Sexy beasts, another fad dating show, yawn…

I heard Netflix had commissioned the dating show, Sexy beasts (Remember it was a BBC Three show in 2014)

Sexy Beasts is a new dating show where real-life singles sport elaborate makeup and prosthetics to put true blind-date chemistry to the test.

There seems to be a bit of stir about this one, although lets be honest its another fad dating show. Will it go beyond a couple of seasons? I very much doubt it. Its certainly not a first dates, which just keeps going and going.

People need to remember just like dating services/apps, everything is very fickle. Anything new gets attention and is seen as innovative. Well I guess they couldn’t strip any more clothes off people. Sex has been done, doing it in the dark had mixed success, trying to turn dating into a soap has had mixed sucess and attempted to go large has had zero success. Bring on the next fad, tons of make up and masks to hide their true looks.

Yawn!

One BBC for everybody

https://twitter.com/scottygb/status/719875893716500480

 

Interesting tweet from Buzzfeed who were talking to Netflix’s CEO, while talking about the BBC and Top Gear.

Hastings: The BBC has been a pioneer. They have been the first to invest in technology like the iPlayer, which has done a great job. … [In the future] they’ll have to get rid of the iPlayer branding. It should just be the BBC.

What comes to my mind…?

In writing, you must kill your darlings.”

Well that, Chris’s post and the many conversations I have had over the last 5 years.

Is it really TV time again?

Shane says this has my name all over it

Fancy sharing your dating dramas with the world? Well now’s your chance – with BBC3 looking for online daters to tell their side of the digital story.

As data has grown and given people more means of communication, so technology has advanced to bring people even closer than ever – or has it?
With social networking sites connecting friends via a number of platforms, the cyber highway has taken networking to the next level – literally.

Online dating has become a global phenomenon, with people seeking love all over the world in the hope of finding ‘The One’ – and now leading UK television production company Roughcut TV is on the lookout for any volunteers willing to divulge their experiences, particularly those using dating apps such as Tinder.

Assistant producer, Alana McVerry, says: “The documentary we’re making for BBC3 is broadly looking at dating and relationships in the age of technology. We’re looking at how dating and relationships have changed given that we’ve now got access to more people than ever before and dating has become a truly global market.

“Does having access to more people than ever before make us pickier? Or does it make us more likely to find a good match? Now that we’re looking online are we looking at different things like grammar and spelling and picking apart profiles and characteristics, which we wouldn’t do if that person was standing right in front of us?”

When I first heard about it I said sure sounds good, then Marie wrote on twitter saying, would I like to be on TV again. My instant thought is oh my goodness… TV not a again and BBC Three again! And what is the link with welovedates.com? (never heard of this site before). I originally thought it was Radio, so I suggested Marie should check out the radio shows pieces I’ve done for BBC Merseyside’s Upfront.

Lets remember what happened the last few times I was on TV (plus I’m not a fan of the TV people)

The Year of Making love… and How to have more sex

I would have to be some sort of sadistic guy to put myself through it all again. And frankly this has such a small amount of information about its actual purpose. I’m already imagining a show full of people moaning about the bad side of online dating, rather than mentioning the good stuff which can happen too.  If it was a good BBC programme, it would mention both sides really?

Anyway unless I hear differently from Marie Northon and the rest of the production team, its going to be no.

You will have to read about my dating dramas in my book which I’m still writing slowly… Funny enough I was writing chapter 13 in my local when Shane tweeted originally.

Times review of the Year of Making Love

Year of Making Love Times review

Thanks to Teknoteacher for the tweet… alerting me to the Times review

Just as I feared

Unfortunately very little airtime during new series “The year of making love” is given over to actual “science” involved

Science…! Yes science we all shout…!

@zeonglow  said something interesting while I was watching the latest episode.

#yoml isn’t science. They should have matched up half of them at random. That would have been interesting.

All the science in the programme is 2 scientists looking pretty saying comments like, “oh there a good match…” I would suggest the title is quite correct, biology lessons minus the science.

Yes most people who watch BBC Three would yawn but thats part of the reason why I personally took part

The whole post is online as you’d expect. But I leave you with this fun section…

Unfortunately, very little airtime during new series The Year of Making Love is given over to the actual “science” involved. Essentially, personality-profiler Thomas and behavioural-psychologist Emma have analysed the assembled single masses and paired them off with one another. Imagine Yente, the matchmaker in Fiddler on the Roof, if she exchanged the layered shawls for a lab coat.

A year of making love redeems its self?

Year of making love

If you don’t already know my own personal experience of BBC Three’s year of making love and the crazy things which have followed

However last night it was time for the whole thing to be played out on BBC Three. I had feared the very worst but what was churned out on TV wasn’t so bad. Nope the TV magic or the beauty of editing pretty much cleaned away the slate of last year. With it also the grand claims of a record breaking attempt, 500 couples, blah blah, etc

Interestingly during the show there was no official hashtag, so we used the #yoml hashtag which a few of us had been using during last years recording. Most of the comments were reasonably positive about the show which seemed to focus more on the couples than the experiment and process.

Even Laura said

Looks so smooth, sleek, quick and efficient.. The magic of television!

Was I in the show? Yes I saw myself twice but only really passing shots. The clearest is when Cherry Healy is talking to a guy and there’s me in background.

Most of the shots for the show focused on the start of the day when everyone was happy and still expecting great things to happen. However there are some shots where its clear the audience has thinned and are a lot less enthusiastic about the whole thing. In actually fact there was other signs of the conflict which was unveiling…

Loved seeing all the empty seats – that looked really really good……. Not

Steve G said on the unofficial YOML Facebook group

Nicely edited…the only evidence of the farce that day turned into was when Cherry and the scientists were discussing the matches you could hear the unmatched being called out like cattle like we were…
Yes I remember that moment too.. Being called out like Cattle lead to the sides and then being told they’ve changed their minds.
The scientific nature of the show was played down, because frankly it would have been a major sticking point for me. No matter what they say on the programme, we have the producer on camera talking about speed dating the leftovers. Once again you can’t claim science and then throw people into speed dating…

Ian Arundale said

YOML is a good advert for online dating algorithms! isItscienceOrLuck

To which I said no its not… Actually the science or luck is a interesting one… Being TV and the heavy editing they will show a selection of couples with a bias to the ones who last the longest. If we go on the first week, a possible one serious relationship out of 4 isn’t too great. I would suggest luck is in play more than science at this moment. This is why I’m very interested in the science behind it all as it gets to the bottom of something much greater…

With enough Big Data can algorithms work on some of the most human of things… falling in love?

Unforgettably, this show isn’t going to provide any answers…

Matthew S and Matthew K pointed out…

They didnt talk about the compatibility test at all!

Yeah, very true, the science was brushed over very quickly. TV has really strict guidelines about faking things, and we know there was lots of manipulation going on so they clearly had to be very vague about it!

Actually we were asked to make personal videos which you will see popping up on the show now and there… Of course I did my own and I have now made it public here.

BBC Three turned a smouldering wreck into a tiny little pebble which will satisfy the BBC Three audience I’m sure.

My part to play in it was minimum which was good because frankly Laura is a great woman and I have to say my match which I finally got after many months, seemed slightly off on the face of it. Actually would you like to know who my match was? Well it was woman called Olivia Pinder. I did write to her once but never heard anything so just decided she wasn’t interested or she was as fed up of the whole shame as myself. Then my YOML friend Cristina Conti asked if I had heard anything from my match and convinced me to give it one more shot. Of course I didn’t hear anything, so that was it. Plus frankly I had enough of it by a certain point…

Would I ever do anything like this again? Well if its a dating show/experiment no. I felt like I brushed close enough with those people who have words like “model” and “promotions” in their résumés & had been on other TV shows! Just there looking for stardom?! This so isn’t me and I am still very surprised they let me take part at all.

Almost at blows

Steve G posed a interesting question,

Gotta feel for the people who had sat through until 8pm (like myself and it was 9pm) and didn’t get a match however I don’t know whether I would of preferred that and not knowing then having being matched last minute…

Personally I always wanted to know who my match was… the not knowing was frustrating because I knew someone knew but didn’t want to tell me unless it was in front of broadcast cameras. The moment I knew, it wasn’t such a big deal anymore. Even when I heard nothing back, it wasn’t a problem. I think the not knowing was the problem.

My brush with mainstream TV has been too close for comfort, to date I’ve gotten away with it. Maybe thats a sure sign I should avoid at all costs from now on… I’ll keep watching just to see if some of the friends I made are on there but otherwise this is one experience I can mark up as a close shave.

Try Being Me

Screen grab from try being me experiments

I didn’t watch Try Being Me but it sounds great…

It’s only the start of January, but I honestly believe that Try Being Me will be one of the most important pieces of interactive content we will launch on CBBC in 2013. It’s not a large investment of license fee payers’ money, nor is it a particularly significant or complex technological leap. Instead, Try Being Me uses video, quirky animations, and thoughtfully produced game mechanics to give the CBBC audience a deeper understanding of the frustrations and difficulties that dyslexia can sometimes bring, in an engaging, visceral and simple way. It’s an interactive approach to factual content we’ve never tried before. Our aim is to add a physical understanding of the subject to the mental and emotional impact of traditional Newsround journalism. It’s the kind of experimental content that only Newsround and CBBC would make for British children.

I must have mentioned my sister finally got the day to day problems with dyslexia when she watched Kerry Katona’s don’t call me stupid on BBC Three. I guess its a shame more of BBC Three wasn’t more informative like that?

Here comes the year of making love…

Yes when you thought it couldn’t happen, here it is on the promo for BBC Three’s 2013 season (need to be in the UK sorry).

As things gear up for next season, it will be interesting to see whats changed. Seems Fevermedia haven’t quite got up to speed yet. Their last post is STILL seeking people to take part in June.

There’s been a number of comments on the unofficial Facebook group, theres little to no more information on Digital Spy but a bit more at the BBC press office.

The lack of interest and push indicates to me, this show will go down without any major fan-fare or flames. Maybe the BBC will think again before entering the world of dating and love? Got to say, it might pass without any real comment. Which isn’t a bad thing because we all (including Fevermedia) frankly rather forget what happened…

The year of making love part 2?

I have no idea what they (Fevermedia) think there up to now…

But they seem to be recruiting for part 2, cover there tracks or trying to rescue the year of making love… A friend (removed details just incase), sent this to me, I first thought it was a old email but when I looked at it again, I noticed the date was way after the epic fail which was the year of making love event.

From: Flanagain, Kerry, Fevermedia [kerry.flanagan@fevermedia.co.uk]
Sent: 14 March 2012
Subject: Exciting new BBC Three show looking for single people to take part!

I am contacting you from Fever Media on behalf of BBC Three.
We’re currently looking for people to take part in one of the UK’s biggest relationship experiments, for a brand new BBC television series.
The show will put the new science of compatibility to the test and in order to do this we are looking for single men and women that would be interested in going on a date with their perfect partner.

I have attached a flyer to this email, it would be great if you can pass this onto your students via the intranet, or display it somewhere? Anyone that is interested can contact the team using the details on the flyer and someone will get back to them ASAP.

Alternatively we’d be really grateful if you can help spread the word via your social media networks to get encourage students to get involved. Can the you retweet the link to our application stage please? Our twitter account is @yearofmakingluv
And to post the following on your facebook page please:

Would you like to be set up with your ideal date in a ground breaking scientific dating experiment? Fever Media and BBC3 are looking to fond you the perfect match! To take part please call 02074285759 or email your details toyearoflove@fevermedia.co.uk

Many Thanks,
Kerry Flanagan – The Year of Making Love
Researcher

And I’m not the only one to spot this… On the Facebook group setup by people who were there the first time, someone posted this Exciting new BBC three show looking for single people to take part!

Yes it seems Fevermedia didn’t learn their lesson first time around and want to repeat the mistake once again. But this time it might be that they stacking the deck (as such) this time to be sure? (of course this is all rumors, but if true show how desperate Fevermedia really are and serious lack of any scientific standing in the show)

My mate runs a modelling agency , yesterday he got a phone call from the fever team asking if any of his models would like to be on the tv show ..

Once again, the scientific experiment is just a washed away in the aim of creating TV. I certainly won’t be taking part, although I will be watching and researching to see what they do this time around.

Official apology from Fevermedia for Year of making love

Funny I missed this all together… and it wasn’t till someone left a comment on my personal OKcupid blog where I made reference to the debacle in the light a question about maths in matching people.

To everyone who attended The Year Of Making Love launch event.

First of all, thank you very much for attending. As you know, hundreds of people joined us on Saturday in Bedfordshire. Whilst the vast majority of people enjoyed their day, I am well aware that some people’s experiences were disappointing which is something I deeply regret. I and the entire team are extremely sorry for the difficulties you faced.

By way of explanation I want to say a few things about the day. We invited 1000 people to the event, all of whom had been carefully matched in advance by our experts. You held up your side of the deal by coming along on Saturday. Unfortunately, we were surprised by the high number of people who did not arrive at the venue. This was entirely unexpected, since every single person who was invited had confirmed their attendance with the production team in the days prior to the event. The contributors who did not turn up caused a large number of problems for us throughout the day, and had a serious knock on effect on the smooth running of the event.

When it became clear early on Saturday morning that some contributors had not got onto their coach, our team immediately began to call around those individuals to try to get them to the venue. As the day progressed more and more people were turning up who had not got on their original coach but had instead made their own way to the venue. This meant people’s matches were arriving throughout the day and in some cases we didn’t know for sure whether a match was on their way until rather late in the day. We also decided to delay some coaches to give people more time to get to the venue. This meant people were arriving later and in larger numbers than planned which caused queues and a delay in the registration process.

Later in the afternoon, it did become clear that for a number of you, your match was unfortunately not going to turn up. At this point we could tell by checking each individual’s number that there were many strongly compatible people in the room and we created new couples using the same scientific data from the personality tests that had been used originally. Unfortunately, a number of people who had registered on the day left the venue during the afternoon without first informing anyone on the production team. This meant many of our new matches would not be possible as one of half of the match had actually already left the event – although of course we didn’t yet have that information.

This is the first time an event like this has ever been attempted before and whilst many had a fantastic day I am aware that some people’s day was a big disappointment. If you are one of those people I hope you trust we tried to do what we could in difficult circumstances. From my point of view, having one unhappy contributor is not acceptable, so I am extremely disappointed that some of our contributors feel let down. We could not have made this event happen without our contributors and I do thank you for being there on the day.

I should also let you know that we will be contacting everyone who did not turn up on the day to try to find out why. We are also looking in to the possibility of putting people in contact with their original matches but this is entirely dependant on two way consent.

Finally, should you wish to share your thoughts with us, I would genuinely welcome your feedback. Over the next few weeks I’m asking our team to get in touch with everyone and I will ensure that each and every one of you receives a reply to your questions and concerns. We are working through the emails we have received, but if you have anything more to add the best way to reach us is at yoml-update@fevermedia.co.uk.

The Year Of Making Love launch day was an ambitious event and whilst the majority of people successfully met their match, we are fully committed to try and make amends for those that didn’t.
Thank you again for taking part and please accept our apologies.

Fever Media

Finally a better understanding of what was going on in the background. If only this was made clear during the event instead of keeping it a bloody secret. That was the biggest problem, very little very information or communication to us, the participations/contributors.

Frankly its a very poor apology, it still doesn’t address why we were so delayed getting off the coaches and never given a break, food or drink for a good 6-8 hours. Theres also no information to say if the show will go ahead in its current form or greatly changed?

Fevermedia once again blame us and not themselves. Are they really surprised people started leaving when there was no communication?

They must have known the risks, this is why they had researchers calling us up right to the last moment. One of the guys I met on the day from Manchester, received a call on the coach up from one of the researchers asking if he was on the coach or not. I guess it does explain why the coach were 50% capacity on the way up…

I never can explain to people who were not there how frustrating the whole event was… Even now a week later (8pm) its crazy to think at this time last week I had not eaten or drank for close to 8 hours. The intriguing nature of meeting my perfect match kept me at the venue and there should have been a system or solution to keep people informed if they went away, even to the toilet. The idea of matching people in front of the cameras blindsided the whole process till it became very clear it was totally impossible. Not sure when Fevermedia caught on to this fact but it was certainly hours after everyone else.

As I said previously, usually TV is created under a dictatorship. These guys (director/producer/etc) keep things so usually tight, so it was very eyeopening to see public wifi, etc available. However although I enjoyed the openness of this type of thing, they totally dropped the ball for event management. No apology for that anywhere to see…

A year of making love and where it went wrong

Most people will remember the last blog I wrote about the BBC Three dating experiment called A year of making love

Well I went to the event and frankly it was a total shambles. So what happened (imho)?

I have to be careful because I did sign a contract with them, which if I read correctly did have clauses which seemed NDA like (yes I do read contracts but it was very rushed at the time and we never got a copy of what we signed) From memory it was more about exclusive use of footage, etc. And Fevermedia actively encouraged us to document our experiences for a year. From the paper work they gave us…

  • How was the YOML (year of making love) launch day for you – what was your experience?
  • What do you think of the science that matched you two together… has it done well or not!?

They even supplied free wifi on the day which did really surprise me, hence lots of tweeting, uploading photos, etc… So I’m just posting my own thoughts…

I got up and got myself ready for the 7am coach journey from Piccadilly Station. 4 Coaches were put on with males in two and females in the others. We were meant to leave on the dot so we would reach the secret venue by 10am. However that never happened as we left Manchester at about 8am instead (no real reason why, or at least explained)

Then when we finally got to Millbrook, we were left sitting in our seats on the coaches for almost a hour. Yes we were on location but each coach was sat in a formation waiting for what? No one knew, no communication, no one to ask. Coach driver only said he’s been told to wait. In the end, its was only my bladder and my unwillingness to go pee in the bushes near the formation of coaches. I personally think they wanted to do a shoot of everyone getting into the building but it just never happened.

Marching into the building/hanger to use the toilets, it seemed stupid to go back to the coach. I also had met some guys on the coach who followed me (more about them later). So we stuck around and waited in a queue of woman also waiting to register and get in.

Finally through registration and directed into the green zone to collect our wrist bands and sign the very light contract. We were given a a food voucher (a sandwich and a drink), information sheets and told to wait with other matches. To be correct, the green zone was mainly for males and the orange zone mainly for females. However, I was pleased to see some woman who in my terrible gaydar sense were homosexual. I was pleased mainly because I did wonder if this experiment was exclusively straight, which turned out not to be. A matching experiment should work with LGBT too, OkCupid‘s does.

Right after about a hour of waiting around, we were told to go into the main area. To be honest it was massive and very impressive at first. Orange (mainly women) on the left and Green (mainly men) on the right. Separated by a large isle in the middle, like a church wedding. Were were also explained this is a “scientific experiment” which has never been done on this scale before…

The idea was when your number is read out, go to either side/wing to get quickly sorted and get given a couple number. When your couple number is read out, emerge from the hidden wings, walk on to the stage meet your partner for the very first time say something nice and walk down the isle in front of the cameras. Basically they wanted to capture that very first moment when you met and the reaction as you walked away to learn more about each other next door

And to be frank for the first few hours it worked. There were some amazing matches and some great moments when people lept into each others arms, did a spin on the spot and carried the parter down the isle over there shoulders. The energy in the room from the 1000 people was great. However after 2-3 hours, the space started to empty from matches and the energy started to shorten.

Where it went wrong…

We were promised breaks but never told when they were. Instead there were long periods where they had called quite a few numbers and trying to sort out there partner numbers in the wings (once again no communication of what was going on).

Little Update…
Also worth mentioning there were doing in small batches starting from 2xxx and 1xxxx going upwards. So realistically I should have been matched very early with 2135. However they skipped over large batches at certain points. But still generally going up into towards 2500 and 1500. Of course they never reached 500.

Later the blame was pushed on to people leaving and their partner being left alone. In actual fact, if they had brought us into the arena in small batches, instead of random it would have speeded up the process no end.
People started using there phones, reading magazines and generally chatting away. The clapping went from loud to drips in a sink. People screamed for food as we hadn’t had food for over 5 hours! I was thinking about starting a shout out about this but decided better of it.

The event was due to come to a close at 6pm but we left the venue at about 8:30pm. Lots of people including myself, came by coaches but others drove and got connecting trains to Milton Keynes. If your coming from a long way, you want to make sure you get home safely (specially if your a single woman, friends were not allowed – you had to come alone). The coaches threaten to leave but were held back as long as possible. There was a air of people needed to go and they did.

Fevermedia tried to speed things up but with the false positives and the lack of excitement it became very telling. However, instead of changing things (after a announcement captured on youtube). They pushed on with the same format (they really wanted that moment of first meeting on camera), even my number got called and I was waiting in the wings to meet my partner.

Then they changed their minds (finally realising this will never work in the time) and pulled everyone to the back of the venue to read out the numbers and matches. This was very badly done (it was like calling for cattle) and done far far too late. Hence it pretty much exploded at the end with  a ugly stand off between production staff and the people who had not been matched (roughly 100 people).

I like many others were peed off (lack of food, drink, sitting in uncomfortable chairs for hours on end, with very little communication about what was happening) that maybe in the room was our matches but we would never find out because they wanted to hold on to that information. At one point they even suggested a speed dating session (I hope as a unhelpful joke) which would have made the whole scientific experiment a total joke. Fevermedia did say they would contact everyone who wasn’t matched and match them over email but like many expressed, the moment is gone and after such a bad handle of the situation why would anyone want to be involved again?

The cold light of the next day

They wanted to be the largest but only matched about 350 couples? (aim was 500). They could cover up some of the holes on in post but its going to need plenty of editing and they will never get the magic 500 couple number, specially now.

It wasn’t that I was pinning my hopes on meeting the one, just that I like many wanted to meet them and felt bad for this other person who you may have even rubbed shoulders with. In actual fact, I met some great people on the day and sharing stories and experiences on the coach was interesting.

After all the trouble of the day (we got back to Manchester after midnight! I even had to direct the coach driver…), a few of us went to Tai Wu for Chinese food as we were so bloody hungry. Two of the guys I met on the coach, had met there match partners but hadn’t really clicked (yet?)  so hooked up with other people. One of them came to Tai Wu with us and they seemed to be hitting it off very well. Mismatch maybe, who knows? We’ve all agreed to meet up again soon in the Northern Quarter for drinks as we swapped numbers.

For me it was a the not knowing and being in the same room with someone who might be a great match. End of the day I was more interested in seeing if it could work. One guy I spoke to on the coach home, had staked quite heavy amount of time and effort on this and was deeply upset. Some would say thats really bad but at just 18 and frankly a super shy personality, the build up and catastrophic breakdown of the show was heart breaking. I did say to him don’t confuse the show format with the actual idea of using maths to connect people. OkCupid does a excellent job (imho) but I have to date answered over 500 detailed questions. While for the show we answered roughly 50?

End of the day, I’m not that upset (some were screaming blue murder at the end)… I do fear it reflects very badly on the BBC because I heard negative comments about the show and attributing BBC Three. It was all very anticlimactic for something which started off well (even with the small problems at the start). I did feel sorry for Fevermedia specially when people were laying into them but if they had sorted out the matches and worried less about getting that on camera everyone would have been a lot happier. I’d suggest they should have done it over 2 days for such a number of people really, but I imagine that would have been a logistical nightmare too.

This further adds further weight to my thoughts about broadcast TV. There’s a sense your just cattle and don’t matter in getting the final product. Your the bi-product and thats just not right (specially felt this when they were reading out numbers like cattle). In my TedX talk earlier in the week I talked about everyone being unique and special. 500 new stories and relationships had the potential to be an amazing story but for a lot of people it was an experience they never want to be involved in again…

And with this I rip my green band off with my match number 2135. Its very unlikely I’ll be involved any further… And I’m sure my match if anything like me won’t either…

a year of making love band

A year of making love?

chocolate for perfect match

I have no idea whats going to happen tomorrow but remember that BBC Three dating show I considered going on a while back?

Well I applied and got accepted on board…

All I know so far is there are 499 other men and 500 woman also going… We’ll be matched based on maths or more like sudo-science off the back of our questionnaire which we all had to fill in. So like OkCupid its based on a matching technology to see whos the most compatible for each person. One of the 500 will be a “perfect” match for me.

Tomorrow we set off at 7am from a place in Manchester to a place in the midlands to meet quite a few of the opposite sex, then later in the day we will meet our “ideal match?”

One of the researchers called me a few days ago to check I was still going, because “you wouldn’t want to let down the other person of course.” She then asked if I was going to bring some flowers for her? To which I was like “ummm no?” Anyway later today, I decided maybe I should buy something, because goodness knows what everyone else will be doing…? Yes I bowed to peer pressure on this one, not really my style.. I know. I got a box of chocolates and will wrap them up in a bit…

Everything I do hopefully will be in my character, I won’t be acting out of turn or pushed into something.

If things work out, then great but generally I’m not expecting to find my perfect match or anything like that. I mean lets look at the maths…

I answered about 40 questions and the sample size isn’t that big. OKCupid has a much bigger sample size and I’ve answered roughly 700 questions with the ability to say how important the answer is to me and what I’d expect my ideal match to say (so much deeper)… So I would be totally amazed if something happened…

Funny enough, I watched BBC Three at work in FYG deli while they filmed Snog, Marry or Avoid today. To be honest I wasn’t that impressed, so I am more worried about this dating experiment than ever before.

My good friend Ross has warned me that, if I do this all those woman I’ve been out on dates with and worst will start selling their stories to papers, specially if it goes well. This seriously does worry me because frankly I’ve done a lot of things in my life with lots of people and not all of them are great… 🙁 My only hope is that with 499 other people, my history won’t be that interesting to the media. But heck you never ever know…

I’m not sure how much I will be able to tweet or blog but I’ll certainly do what I can… maybe using the hashtag #yroflove?

I’m signed up for who knows what…

Ketchup and Mustard

Remember when I asked the question multiple times, if I should sign up for a BBC Three ground breaking dating experiment titled, a year of making love?

Well I can tell you I did sign up and I was selected (yes I did tell them I was a BBC employee of course)

That’s about all I know right now… We’ve been asked to keep a date free (best I don’t reveal which one) and await further instructions.

I’m not sure what to expect but I’m nervously looking forward to it as a total experiment. What ever happens, I’m certainly going to be holding it together and not doing anything stupid, even if everyone else chooses to do so. I’ll be holding on to any dignity I have very tightly. Really hoping this is one of BBC Three’s better shows.

Should I apply for a BBC Three dating experiment?

I’m trying to decide if I should apply for this groundbreaking dating experiment or rather TV dating show

We’re looking for single people to take part in a groundbreaking dating experiment.

Are you looking for Miss or Mr Right?

Would you like to be set up with your ideal date?

Using the science of compatibility testing, our relationship experts will be creating 500 compatible couples who will meet for the first time at an exciting TV dating event.

This is the week that our compatibility test goes live, so make sure that you don’t miss out on the chance of meeting your perfect date by getting in touch now!

I might not be able to apply due to being a BBC member of staff but you never know… Actually the only reason I’m considering it is because its BBC. However its BBC Three, so who knows what it might end up like.

I’ve asked on Twitter and Google Plus and its been a mixed response, but now the deadline is coming up and I need to decide.

Can I remind you about the last time I was on TV, and that was without me even signing up to anything!