Boy Meets Girl: The model date

Sep 9 2008 Playing the dating game with Ed Saunt and Vicki Eltis

Vicki and Ed are tasked with finding a 'model' date.

Ed writes: Vicki really laid down the gauntlet this week. "I’m dating a model on Wednesday so we won’t be doing any speed dating nonsense," she said. "You’ll have to find yourself a model too."

Now I apparently don’t have Vicki’s touch for picking up models who feature on the cover of glossy magazines but ‘the bulldog’ (as she likes to call herself) is not one to be denied so I went back to the drawing board to come up with a plan.

After discussing it with friends and rejecting the only model I know on the grounds of ugliness (strange but true) I came to the only possible conclusion that made sense.

I’ll go out. They’ll come to me – they always do (strange but lies).

However, I had no success on the dancefloor and left my club of choice with worries about how to fill this space. Yes, I was going home alone but all I was fretting about was you readers.

So, readers, imagine my all-round delight when I sparked up a conversation outside with a gorgeous – yet quirky – girl by the name of Julia.

Sweet and funny with a quick wit, Julia seemed fantastic – if maybe sailing too close to the quirky wind.

Then, when I was thinking about where this might lead, a gust of that wind blew me off my feet.

We were talking religion (as you do at 3am on a Saturday night) and I asked her if she had any beliefs.

"I’m a witch," she said. "Don’t be so harsh on yourself," I thought, before realising she actually believed she had powers she could summon from bringing the earth’s spirituality together as one or some other rubbish.

I felt scared because she was a witch, I felt relieved I hadn’t gone home with a witch but most of all I felt embarrassed that I had fallen for a witch.

Needless to say I made my excuses and magic-ed my way off into the night, eager not to let the search for a model turn into another witch-hunt (sorry).

******

Vicki writes: WOW! What can I say I was seriously nervous on the way to my date last Wednesday.

I was meeting up with Fred Watkins, a 21-year-old from Weybridge who had not only become a finalist in the Men's Health Magazine Cover of the Year Award, but who also scooped the Cosmopolitan's Reader's Choice runner-up award.

Many women from all over the UK had picked up the phone and voted for him and now I had the chance to meet him face-to-face on a date, all after I had been swooning over his muscly torso in photos our newsdesk had received.

To keep up looking that good it was no wonder Fred only had one beer and a tomato juice as we sat in the Lavish Lounge in Weybridge.

Knowing he also works out five times a week I was nervous to how I would come across.

As I sat sipping two glasses of Strawberry Fields cocktails I was worried I would give him the worng impression – well it didn't look like I was too bothered about keeping fit.

In the week the editor at Cosmopolitan magazine, Louise Court, told me her readers' had voted for him because not only did he have an amazing body but had a great smile too - friendly but cheeky.

When I arrrived he was sitting at the bar and I agreed with Louise - what an adorable man he is!

I had kind of expected him to stand me up after seeing online photos of me. But he didn't look so luckily he was there.

We had a few things in common, we'd both lived in Nottingham and he used to want to be a journalist.

He told me all about the awards, but not in a boastful way, and told me a secret about the original Men's Health photo shoot!

He was polite, kind, funny and completely modest. He even told I had made him feel comfortable during the interviews and that made me feel better.

Why he's not got a girlfriend right now I don't know, but with all that training, I guess he just doesn't have the time.

He kissed me on the cheek and we went our separate ways, saying we might bump into each other again.

I hope he does stay in touch but looking like that I'm sure he'll have many admirers falling at his feet and I'll just be that girl who interviewed him!