How well can you get to know somebody in four minutes, wonders Pixelsmith as he embarks on his inaugural speed date.

Speed dating. It's a weird old business. Gather a cluster of singletons, shove them into a room, pair them up for four minutes at a time – refereed with a great big whistle – and then boot the whole sorry lot out into the street.
The next day, everyone gets an email explaining who fancied them, plus contact details so they can meet up to discover if a few moments of polite chatter in a darkened bar can be extended for an entire evening. Good luck with that.

From a distance, the whole process looks decidedly unnatural. But it's just a modern variation on old-fashioned parlour games. In the olden days – and I’m no historian, but this probably happened – young men and women would gather in the drawing rooms of country houses and play boring games involving pianos and blindfolds and fruit, which was about all they had back then.

There would be a song involving some bawdy reference to a woman exposing her ankle and touching a man's hat, everyone would fall about tittering and then they'd all propose to each other and go live in castles. Except for peasants, who never got a chance to mate because they rarely made it past the age of 12.

So, give us a room of single people, throw in a strange ruleset so everybody knows what to do, and we're away. At least, that's what I was telling myself as I walked across Leeds to Tiger Tiger, the venue for the night.

There was a lot of nervous mingling going on when I arrived. I headed up to the bar and ordered a drink, then turned to the person standing next to me.

“Can I talk to you so that neither of us looks like a lemon, ” I said, missing the point of the evening somewhat, because he was clearly a man. We struck up a conversation, exchanging details about what we did, where we came from and whether we'd ever been speed dating before, at which point I realised I was effectively speed dating him.

“I’m not speed dating you, ” I said. He informed me that he was aware of this.

Next, we were called to attention by a lady wearing a badge, who doled out pens, paper and a number to each of us. The plan was as follows: we'd sit down at a table with whichever member of the opposite sex had the same number as us, embark on a fascinating and intimate “getting to know you” chat and then, four minutes later, the mood would be cruelly shattered by the screech of a whistle and we'd cast our new friend aside like a piece of rubbish and move on to the next one.

Not before jotting down a couple of notes to remember them by (“blonde, nice eyes, no teeth”) and marking them with a tick or a cross. On the piece of paper, obviously, not on them. That would be a bit harsh.

I sat down with my first speed date.

“Hello,” I said, smiling.

“Hi,” she said, smiling back.

I continued: “So – where are you from?”

“Wakefield.”

“Is it nice there?”

“No.”

It was going well. I discovered that she worked “in construction” and liked “going out”, and before long the whistle blew and we said our friendly goodbyes. I stood up, wrote down “Wakefield, construction” on my piece of paper, pondered for a moment, and put a cross.

One down, 14 to go. This was going to be odd.