of speed dating! Listen to my pre-date nerves, my half-time comments and more of my conversation with Jamie...When Emma and I walked in to the Original Four nightclub in Leicester where the event was being held, the room was already pretty full despite the fact we'd come early so I could put my recording equipment and camera behind the bar without anyone noticing. Coupled with the price of the evening, a pretty expensive £20, this shows exactly how seriously a lot of the people there were taking the event – it was not simply an amusing night out, it was a genuine attempt to find a partner.  | | Love shack: Original 4 nightclub |
Not so for Emma and I though, which I was already starting to feel guilty about. Although I will freely admit to a love of 'chick flicks', I was pretty sure that speed dating was not the way that I was going to find Mr Right, and so I was more concerned about avoiding awkward pauses in conversation than discovering if a man 15 years older than me was my perfect match. To their credit though, all the men I talked to were friendly and kept up their end of the conversation, although I did feel like I was interrogating a couple of them due to the sparseness of their responses! Happily ever after?Speed dating was an interesting experience, but I can pretty much guarantee that I haven't met my soul mate. The men taking part were mostly at least ten years older than me, and after we had finished discussing what we do, where we're from and what we like doing in our spare time, finding common ground would be pretty difficult. However as Carrie and friends in 'Sex and the City' often bemoan the lack of ways to meet available men, maybe speed dating (like online dating a few years ago) is the way forward. It does allow you to meet other people who are looking for a relationship, and is at least more reliable than hanging around at the water cooler waiting for a 'moment.' But for now I'm going to look to that great dating icon of our generation, Bridget Jones (we are both journalists with a love of Colin Firth and chardonnay after all) for guidance and be proud to be a singleton. | 
