Hook, link and sunk. How dates go horribly wrong.
It's always slightly embarrassing to talk about the origins of Bad Dates. It doesn't please the cynic in me to have to admit that the idea had its genesis in a soppy bout of sentimentality, followed by what I'd be quick to describe in others as filthy capitalist greed.
First the cheesy bit: I was walking back from picking up some shopping, daydreaming and mentally congratulating myself on how lucky I was to be with such a splendid girlfriend. 'Lucky' especially because in the past I'd been so singularly unimpressive when it came to romance.
That's when my mind drifted onto all the bad experiences I'd had - or in fact caused - when dating. The metaphorical light bulb went off in my head when I found myself laughing out loud about the time I'd managed to puke all over the side of a prospective date's brand new (white) car. It struck me that millions of other people probably shared similar experiences - and hopefully found them equally amusing.
This light burned especially bright because only a few days before I'd had a bracing exchange with my agent when she'd very gently and tactfully convinced me that my various ideas for books about the evils of religion weren't guaranteed to set publishing marketing directors' eyes aflame. I needed to think of some better ideas. Something more accessible:
"You want me to dumb down?" I asked.
"Er, yes," she said.
"Even further!"
"..."
"Ok."
It wasn't that I was opposed to dumbing down in the populist sense. I like the idea of appealing to as many people as possible. However, considering that my last two books had been called 'The Joy Of Sects' and 'Crap Towns II' respectively, to reach even lower in terms of the common denominator was going to be no mean feat. So the idea of a book about relationships struck me as golden. What could be more Heat-tastic than that?
The first thing I did was to hassle and harangue a few stories from my friends. They proved to me that the thing had legs: their tales of woe were funny, surprising and full of bizarre variety. (Unfortunately I probably shouldn't pinpoint which ones they were to protect my friends' anonymity, especially since they're often so exquisitely humiliating).
Once I was convinced the idea was going to work, I used these stories as the skeleton for a website I set up called When Dates Go Bad. Once that was up and running I took out a few small ads inviting submissions in the 'Personals' sections of The London Review of Books, The Gay Times and Private Eye - as well as a little notice on the infamous Popbitch.
My hope that the readers of these publications would give me a fairly broad spectrum of interesting stories was realised. Foolishly, I didn't ask respondents to specify where they'd heard of the project. But, going by stereotypes alone, I'm guessing that the stories of frightfully clever people doing terrible things at posh parties came from the LRB; the surreal misadventures in media land came from Private Eye; the stories involving Gaydar came from the Gay Times; while the readers of Popbitch supplied the waspish and shockingly rude entries for the section I'd set up inviting people to send me the worst one-liners they'd heard.
In spite of all of my well-laid plans and schemes, however, it was plain dumb luck that really helped the website take off. Because I'd launched it just before February 14, When Dates Go Bad became one of the anti-Valentine's Day stories of the year. Excerpts were published everywhere from The Independent in the UK to the Kerala Times in India, via my own hometown newspaper, The Lancaster Guardian.
I had an exciting week speaking on the World Service, Forces Radio (did you even know such a thing existed?), Radio 5 and all manner of local radio stations. By the end, news of the website had reached enough people to guarantee a steady stream of stories came my way.
After that it was simply a matter of editing the stories, changing enough details to ensure that no one could reasonably recognise themselves within them and plying my friends with enough booze to ensure that I wheedled every last anecdote out of them too. The whole process was a pleasure. I spent most of the time laughing to myself and gasping in amazement. And, contrary to my last vestiges of intellectual snobbery, creating the book of Bad Dates was actually a fascinating process: the breadth of human (bad) experience it encompassed was huge.
Now, as I write this, the book's all ready. My giggling fit of 10 months ago has taken on concrete form. It's even sitting on my desk in front of me. It has a lovely cover (for which, sadly, I can't take any of the credit other than suggesting to the publisher I wanted a pretty lady and something Pulp Fiction-y). By the time this blog is published, it should also be about to hit the shops.
My work is done. All I can do now is keep a lid on my steadily building nerves and just hope that it sells. Oh, and I must try to resist the temptation to rush into book stores and rearrange their shelves so that my book is at the front of all their displays, a temptation that will no doubt soon get the better of me. So if you do see a copy of Bad Dates at the front of your local Waterstones, you'll know that I've been passing through.
