NICKY TAYLOR spent Christmas at the Donnington Park Hotel near Newbury, Berkshire, with her mother and a number of long-distance lorry drivers. On Christmas Day they all went to the local pub with 70 other people they didn’t know at all.

Lunch began with a search for name tags, and as Nicky spotted the man who would be pulling her cracker she realised she would not find love today. Meanwhile, her three young children were enjoying a traditional turkey lunch get-together with her ex-husband.

“Looking around the room,” Nicky recalls, “I couldn’t help thinking that these were people whose relatives didn’t want to spend Christmas with them.” But then she wondered where that left her.

It is staggering what some people will do to avoid long-term loneliness. But it is even more staggering that anyone would go to those lengths with their mother in tow. There is something about going on the pull with one’s mother that is simply taboo.

Four years ago, when Nicky was married and a fully paid-up member of the North London dinner-party set, she would have shuddered to think of herself behaving this way. “You know the smug marrieds in Bridget Jones? I was worse. I lived in a big house in Highgate, I had three lovely children and I went for walks on Hampstead Heath feeling very pleased with myself.”

Early this year, in a move that even the brazen might think undignified, Nicky paid to have her picture plastered on a billboard above a busy Birmingham interchange. Beneath her beaming face was a web address where potential suitors were invited to log on and get in touch. Nicky invited her mother to put her face up there alongside her own.

Nicky, a 38-year-old filmmaker, has been single since her divorce two years ago. Tired of being alone, she decided to take control and find herself a date. Nicky also decided to commit her journey to film in the form of a video diary-documentary. From singles events to introduction agencies, internet dating to “billboard love”, no dating stone was left unturned. Judith, her twice-widowed 62-year-old mother, came along too.

Seven years ago, when Nicky told Judith she was getting married, her mother cried. “And they weren’t tears of joy!” interjects Judith. “We didn’t talk very much when I got married. Mum didn’t really approve ...”

I met Nicky and Judith for lunch in London last week. They are great friends now, enjoying that peculiarly symbiotic relationship that very close mums and daughters share. They had spent the morning doing publicity photos for the documentary and both were thrilled with their hair and make-up. Judith keeps jumping up from the table to look in the mirror and admire her newly straightened hair. “Do you love it, Nicks? Or is it a bit Hillary Clinton? I stole a pair of tights from the shoot — do you think they’ll mind?” There is a lot of laughter and white wine, and Nicky tells me she bought Judith here for Mother’s Day.

After her divorce Nicky found herself struggling to support her three young children and pay their bills on freelance earnings. She rented out her bedroom and was sleeping on the sofa, working all day and then selling Tupperware in the evenings to try to make ends meet. There was no time for anything else, and enough was enough. Nicky moved back to the Midlands where she grew up, and where Judith still lives, and took a staff job at the BBC. “It was very difficult because most of my friends had moved on and I had a tiny social life,” Nicky says.

She relied heavily on her mum for friendship, support and babysitting duties. “I couldn’t have done it without her. She’s a fantastic mum and a real friend, and so important to me.”

Nicky’s biggest priority now is giving her children the same happy childhood that she had, one which revolved around a mother and father both living in the same home. “I came from a happy home — Mum inside cooking the Sunday lunch, Dad outside mowing the lawn — and I want the same for them. They don’t need another dad, they have one and they love him, but I feel there should be five people sitting round my kitchen table, not four. Five feels right somehow. ”

Nicky wants someone to share her life, someone who will love her children and provide them with a father figure at her home. “I’m a female divorcée with three small children. It’s buy one, get three free. This man doesn’t have to be bloody amazing, but he will have to love my kids. Having made a mistake in the past, I’m not going there again with anyone without really thinking about it. I want someone to enrich my life, not someone who’s going to drain me emotionally.”