Boy Meets Girl: It's (credit) crunch time

Nov 25 2008 Playing the dating game with Ed Saunt and Vicki Eltis

Even the dating world is not immune to the credit crunch, as our intrepid daters Ed and Vicki discover.

Ed writes: Newspapers, magazines and TV at the moment are stuffed with ways to ‘beat the credit crunch’.

Gordon Brown is haemorrhaging petrol money flying all over the world crowing about winning the battle and even Gordon Ramsey’s got in on the act with his Friday night cookalongs.

But no matter how much bilge you read in the Sunday supplements (that cost £2 a pop), short of disappearing in a canoe for a few years there is no way out.

Or is there? If Gordon, George and Barack would care to lend me an ear for an afternoon, I think I might just have a solution.

It doesn’t involve trillions of pounds worth of debt or any bailout of any kind and with one swift – if highly controversial move – I could end the world’s woes.

I say the time has come for a worldwide, coordinated annulment of all marriages. Lets get the people out dating again – that’s sure to get the world’s financial cogs going again.

Think about it. Tube: £2, dinner: £50, drinks: £20, nightclub: £10, taxi home: £25, paracetamol: approx 97p.

Multiply that by a few billion and you’ve got one hell of a boost to the economy. The only concern might be the potential dating-induced hyperinflation.

However, as this is a global economic crisis, it needs global action. Despite what you think I might have been doing over the last six months, I’m not prepared to go on a one man dating mission to try to spend the world out of recession.

So until Gordon or Gordon or Barack call me I will be doing no public service by spending lavishly on dates. But any girl interested in going for a walk in the park or to a (free) gallery can contact me on the usual numbers.

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Vicki writes: Everywhere you look there is news about the credit crunch and people being made redundant from their jobs.

As I start to worry about the plug being pulled on this dating column, just for the sheer lack of dates I have been offered, I turned on the television the other night to find one of the old episodes of Sex in the City.

In the scene Carrie Bradshaw sits with her three friends in a restaurant somewhere worrying too about the lack of dates and being laid off her column while other people in the city were really worried about being, well laid off.

So at least I'm not the only one.

But it really got me thinking just where have all the good guys gone?

The dates are dwindling and every potential guy I've dated seems hell-bent on just being my friend!

Even if I clock eyes on a potential date it seems everywhere I look they are taken already, or worse than all of these, is the ‘Commitment-phobes.’

Like the one who has been dating and in real boyfriend-mode too, my best friend N. Last week he dumped her after four months of heady passion and romance.

But oh no, all of a sudden he couldn't handle it anymore - a ‘Commitment-phobe’. Trust me there are many like him.

I think the desperate time of the credit crunch stops people worrying about the lack of their love life and instead they concentrate on their bank balance.

And these ‘Commitment-phobes’, who cant decided what they want and string you along for months have got even more of an excuse to stay single, because it’s cheaper and they can concentrate again on yep, you've guessed it, number one.

I am beginning to wonder how I can pull myself out of this dry spell of dates. Guess I should just scrape out my piggy bank just enough for one drink.