Weight 13st 10 (something definitely dodgy with my scales!) CNPS numbers spotted 1.
Being stood up is my ultimate fear in my ridiculous quest to date 50 women in 50 nights. This becomes especially scary the more dates I have under my belt (it's just a turn of phase) What if I can't find anyone else to go out with? Will I have to start the whole thing all over again (please Gods, no!) or will I be allowed to date two women in one day at some later point to make up for it. It would be a shame to have to do either of these options: having a day off would kind of ruin the whole point. Which is, I think (though sometimes I wonder if anything I am doing for this show has a point), to show the physical and mental wear and tear and being involved with 50 different women in a consecutive fashion.
It hasn't been as difficult as I imagined as yet, but when I consider that there is still over a month of this to go, my blood runs cold.
Tonight I was meeting 17 at a tube station and planning to take her ten pin bowling (no-one can accuse me of having no class). She was someone I didn't know at all and nor did I know any of her friends, having set everything up on the internet.
It struck me how easy it would be for someone to ruin all my plans for a kind of a joke and set up such a meeting and then hilariously just not turn up. Maybe they could stand at a distance and watch me waiting, taking photos and laughing at me, and then post them on a web page called www.RichardHerringisabigsadidiotwhogotstooduphahaha.com
I believe the domain name is still available for anyone who wants to set up such a page.
17 (or 17 of 50 for those of you who want to think of my women as a Borg collective) was a little late.
There was a woman sort of hanging around looking at her watch and apparently waiting for someone. I had seen a picture of 17 and there were some similarities, but I didn't think it was her. Also 17 had told me she knew what I looked like. But maybe 17 had thought I was a chef off of Ready, Steady, Cook when she made the date and was waiting for him, whoever he is.
She went away.
Seventeen was only ten minutes late, but I was getting increasingly concerned. It was still early, I could probably find another date if necessary - maybe the woman who I'd just been looking at, it seemed she'd been stood up too. Indeed I did think when I took up this task that the challenging thing would be to force myself to chat up and ask out strangers (something I have always been too scared to do), but that hasn't been necessary. There seem to be a ready supply of interesting and attractive single women in London, who are just waiting to be asked out by a man who wants fifty girlfriends. Who'd have known?
Another few minutes went by and the girl from before returned, checking her mobile phone, looking at her watch. I thought I'd better check. I sidled up to her and asked, "Are you 17?" (I used 17's earth name when I did this - although I prefer to use the number on the dates - as I felt that the question could be mis-construed in all kinds of ways).
She smiled and said "No!"
I felt like a foolish man, clearly on a blind date.
Of course it couldn't have been her, but paranoia had got the better of me.
17 turned up soon enough and if she had been hoping to meet that chef bloke then she didn't show it in her eyes.
Earlier in the afternoon I had suggested to my director that it might get the show a bit more publicity if I were to murder all fifty women at the end of the date and then use their fifty skulls to create an hilarious musical number, where using some kind of animatronics the skulls were made to appear to sing -
"I'm number one, he shot me with a gun.
I'm number two, he cooked me in a stew.
I'm number three, he garrotted me!
That's the last time any of us go on a date with Richard!"
And so on.
He thought it was a good idea, but as I have failed to kill all of the first sixteen girls, he felt that maybe I should do that in a different show. He's right. There's a lot of mileage in this idea.
We also decided that to preserve my rapidly diminishing sanity that we should not do the Guinness Book of Records section of the show. Jeremy suggested that there was scope for an entire show about that. I think he's right. And it would be good to take some time to learn all the facts properly. and also try to learn more musical instruments than Roy Castle could play.
So it's "Fifty Ways to Cleave Your Lover" next year and then "Richard Herring's World of Records" the year after. Though that one might only be playing at her majesty's pleasure.
Funnily enough when I mentioned my singing skull routine to number 17 she seemed a bit uneasy with the whole project. Like she'd accidentally ended up going out with a lunatic or something.
Some people are just odd.
