Making a mix-tape: the ways you came on too strong on teenage first dates

DATING as a teenager usually followed eight months of lovesick obsession, which came out by absolutely f**king things up: 

Making a mix-tape

Sure, maybe a few months into a relationship. However, rocking up to a Pizza Express to shyly hand your paramour a CD of Dido remixes guarantees you’ll be eating your Sloppy Giuseppe in total silence for 90 minutes before getting the bus home alone.

A gift of jewellery

There’s nothing wrong with chocolates or flowers at a first date, apart from how agonisingly obvious it makes it when you’re stood up. But appearing with gift-wrapped ear-rings that cost all of your savings from your summer job made it look as if you had arranged a dowry.

Writing a poem

Poetry is the most reviled of the literary arts, even when Keats wrote it. You’ll never hear from your date again after presenting him with a hand-bound volume of sonnets including ‘The back of your head in physics A-level is the shape of the hole in my heart’. Bonus loser points if you then fail physics A-level.

Dressing tartily

Teenage girls on dates will often be forced into extremely unwise clothing decisions by naive friends, all the rom-coms they’ve watched and the patriarchy. It doesn’t matter what the boy does when the girl is wearing a lime-green minidress with red heels, she will never want to see him again.

Singing

Romance, drink and inexperience lead to awful, regrettable decisions, like performing Take That’s A Million Love Songs to a bewildered girl who only agreed to this because your mate’s going out with her mate. Finish the song, shake hands and agree to part ways forever.

Going in for a snog immediately

You’re both there for a snog, and it’ll probably happen out of sheer awkwardness. But if, over-excited, you meet outside Nando’s and suddenly throw yourself at your terrified partner, they’ll run with the speed and grace of Bambi fleeing the burning forest. Still, you got a snog.

Six musical acts who laughably tried to sound hard

MUSICIANS can’t be content with writing tunes and feel the need to pretend they’re hard. Here are some of the least convincing: 

Mötley Crüe

Every band photo was supposedly dripping with menace but they just looked like drag queens impersonating popular busty horror host Elvira. Their biker look for Girls, Girls, Girls was equally camp, and they were so full of smack and Jack Daniels they’d have lost a fight before they knew one was taking place.

Elton John, specifically Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting

In which parallel universe pub did Elton go scrapping in his star-shaped glasses and flared silver jumpsuit? The Tantrum and Tiara? Okay, the lyrics were by Bernie Taupin, but as essentially a poet he seems equally unlikely to be wielding a flick knife.

Oasis

There were scuffles between the Gallaghers, but their family wasn’t troubled enough for either to be psychopathic enough to finish the job. Liam did hit Noel over the head with a tambourine once, but it’s not a weapon favoured by elite troops or gangland enforcers.

Eminem

Despite his songs being extremely violent, Eminem is no more hard than the bloke who played Freddie Krueger. In real life, Mr Mathers is probably of average hardness at best and unlikely to slowly skin you alive with a hedge trimmer, or whatever his latest baroque rap fantasy is.

Status Quo, specifically In the Army Now

A weird account of combat clearly written by non-combatants: ‘Hand grenades flying over your head, missiles flying over your head, if you want to survive get out of bed’. So clunky and unrealistic it may as well contain the line ‘If atom bombs hit you won’t be fine, try to make sure you don’t tread on a landmine’.

Michael Jackson 

Leaving aside his actual sickening crimes, Jackson claimed to be both Bad – really, really bad – and a Smooth Criminal in a confusing ditty about a murdered woman. Both prove showbiz kids pretending to be tough is laughable. The dancing zombie was more frightening, and that was bollocks.