My date was a disaster – the kebab shop owner helped me escape

Internet dating had only just popped up when I decided to give it a go. 

I’d been single for about a year but before that I was a serial monogamist and had never been on my own for more than a few months at a time.

I figured that, in theory, internet dating wasn’t that different from the adding-randomers-fest of MySpace, MSN Messenger and Facepic. I decided on Plenty of Fish – my criteria being, it was free for women to join. 

I wasn’t looking for anything serious. I was in my early 20s and had only just started my first grown-up job in a new office. I just wanted to meet some nice guys, go out on dates and see where it went. 

I created my profile, and really enjoyed POF – it was like playing The Sims, a totally gamified experience. You could put your best self forward while wearing a dressing gown, watching Desperate Housewives and eating crisps on the couch. It was such a good way to save on effort and makeup.

After weeding out the strange, the pervy, and the men who posed with pictures of carp (taking the Plenty of Fish theme a little too seriously), I was left with Billy*. 

He was also in his early 20s, and, like me, still lived with his parents in my village. 

He immediately stood out because he said something intelligible in his first message and didn’t try to send me a photo of his penis.

His photos were also clear (no blurry group shots) and he looked ‘nice’: dark hair, decent smile, the sort of man you wouldn’t mind sharing some chips with. 

We swapped numbers and loosely agreed to meet up ‘some time’, figuring that because there were only about three bars nearby, we’d probably be at the same place at the same time eventually anyway.  

And one Saturday night, it happened. I had been out-out with my best friend and was on our way home – via the kebab shop – when Billy messaged asking if I was still up, in the area, and keen to meet?

I texted back with our location and, as luck would have it, he lived nearby. It seemed harmless enough to meet him, so I agreed. I’d had my night out, so either this would be a great end or we’d ditch him and go home. Nothing lost either way. 

A few minutes later, my phone rang. Billy had arrived. 

I left my friend ordering our cheesy chips and went outside, feeling excited but also slightly cautious. There’s a saying: ‘Nothing good comes from answering your phone at 1am’. 

I was about to find out how true this was.

At first, I couldn’t see him. So I searched around, until a man called my name and I turned to see he was waving at me.

It was Billy. Except… it wasn’t him. 

He was the same age and same ethnicity as the man in the photos of Billy but even with my beer goggles on, it didn’t take me long to realise that this ‘Billy’ was not the man from the photos. It wasn’t even like the photos had been overly good or flattering: it just wasn’t him. At all.

This man – and I can’t think of a polite way to put this – had wide, excited, manic-looking eyes. 

My confusion must have been evident because he laughed and said, ‘Oh, did you really think that was me in the pictures?

Well, yes – because, why wouldn’t I? They were pictures of a normal guy, not some male model, and he’d had about 10 of them. 

He went on to explain, quite remorselessly, that he’d stolen the pictures from his cousin’s Facebook. 

Before I could question him further – or leave – he grabbed my hand, pulled me back into the kebab shop, and loudly announced to everyone, ‘This is my girlfriend!’

I was too stunned to react. I glanced over at my friend, who looked just as surprised and bemused as I felt. I tried to signal that we needed to run away, and that there was no way I was actually dating this lunatic, but he still had a firm grip on my hand.

The kebab shop owner, however, clearly clocking my expression, took pity on me. As soon as my ‘date’ turned his back to order some food, he waved us over and ushered us out the back door. 

As my bestie and I jogged to the nearest taxi rank, cheesy chips rippling in the wind, she turned to me and said ‘Let’s not talk about this again’. 

I blocked ‘Billy’ both on my phone and on the dating site, although I did see him on a bus once, and I did have to block him on Facebook after he somehow found me there, too (no idea how, as we hadn’t swapped details).

As for online dating, I took a bit of a break after that. Back then, I was surprised that people were allowed to lie about who they were on the internet, although I now look at catfishing scams like the one featured on Sweet Bobby and feel like I had a narrow escape.

I was very grateful that I had met him in a public place and brought a friend.

That said, I had told him that my name was Mary and I was a stripper. 

He probably should have known better than to meet a stranger at a kebab shop at 1am. 

*Name has been changed

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing jess.austin@metro.co.uk. 

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