Take Me Out is some truly wonderful television. Calling all secret Blind Date lovers, this is just like Blind Date only better. Well, apart from the actual dates they go on: whereas in Blind Date they sent you off on a week’s holiday, on Take Me Out they send you for a pint in Manchester’s “Fernandos!”
The concept of the show is simple enough. Gather 30 women into the room and give them a light box. Then enters the man, who appears to his own selected entrance music, from the ‘love lift’. Round 1: he women take a good look at him and then turn their lights off if they’re not interested. Brilliant. Then come two more rounds where the man tries to impress the woman, sometimes with a talent and the women continue to turn their lights off whenever they see or hear something they don’t like. At intervals the host, Paddy McGuinness, goes around asking the girls plan Blind Date style cheesy lines. For the final round, if there are actually any women left by this stage, the man gets to choose from those left standing.
I still haven’t quite decided whether it’s more fun to watch a total knockout, where the man goes home with no date and has to leave to the exit music ‘All By Myself’, or when it gets to the final stage and the man suddenly turns into pure arrogance and runs about switching the girls lights out while the women embarrass themselves by begging him not to.
Unfortunately the first series has now ended but most of the episodes are available still on ITV Player and I am anxiously praying for a second series. To get your Take Me Out fix in the mean time you can watch many clips on this website, including some of the girls auditions.
Frederica Dixon