Gaylord Makes the World Go Round

It might be hard to believe, but there was a time when women would go to extreme lengths to try and win my heart (I mean metaphorically - although I was once involved in a charity raffle where my actual heart was second prize). Invasive cosmetic surgery, terrifying campaigns of demented letter-writing, and life-size tattoos of my face became a regular occurrence amongst the women of 1970s Los Angeles. Indeed, before I fell head over heels in love with my glorious Diana (THE QUEEN OF MY LOINS) I was known as something of a womaniser: in my prime my indiscriminate member managed to restore the sight of the blind, miraculously impregnate septuagenarians, and put one woman into a permanent, blissful coma.

But the years have taken their toll, and these days the closest I get to female company is vigorously stroking a dog in heat who I've doused in cheap perfume or standing in the supermarket and fondling the most vaginal soft fruit I can find. It was after a particularly tearful session of self-pleasure on Monday that I decided enough was enough: I was going to go meet a woman the only way a modern man can - speed dating.

The Eldon Tavern had made an effort to attract "the right sort of women" (I hoped that was code for widowed) to the evening, and when I arrived I was surprised to see that, amongst the balding men in badly-fitting suits, there were actually women milling about the bar. They ranged in age from 30 to 80, some more portly than others (one woman had to be lowered in by a crane through a hole in the roof), and some more desperate (an elderly lady had asked me to marry her and had written me into her will before I'd taken my coat off), but each of them, I was pleased and relieved to note, was almost certainly a woman.

But suddenly I was struck by the full tragedy of my situation. How could I sit there and tell these trout-faced women that my sole purpose in being here was to seduce them into bed only to leave their bedsits (and quite possibly the country) the next day, never to return? Was it pitiful that the full extent of my worldly ambitions was to thumb my reluctant member into a middle-aged, Bella-reading divorcee called Jackie who manages the checkouts at TK Maxx, drinks two bottles of cheap Chardonnay a night, and believes profoundly in the power of crystals? I realised with horror that it was.

What followed was a disaster. The first woman who sat opposite me - and I'm being kind here - must have been a good 22 stone. Through her pie hole she slurred something, presumably asking my name, while all I could do was stare at her in silence until the 3 minutes was up and I fled to the next table. It was hardly an improvement: a one-armed female plumber from Knowle West called Tracy, she seemed to be there expressly for the purpose of finding a man who was allowed a mobile phone contract. The third woman who sat opposite me, however, - an enormous-chested woman called Marlene who worked in an off-licence - seemed like my best chance of happiness. The three minutes passed quickly, talking about my glittering history as a superstar of stage and screen and about the time she hilariously gave someone the wrong change.

We really hit it off, especially when she implied I could get a discount on Vermouth. I immediately ticked her name on my card and waited until the end of the evening when we could finally be together again.

After an hour of yet-more dead-eyed staring, I was ready to claim my prize. I ran over to her in lusty expectancy, but was stopped dead in my tracks when I saw she was holding hands with a young man, almost certainly a student, who had clearly whisked her off her feet. I was so incensed that I immediately punched the man in the stomach until he vomited, at which point Marlene emptied a can of mace spray into my eyes and set off a rape alarm. Everyone left the pub and I had to stumble home (via the hospital, of course) on my own.

I have learnt this simple lesson, which I pass on to you as a gift of wisdom: love does not exist.