One


Cuddly, Ferrari-driving 38-year-old, GSOH, travels extensively with job, WLTM fun-loving woman and see where life's wide open road takes us.

It's 8 p.m. and a particularly gripping East Enders' plotline is reaching its long, drawn-out conclusion in homes across the country.

I'd like nothing more than to be curled up on the sofa watching it, with a glass of chilled white wine in one hand, a tube of salt and vinegar Pringles in the other.

But instead, I'm on a blind date with Chewbacca.

Cuddly? The man is a walking rug, with the notable exception of the top of his head, a shining dome that gives way to an ample forehead you could show movies on. In wide screen and with subtitles.

"Shall we order?" he says, snapping his fingers in a rapid-fire motion at the waitress. With each click, my neck sinks further into my body.

"Just a main course for me, thanks," I simper. Please God, don't let him order one of those complicated dishes that takes twenty minutes to prepare.

Of course, if this was my friend Madeleine, she would have established at first sight that her date could be tried under the Trades Descriptions Act, excused herself to the loo, then slipped out of a back door never to return.

But I'm too nice to do that. And cowardly. I'm worried he might track me down through my e-mail address and start stealing underwear from my rotary washing line, shortly before putting it on and turning up semi-naked at my parents' Ruby Wedding celebrations. OK, so I have an overactive imagination, but you get my drift.

Nope. Coward that I am, I'm stuck with Yeti man for at least the next hour.

"So!" I say brightly, desperate to resuscitate a conversation that's already flatlining, "you travel a lot?"

"Yes, I do." Chewy--otherwise known as Graham--says this with the measured gravitas of a man who's just announced he's head of a global peacekeeping crusade. He doesn't show any signs of elaborating.

"Abroad?" I persevere.

"Sometimes." Leaning across the table with a large lump of bread in his hand, he wipes it, Neanderthal style, across the top of the butter and rams it into his mouth. The things you see when you haven't got your gun, as my old grandma used to say.

"So, tell me about some of the places you've been to." Oh God, I have suddenly metamorphosed into a daytime television presenter. It can only be a matter of minutes before I'm asking him his favorite color.

"Not much to tell." He shrugs, cramming yet more bread into his mouth. A large blob impales itself on his stubbly chin. "Mostly Germany, occasionally France, but most of the time I travel around Britain."

It's a personal rule of mine never to resort to the "what do you do?" question within half an hour of meeting someone for the first time. But on this occasion, the word desperate doesn't cover it.

"So what do you do?"

"I work with cars." He sits back in his chair, which creaks ominously, and I get my first glimpse of the sizable paunch he's been hiding under the table.

"Ah, hence the Ferrari! I don't know much about cars, but even I know that's an impressive one to own." I inwardly sigh with relief, thinking that, finally, I have dredged up something that may inflame an enthusiastic response from this world-beating dullard.

But no. In fact, he looks a little sheepish, and a vein on the side of his hairless temple starts to pulsate rather noticeably. "I don't actually own one, I just drive them occasionally."

"What, like Michael Schumacher?" I laugh. He doesn't reciprocate.

"My car company sells them." He clicks his fingers at the waitress again, indicating for her to fill up our wine glasses.

"Your car company," I e