Fed Up Fred’s Dating Advice Column ❤️

Fed Up Fred's online dating advice column

Okay, we’re looking to support world-weary freelance writer Fed Up Fred, so we’ve given him this one-off online dating advice piece to write.

If it’s popular, it’ll become a regular gig for him. We’re paying Fred one pence a word (truly generous under today’s ultra-tight-fisted gig economy).

For his first piece, we asked Fred to round-up a batch of dating tips from back in his day and merge them with modern dating expectations.

Back in My Dating Days: How to Tickle the Fancy of The Modern Woman

When I was a lad, at weekends you’d have thruppence to spend on the ladies who’d all hang about the town centre hoping to see The Beatles (though The Beatles never did turn up).

Then you’d go to the local dance that night, have a beer, and approach the lady you like all full of butterflies, beer, and wonder.

You’d doff your cap and say, “Pardon me, madam” or “milady” (that last one would set a good first impression) and then you’d have a polite dance while not making any eye contact while praying to God that what you’re doing isn’t a sin that’ll leave you burning in Hell for all eternity.

You’d have one hand on her hip, the other holding her hand, and you’d do a waltz. At the end of which you’d ask her for her hand in marriage. If she agreed, within 48 months you’d have a family of five on the go. Those were the days!
Fed Up Fred the Freelancer

To be clear, I was married for 45 years to the wife Barbara. But she divorced me in 2019 to shack up with Barry the local businessman because he’s got three houses.

So, this dating experiment is part for me, too, because I need to get my world-weary ways back into the dating scene!

Now, I get it. The times change. Maybe those tactics won’t get you far these days, although I still recommend you buy a cap to doff.

Alas, the truth is fellas these days need modern tips on how to “date the dames” and it’s all about them new-fangled things like ONLINE DATING APPS.

So I gave Demented Doreen’s Disastrous Dating Department a go. These were my findings:

You need a good profile description.
Post your most dapper photographs (wear a monocle at every opportunity).
Be prepared for romance scams.
Be prepared for fake profiles.
Be prepared for crushing disappointment and despair.

Intrigued by this, as well as severely depressed, I have created an online dating formula and structure to follow.

Fed Up Fred’s Online Dating Formula

What I found was that every woman I approached with a detailed, gentlemanly message with good humour and cheer was met with either:

No response.
Requests for money.

A more detailed structure of this dating misery goes like this, to which I do not doff my cap.

Step 1: Create dating profile and write dating profile description and add pictures
Step 2: Send messages to attractive women (e.g. “You like smashing today, milady!”)
Step 3: Get ignored and/or romance scammed (e.g. money requests from people really living in Barbados)
Step 4: Have a colossal fit of despair
Step 5: Rage against the world
Step 6: Pine over the good old days when online dating apps didn’t exist and you had to rely on blind luck or those weird lonely hearts columns in newspapers

As a mathematical formula it goes like this.

Send Message + Get Ignored x Romance Scam / No Date = Despair

After several days on the dating app I found my despair rose exponentially with each passing day, while I also lost £1,500 to romance scammers living in Barbados.

Documenting My Dating Messages

User	Reaction	Date?	Money Lost?	Mood After
Maude76551616	Asked for £300 for a date	No	Yes	Anger
bubblybabe72	Was stuck in Barbados and needed money for a trip to England so I sent £200	No	Yes	Rage
BlondeBombshell79	Asked for £150 for her flight back home	No	Yes	Anger and rage
RealWomenSeeksMan4	No response and I messaged her 20 times	No	No	Anger and despair
ABBAfan64	Sent her £200 so she could go to the ABBA gig	No	Yes	Rage
PamelaAndersonLookalike	No response after 20 messages	No	No	Despair
hugsandkissesandcuddles	Needed £100 for a facelift, said she can’t meet me until she’s had her facelift	No	Yes	Mad as hell

Table documenting some of the “women” I contacted on Demented Doreen’s Disastrous Dating Department as a means to display my failure rate.

Conclusion: Online Dating is Hard Work and so You Should Buy a Cap to Doff

What the bloody hell!? Not only am I now shy of £1,500 I’m feeling jaded and weary of this whole new-fangled “online dating” thing.

Young lads have got it cut out to land a genuine response, never made a date! So, in time-honoured fashion, here are my tips for them:

Buy a cap
Doff your cap as often as possible
Repeat “milady” to every woman you see
Bombard every single milady profile with a message
DO NOT GIVE ANYONE ANY MONEY, NO MATTER HOW ATTRACTIVE THEM APPEAR IN THEIR PROFILE PICTURES

Based on my formula of Send Message + Get Ignored x Romance Scam / No Date = Despair I can confidently predict you’ll get at least one date for every 3,415 messages you send out.

The date will probably be with a bloke pretending to be a woman online, but that’s better than nothing. Heck, you may even really get on with the guy and get married. Beggars can’t be choosers these days, I’ve seen for myself.