Elite Introductions - Media Room

Sunday Magazine
27th January 2008

                          

 

All Talk No Action by Nick Dent

A young UK traveller is waiting to board a flight in the departure lounge of George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Texas, when he falls into conversation with a young American woman sitting nearby. Noting his foreign accent, the woman asks how he found the USA. “Oh, simple really,” he replies, “just turned left at Greenland.” Later, in a crowded Melbourne bar, a man marches up to a woman and shouts in her ear, “Ten-tonne polar bear.” “What?”she replies. “Ten-tonne polar bear.” “What are you talking about?” “Well, it breaks the ice, doesn’t it?”

 

Meanwhile, at a sweaty club in Ibiza, Spain, a man approaches a woman on the dance floor. “You know, I may not be Fred Flintstone,” he says, “but I bet I can make your Bedrock.”  Classic pick-up lines: they’re cheesy, sleazy and easy. A staple of joke books and websites, they view sarcasm as the lowest-form-of-witstakes.   Everyone has a favourite: “I should get my library card, baby, because I’m checking you out.” “You look sad and lonely, how about some Vitamin Me?” Or, my personal favourite: “Should I call you in the morning–or should I just nudge you?”

 

Some involve mock insults: “Would you sleep with me for $1000? Because I need the money.” Others can sound like threats: “You may as well come home with me because I’m going to tell everyone you did anyway.” And, still, others plumb the depths of obsequiousness: “Can you lend me your phone? I want to call your parents and thank them.”  But no guy in his right mind would ever think of using one of these chestnuts. Would he?

 

“The age of the pick-up line is gone,” says dating expert Trudy Gilbert, managing director of Elite Introductions. “Women think ‘sleaze’ when they hear, ‘Your father must be a thief [because he stole the stars and put them in your eyes].’Women want originality. If guys had something to say, or enough confidence to start the conversation naturally, they wouldn’t need to use someone else’s corny lines.”