It’s interesting who you meet online; it is certainly more varied than the friends of friends approach. It’s how I met the Gorgeous Turk. He was a fund manager and he discovered that I was a solicitor. He sent me a message asking for immigration and criminal solicitor recommendations. Immigration I could understand, but criminal, not so much. As it turned out, he’d killed someone.

Criminal encounters

I found myself in the interesting predicament of having a date lined up with a Turkish murderer. It turned out not to be a heinous crime (more an accident), and being one to laugh in the face of danger, I decided to go on the date anyway. I did, however, opt for a lunch date and picked Bond Street; one of the most public places I could think of.

Within five minutes of meeting, he announced that all English girls were drunks and sluts. I agreed with the drunks part, and gave a fine demonstration of this trait later on. But sluts? Compared to his native Muslim Turkey, maybe. If this was a taster of the conversation to come, this would be a most entertaining lunch.

The waitress brought over two menus, but I wasn’t allowed one – he was ordering for both of us. My key concern was that I was starving and he better order something I like (and inwardly noted that he hasn’t checked whether I have a nut allergy of if I eat meat – definitely a flaw in the ‘I’ll order for someone I’ve just met’ idea). I went with it however, and the ordering was actually commendable. I discovered later that in Turkey, on a first date, the girl uses the boy’s ability to order for her as a factor in judging him.

Three bottles of wine down and six hours later, we were still at lunch, and he was still speaking freely – drugs, criminal activity, Mafia connections, sex, hookers. He was revealing more of his dark side, which was making me contemplate making a dash for it next time he went to the gents. But instead, all good sense tainted by good wine, I opted to go clubbing with him rather than make a run for it.

During the remainder of the date, I learnt a lot about the dating game in Turkey. In Turkey, it’s not that easy to even approach a nice Turkish girl let alone kiss her. Here, when a guy kisses a girl in a nightclub on a drunken Saturday night, that they may have exchanged saliva before names.

The date scored highly overall and although much fun was had, he was not going to be a long-term dating interest. The most important thing for my worried friends was that I survived my encounter with the Mediterranean criminal – and that I didn’t prove all of his stereotypes correct.