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Find the least sticky table: your guide to a romantic date in Wetherspoons

WANT to impress your date with a visit to the country’s most romantic food and drink establishment? Make sure you do these things.

Sample the cuisine

Fancy a reheated beef madras that’s been hanging around for God knows how long? Or a plate of freshly-microwaved chips that somehow come in at 1,500 calories? Then ensure you taste the delights of Wetherspoons’ haute cuisine. Romantic partners like someone with money smarts, so they’re bound to be turned on by you ordering the cheapest grub on the menu.

Find the least sticky table

Most tables in Wetherspoons are more sticky than a cinema carpet because they’ve had lots of pints of weak, piss-flavoured lager spilt on them. If you want to impress your date, find the one with the least beer or bodily fluids on it, or get imaginative and sit somewhere else that’s more hygienic. Like the toilets.

Don’t bring flowers

Dates love to receive flowers, but do not bring them into a Wetherspoons. Hand them over at home, and if you’re clutching a bunch when you arrive at Spoons, drop them on the pavement by the door. The punters will find the sight of a bloke carrying flowers offensively effeminate, so get your date a less soppy gift, eg. a pint of Old Peculiar. The atmosphere will probably cause them to shrivel up and die instantly anyway.

Inspect the carpets

Each Wetherspoons has a unique carpet. And while your date is sure to find this a scintillating topic of conversation, it also means that the flooring shows up vomit stains in its own individual way. If you’re blessed with several local Spoons, choose the one with carpet which most successfully camouflages regurgitated Fosters. It’s thoughtful little touches like this that will impress.

Dutch courage

It’s normal to get jittery on dates. To steady your nerves, why not explore the many guest ales on tap? After your ninth pint of Doom Bar you’ll be so relaxed you’ll be bringing up tedious workplace grievances or rambling incoherently about ‘classic’ action movies, while your date excuses themselves to escape via the bathroom window.

Five childhood traumas your parents still refer to as 'character building'

THEY f**k you up, your mum and dad. Philip Larkin said they don’t mean to, but you’ve got your doubts. Here are five traumas they inflicted which they still classify as ‘character building’.

Forgetting to pick you up from school

This only happened once, decades ago. However it was during a horrendous thunderstorm and you nearly caught pneumonia as you struggled to make your way home. In your parents’ eyes this is a hilarious anecdote which put much-needed hairs on your chest. To you it’s the origin story of why you haven’t had grandchildren.

Taking you on an awful holiday

Normal families go on holiday to the Lake District or Portugal. Not yours, though. Instead, your parents would take you camping in the remotest, most godforsaken backwaters. Cue walks where you’d get lost for nine hours, food poisoning from ‘cooking’ sausages on the feeble camping stove, and seriously worrying you might be found dead in an isolated ravine by mountain rescue. ‘Still, it beats Center Parcs!’ your dad would beam.

Being too strict

Being a parent is a difficult balancing act. If they’re too lenient, their kids will take advantage of this softness and walk all over them. If they’re too strict, their children will develop anxiety and harbour deep-seated resentment for the rest of their lives. Shame you fall into the second camp, the first one sounds way more fun.

Not remembering your birthday

Your parents are amazed you can still remember this. So what if they forgot the most important day in every child’s calendar? In their opinion it taught you a valuable lesson about not prioritising material goods like presents. You might want to check their will just to make sure you’re not left out of that, too.

Getting divorced/staying together

Whichever one your parents did will have messed you up, or in their eyes, toughened you up. If they got divorced it taught you that love can be fleeting and complicated. And if they stayed together you learned that it’s normal for marriages to dissolve into sexless slogs. You’d have been better off being raised in a laboratory by a team of distant scientists.

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