It kills me to admit it, but the only thing rarer than a unicorn is a woman who knows when to shut up. I reach this awful conclusion after a friend sends an SOS asking for help with her online dating profile.

“I’ve written something,” she says hopefully. “But it might need a little tweaking.”

“OK, send it over, and I’ll check it out. And send the photos too.”

My Inbox creaks as a 6MB file lands a few minutes later, containing six photos and what appears to be the unabridged version of War and Peace.

My eyes land on the opening words: ‘Bubbly brunette...’ and I almost gag. Bubbly? Surely the most damning word for a woman since ‘buxom’. It’s the equivalent of calling a man ‘sweet’. Quite deadly. I take a deep breath and battle on through the cliché-infested swamp. 'Fun-loving, good sense of humour…likes cinema, travel, shopping and the odd cocktail...' Blah blah blah.

I rush towards a gap at the bottom of the page, where she must’ve paused to draw breath. But it’s there that the profile shifts into a full-blown husband hunt.

‘My ideal man is clever, charismatic, kind, witty, ambitious, well-travelled, tall, successful, passionate, adventurous, relaxed, sensitive, patient, fun, sociable, fit, well-dressed and considerate...” And on it goes - a dozen more adjectives to pigeonhole Mr Perfect.

Is she the only one who writes this guff? I take a quick look at what her rivals have to say. Sure enough they’re all gabbling for Britain. I even come upon the words ‘gallant’ and ‘gentleman’ - last seen in the pages of those Grimm brothers’ fairytales.

Before snatching up the phone and telling my friend (and womankind in general) that it’s time to zip it and get real, I decide that a male view is needed.

So I nip across town for an emergency summit with a thirtysomething friend who makes Berlusconi look like a devoted monogamist.

“So what kind of profile would make you get in touch with a girl?”

He shrugs. “One with decent pics. You know, if she’s foxy, I’m in, basically.”

“No, I mean what sort of things should she say in the profile?”

“Oh, it doesn’t really matter. I only read the first three lines, and if she sounds reasonably sane I’ll have a crack. Or as long as she sounds like she's wild in the bedroom.”

“The first three lines?” I have a flashback to the epic profile I read earlier.

“Well, you know how women blather on...”

He gets up from the table and wanders around the garden, but I don’t let him escape that easily. “But don’t you secretly hope you’re going to find your future wife on there one day?”

He stops deadheading his roses and looks at me as if I’ve suggested microwaving his television remote.

“Are you mad? Guys only use Internet dating for casual sex...that’s what it’s there for.”

“That’s a bit of a generalization, isn’t it?” I splutter.

“It’s what all my friends use it for. Why else would good looking guys go on a dating site?”

Later, as I walk home, I imagine my friend hunched over her laptop, scouring the profiles of every potential suitor, still looking for the man with the cosy cottage. And I wonder how to break it to her that the only Mr Right on the Internet is Mr Right Now.

Here Is The Writer : Alice in Numberland

By day Alice crunches numbers at a banking colossus in Canary Wharf, and by night she devotes her time to studying the strange behaviours of the male species. In between she expands her collection of Agent Provocateur and runs marathons. Tell her what you think about dating in the City.
 

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