I Went on a Television Dating Show On a Dare

I didn’t find love, but I gained a bizarre experience

The year was 1999. The threat of Y2K loomed, and there was a bit of urgency in the air as people waited for all the world’s computers to simultaneously crash.

This was also during a time when internet dating was still reserved mostly for social outcasts and the painfully shy. The outcasts knew they had a limited window to connect with another human online before it all fell to shit. But I wasn’t even cool enough to attract much attention online, even then.

So I surprised myself that night at a Toronto nightclub as I sipped my last drink of the evening with a group of friends. I had stayed to the walls downing some overpriced cocktails and trying not to look too awkward the whole time. I moved to a table outside counting down until I could just go home.

Then these two bouncy and enthusiastic recruiters wandered over to our table and started asking us if we were single. Immediately three or four fingers around the table pointed at me, and I felt myself sinking into the chair a bit in an attempt to disappear.

This is what I remember: they told us they were looking for contestants for a new television dating show that would be filmed in Toronto. I remember just sheepishly putting up my hand to say no thanks, and that was that. But shortly after, the friends at the table started to question my manliness. They basically dared me to do it, and that was it.

I found the recruiters before they left and boldly told them I would do it. They asked me a few questions on the spot and took my photo, I signed something, and then I had the realization that I had possibly just signed away my dignity. Winning the approval of a girl hadn’t been that easy for me up to that point, and now I had to somehow do it in front of a live television audience.

I managed to talk my best friend into going on the show with me, which both took the pressure off and added some. If I completely bombed or had a freak out on television, he would have to watch it all in real-time. There was no hiding.

He auditioned and was quickly chosen, with the request that we were on the same episode of the show. Oh, what’s the name of the show, you ask? It was called Cooking For Love (Women’s Television Network) and there’s still some video evidence of it online. (I have a videotape of the episode I appeared on somewhere but I think I lost track of it on purpose over the years. I’m not entirely sure where it is. Really.)

Basically, the show was about three grown men blindly answering questions from a woman (sort of like The Dating Game) while trying to create an edible meal with the ingredients supplied to them (à la Just Like Mom.)

The entire time leading up to the taping I thought about ways I could get out of it while still preserving some of my integrity. However, I didn’t come up with a suitably bad idea in time and there we were at the studio, a makeup crew backstage powdering us up for the camera and the statuesque host telling us male contestants that the woman we were vying for was very pretty. Well, that’s not helping, I thought to myself. I could feel my face burning with anxiety, and I was sure it was clearly visible under the makeup.

Everyone is going to see this red-faced person appear and the studio will have to use film tricks to tone it down during editing, I thought. I’ll never live it down.

After one or two run-throughs of where I was supposed to stand when being introduced and what to do if we won (I didn’t consider this possibility), we were rolling. We started answering questions lobbed at us from the mystery woman while simultaneously cooking up a delicious stir-fry that was supposedly worthy of a second date.

I don’t remember most of the questions asked of me (where the heck is that tape?) but I do remember thinking that my answers were not funny or romantic at all. I remember my friend asking her if she “had a helmet,” which drew some confused looks. But he explained that he wanted to take her for a motorcycle ride. Well, he’s got this in the bag, I thought.

At one point, the other contestant (a guy who had a minor role in a Kevin Costner movie whose agent told him the dating show would be good for publicity) and my friend started pranking me, stealing some of the ingredients from my station and tossing them back and forth to each other.

I could feel my face burning with anxiety, and I was sure it was clearly visible under the makeup.

They didn’t get my pickles as I ended up throwing them into my stir fry. You could call that little experience with cooking, or you could call it genius. But it wasn’t the pickles that sealed the deal for me, though. I had cut an apple into heart shapes and garnished the plate with it. That pushed her towards picking me apparently (something about creativity or something.) I don’t really remember. She picked me. (I was surprised too.) Even my own brother told me later that my friend was robbed and he shoulda won. I couldn’t really disagree, but it wasn’t up to me.

As far as I was concerned, I had accomplished what I set out to do: impress some friends whose identities are now lost to me. It was never actually about meeting someone and making a go of it. I was just there to prove to myself I could be there and could take risks when I wanted to. Take that, life.

While the girl who picked me (or at least, picked my voice and my food) was very nice, our relationship didn’t last past the first date. But I remember the venue that the show sent us to as a reward very well: the producers happened to pick my favourite restaurant ever in Toronto, and my date and I had a whole room to ourselves. I was ecstatic about eating there and having someone else pick up the bill for a change.

I remember putting off watching the show as long as I could when it aired and peeking through my fingers when I did. I couldn’t bear to see this awkward guy that was supposed to be me fumble his way through the entire episode.

I couldn’t watch it all the way through at first. But then my friend got a call from a relative in England asking why he was watching him on some random station on his telly. Apparently, the show was syndicated in the UK. Maybe even to Japan, for as much as I know.

Shortly after the debut, girls started recognizing me in the mall. It was very weird to hear “excuse me, weren’t you on that show…” I would blush and deny it, even when they said “no, it’s you” with a knowing smile. For a while, the contestants even had a fan page online. That was very weird too. Some of the comments about me were along the lines of being “nerdy and awkward but strangely sexy” or something. The page disappeared without a trace.

I learned from the whole experience that I’m not really cut out to be famous — not even remotely famous for that matter. I also learned that television was not my calling. But I do have an amusing story to tell because of it, and despite me making a bit of a fool of myself, I don’t regret it.

I had some trouble tracking down any info about the show online. If you find anything, make sure to link to it in the comments. If you remember watching that show, please let me know so I don’t continue to suspect I’m delusional. I’d love to remember more about it so I could laugh at myself instead of hiding.

Now if I could only hunt down that videotape… (if I do, I will edit in some awkward quotes.)

(PS I ended up meeting someone electronically in 2009, when online dating had become acceptably cool. We have been together for 10 years.)