What do you look for in a man? Nice eyes? Bright smile? Good taste in footwear? Ability to make you laugh? We all have tick-boxes and black markers at the ready when it comes to finding a mate. I can’t tell you who you should date – that is simply none of my business – but I can certainly advise you give this quarter-century of drips a wide berth. Yes, it’s another 25 men you should swerve to add to the 75 I’ve already blacklisted. And I should know how bad...

There are so many social minefields these days, and endless faux pas just waiting to happen, it's surprising we ever bother going out at all, or communicating with anyone. If it weren’t for thick skins and an ability to recover from public mortification, we’d be better off living all alone, rocking back and forth in our world where nothing ever really happens, but we are all safe. Few things are as mind-numbingly political, stupid and awkward than the simple ‘x’. Not the one that marks the spot on a treasure...

When you are growing up a future gay, you learn very quickly that your relationships with straight men are never going to be anything other than complex. Whether you’re trying to explain to your dad for the eightieth time that you’re not going to kick that football back at him no matter how many times it flies over your head, or enduring the weekly terror of “Backs against the wall, lads” in the showers after PE, it can be difficult to make yourself understood. So alike, but oceans apart. Many...

Football I remember a very miserable afternoon – a rainy Saturday – spent in a pub that smelled of cauliflower and dog, staring with great concentration at a TV up on the wall. I didn’t really dare look away in case I looked like I was bored and I couldn’t have given two bronze fucks about what was happening on the screen so I fixed my gaze on a spider at the corner of the TV. The spider span a web and then fell onto a table and crawled into...

When you’re dating you hear a lot of talk about ‘soulmates’, ‘the one’ or the perfect match. Even the singles website where I met most of perfectly willing – but not always able – victims was called Soulmates, as if everybody on it were hopeless romantics staring at the sky with mooncalf eyes, waiting for Mr Right to swing off a star and drop into their arms. Quizzes, algorithms and your own ridiculous preconceptions help you decide who this person is likely to be, this ‘other half’ of you, and...

Dating used to be very simple: you meet a series of near-strangers for an awkward drink in a pub that’s always too noisy/busy/rough/far away from a Tube station, decide whether you like them or not and if so do it all over again in a nicer venue and perhaps with food. And then you get married. Now that everybody has the attention span of a gnat and is swiping left and right on their iPhones without so much as a thought for the kingdoms of emotions they’re quashing, dating has...

1. “All his photos were taken from quite far away. I hope he’s not a horse-frightener.” 2. “I hope he was joking when he described himself as a flâneur. Because seriously.” 3. “Does my stomach look fat while I sit like this?” 4. “Should I stand up when he gets here so he can see I’m actually quite ripped?” 5. “Should I get a drink while I’m waiting, or hang on until he gets here?” 6. “What should I drink? What will make me look more desirable?” 7. “Maybe I...

Think you’re being nice with your throwaway accolades? Think again, baby cakes. Call me over-sensitive (if you dare), but I could really do without some of these more patronising praises. Hot ginge When I was first born, my mother looked at me in the overbearing light of the hospital ward and thought she detected a hint of ginger in my hair. It wouldn’t be totally unsurprising – two of her siblings are redheads. “Shit,” she thought. Not because red hair is unattractive, but because ginger people are the focus of...