Miranda has recently been writing a script about dating apps and dating agencies, so we’ve been talking a lot about what our respective experiences of dating apps were (to cut a long story short – awful). I spent about a year really making dating apps a core part of my personality because I was quite sad at the time and convinced that if I met someone it would make everything better (eventually got off the apps and got therapy instead, cannot recommend highly enough). By and large, my funny stories from that time are thin on the ground, because when you go into a period of self-conscious dating with a bad attitude, the thing that’s by far most likely to happen is that you’re going to have a really boring time, over and over again. You’re going to get so used to thinking “I could’ve spent that evening with my friends.”

But in amongst the wasted time there will of course be the odd disaster of such gargantuan proportions that it becomes a funny story you can treasure, and it was fun raking over these as Miranda experimented with different ideas for her script. I realised I’ve never really put any of these stories anywhere, and have absolutely no plans to ever put them in a show or a script or anything, so perhaps this is the place for one or two of them. This week I’ll write up my favourite. If it’s funny, then maybe next week I’ll write up my second favourite.

This one is a cautionary tale about lying.

I had arranged a date for Sunday evening. I can’t remember why we’d settled for a Sunday. That was when we were free, I guess. I was only free after about 5pm, because that day I was scheduled to be filming a short comedy sketch in which I played a ventriloquist’s dummy. (Side note – I have never seen this sketch. It never appeared. For a while I used to periodically ask the director how it was coming along and he always went “Oh yes, I must get that finished off,” and then I stopped asking about because I began to suspect that perhaps the sketch was shit. I am still good friends with this director and work with him semi-regularly, and this sketch never comes up, so it must have just been sooooo bad). Anyway, we were scheduled to shoot it at Aces & Eights in Tufnell Park on Sunday afternoon, so I suggested we meet somewhere nearby in Kentish Town at about half 6. Great, said my date, name a place.

At the time, I was a south Londoner through and through. I’ve now lived in north London for four years, but at the time the thought of ever basing myself outside of Brixton struck terror into my bones. Brixton was a part of who I was! I was like David Bowie! My housemates at the time once suggested that maybe we should think of looking for somewhere else to live that had cupboard doors and where we might each actually have some floorspace in our bedrooms, and I was so horrified by the suggestion that I started crying and ran off into the night in my pyjamas so that they had to come and find me (like I said, wasn’t hugely mentally well at this time). So north London was a bit of a mystery to me – I knew where the comedy gigs were, but I didn’t know any decent date spots.

My friend John lived near Kentish Town at the time so I asked him if he knew any pubs that would be nice for a date on a Sunday night – not too quiet and vibeless, not too busy and stressful. “The Vine’s always good on a Sunday,” he replied, and that was that. I messaged my date. “The Vine’s always good on a Sunday,” I said, deciding to present this thought as if it was my own, as if I were a man of the world who knows such things.

When Sunday rolled around and we wrapped on the sketch, I realised that I had not factored into my plan for the evening that I now looked like this:

The bow tie was easy enough to take off, but the make-up and eyeliner were a bit of an issue, and my hair was now thick with several handfuls of gel that had hardened into a crust. I briefly considered just turning up like this – perhaps it would make me seem like Mr Showbiz? “Oh, excuse all this,” I could say, “I was just filming a short sketch which is so bad it’s not even going to go on Youtube.” But no, I decided, that didn’t sound very cool. I wanted to connect with another human being. Turning up dressed as a ventriloquist’s dummy was no way to do that.

I had already left Aces & Eights before I considered all this and was on my way to the Vine trying to work out what to do. I had over an hour before we were due to meet, so I figured I had time to sort myself out. I passed another pub and headed in and explained myself to the bar staff. I said I’d buy a drink if I could just wash my hair and face in their bathroom because I was going on a date and didn’t want to turn up looking like this. They laughed and said of course, and I went to the toilet and washed my hair in the sink until it was more or less back to its usual self.

I still had 50 minutes or so to wait and, because I didn’t know if we were going to eat together or just get a drink, I decided to order a burger. I know I’m not my best self when I’m hungry (see last week’s story about crisps), and I didn’t want to end up distracted and grouchy if she had already eaten, nor did I want to be the only person ordering food. If she did want to eat, I could always just order a small side. I enjoyed my burger and a coke in the pub garden and then, with 5 minutes to spare, I strolled along to the Vine, where I was surprised to find John sitting on the terrace nursing a pint.

“John?” I said. “What are you doing here?” John looked confused to see me.

“What are you doing here?” he said.

“You told me to come here,” I replied.

“Oh yeah, you were asking me for pub recommendations, weren’t you? Well the Vine’s always good on a Sunday.”

“Ah,” I said. “I see what’s happened here.” The word always should have been a clue.

“I’m meeting Tim here,” said John. “Do you want to join us?”

“I can’t, I’m on a date.” I said. “I told you this.”

“Oh yeah,” said John. “Well you can have your date here, we won’t bother you.”

“No, I don’t want you to watch me on a date, I’ll get embarrassed!” I gibbered. I tried to rack my brains to work out what to do, when I heard a voice behind me.

“Joz?” I turned. It was my date. John tried to hide inside his pint glass. I had never had to have a first date in front of a close personal friend before, and I suddenly had no idea how you were supposed to greet someone in this scenario. I opted for a hug, then leant in for a kiss on the cheek, then thought better of it, then leant back. I then gestured to John.

“This is my friend John,” I said.

“Oh, right. Why is he here?” she replied, quite reasonably.

“We always come here on a Sunday,” said John by way of explanation.

“Not me,” I clarified.

“But you said it’s always good on a Sunday,” she pointed out.

“It is,” I said.

“It is,” John confirmed.

“There’s been a bit of a misunderstading,” I gabbled. “Let’s find another pub.” At this point Tim showed up.

“Joz! Wasn’t expecting you. What are you having?” he said.

“Oh, hi Tim. This is Tim,” I explained. My date was baffled. “We’re actually just leaving,” A solution had occurred to me. It was the perfect solution!

“I actually walked past another nice-looking pub on the way here,” I said. “So why don’t we go there?” It didn’t occur to me in the moment that saying “walked past” was going to cause problems. Things were starting to feel quite complicated and awkward, and I thought that saying “I washed my hair in a different pub on the way here because I was dressed like a ventriloquist’s dummy” wouldn’t help matters, so I settled for the bland neutrality of “walked past.”

We said our goodbyes and headed back up the road to the pub I had been in ten minutes earlier. Rather than using the walk to explain more about the specific circumstances, I chose to double down on my lie, I guess in the hope of trying to cement myself as a normal-seeming guy after an awkward start. “I’ve no idea what this one’s like, but I glanced in the window on my way over and it looked good, I thought.” Why was I saying these things? Up until now I hadn’t quite told an outright lie, but now I was planting my feet well and truly in the realms of untruth. I knew far more about this other pub than I did about the Vine. I had eaten their food, drunk their drinks, used their facilities. But I was in over my head and just trying to gasp the air.

When I entered the pub, the barman greeted me by saying “So this is the lovely lady?”, gesturing to my date. I feigned ignorance.

“Gosh, aren’t they nice here?” I said. She looked confused.

“Washed all that stuff out of your hair, then?” the barman persisted. Even in my brain-addled state, I recognised that this was too specific for me to bluff my way out of. I would have to change the story.

“Oh, yes,” I laughed, trying to communicate through facial expression alone that I needed him to stop talking. “All better now.”

“You washed your hair here?” said my date.

“Yes, I just popped in to wash my hair,” I said.

“You said you glanced in the window,” she continued.

“Sorry, I forgot to say “and then I popped in and washed my hair.”” I got my phone out and showed her a picture of me dressed as a ventriloquist’s dummy. She recoiled in disgust. “I looked like that half an hour ago,” I said. She had totally lost the thread of what was going on.

“Why?” she said. “Why did you look like that?” I tried to work out if now was the time to turn on my Mr Showbiz shtick – “Oh, it was just a comedy sketch for a little thing called…Youtube?” – but it didn’t feel like it would help. I ordered drinks and the barman said they would bring them over and we went and sat down.

“Sorry,” I stammered, “it was kind of complicated to explain. But I had all this gel in my hair, so I popped in to wash it out, and then I went straight to the Vine, and then John was there, but he didn’t realise I was going to be there. But that’s it, that’s everything. Sorry, I didn’t mean to lie about everything before I’d even met you, I just didn’t know how to explain it all.”

“Right,” she said, brow furrowed as she tried to make sense of all this. A waiter arrived with our drinks.

“How was the burger?” he said as he placed them down.

“Delicious, thanks,” I replied without thinking. A further flash of confusion crossed my date’s face.

“What burger?” she said.

“Oh, I had a burger here as well.” I said.

“Right. You said you washed your hair and went straight to the Vine.”

“Yes, I forgot to say I ate a burger first.”

“Right. So you didn’t want to get food?”

“Well I can do, if you want some.”

“Well no, not if you’ve had a burger already.”

And so on. I’ll be honest, the rest of the date is a blur. I think we talked about Terry Pratchett at one point. I can’t remember if she ate, and if she did, I can’t remember if I just watched her eat, or if I ordered an arancini or something. The start of the date was too embarrassing for my brain to go to the effort of storing any of the rest of it.

I do remember that she was very nice and really did do her best to try and make it into a normal date after that point, but it’s fair to say that the date was unsalvageable from the off because I had chosen to introduce myself to her as a compulsive liar. For no reason whatsoever, I had decided for this date to be someone who manipulates the truth in order to cover up things that really didn’t need to be covered up, that could have very easily been explained in about thirty seconds, and probably would’ve been vaguely funny or interesting if I had just been a normal person about them. Anything I said or did after that point was kind of irrelevant.

The lesson is that sometimes in dating scenarios you can’t help but come across as slightly insane. We are all slightly insane, in our own way. The hope is that one day you get tired of trying to hide all the parts of yourself you think nobody else could possibly understand or like, and you just let yourself be who you are, and then you meet someone whose little bit of madness fits yours perfectly. That’s the hope. But, while the compulsion to hide yourself away when meeting new people is the great sadness of modern dating, what you can do in the meantime is avoid specifically doing things that make yourself seem more insane than you actually are for no reason whatsoever. “This person is the same kind of crazy as me!” is a lovely feeling to have on a date. “This person has deliberately done things over the course of this date that are giving me the distinct impression that they are crazy” is not. A good lesson.

A Cool New Thing In Comedy – More Soho recommendations! On Monday I saw Josh Glanc’s Family Man, which is a delightfully goofy good time of a show, and tonight I’m seeing Rob Copland’s Gimme! (One With Everything), which I’ve heard amazing things about. They’re both on until Saturday, go and see them!

What’s Made Me Laugh The Most – Miranda and I just did our first Eggbox show at the Pleasance, where we screened and read too many hilarious films and scripts to mention, but watching a live audience watch Luke McQueen’s Just Stop Oil, Please and lose their minds as they gradually realised what he was going to do has a special place in my heart.

Book Of The Week – Currently reading Something New Under The Sun by Alexandra Kleeman, which so far is about a novelist who’s gone to Hollywood to oversee a film adaptation of his book, although I think it might also be set in a post-apocalyptic world where water is really tightly rationed, I’m not quite sure. Interesting so far!

Album Of The Week – Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap by AC/DC. I love AC/DC, I find them incredibly funny, but it’s quite rare I bother listening to an album of theirs I don’t already know, because they’re basically all identical. What a shame for me, because I’ve been missing out on this gem and on the song “Big Balls” in particular, which is about a guy who hosts grand balls in his ballroom and his balls are really big and always bouncing to the left and right. I absolutely love these morons.

Film Of The Week – Soz, not seen any films. Busy week of shows! I kind of wanna go see The Substance, but I’m scared it’ll be horrible. Has anyone seen it? Is it too horrible for a delicate soul like me?

Finally, a reminder that my new show is coming to the Pleasance Studio for two nights next week! I would love to get these nice and busy, so please do come on down if you fancy it!

That’s all for this week! As ever, let me know what you thought, and if you enjoy the newsletter enough to send it to a friend or encourage others to subscribe, it’s very much appreciated! Take care of yourselves until next time,

Joz xx

PS If you value the Therapy Tapes and enjoy what they do, and want to support my work and enable me to keep writing and creating, you can make a one-off donation to my Ko-Fi account, and it’s very gratefully appreciated.

PPS Thanks so much to everyone who came to Eggbox! We had a great time. We’re gonna be running another one in the New Year – do feel free to send us your short films or scripts if you’d like to be considered for it!

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