‘Highland men are very reserved,” complains Vanessa, an attractive forty-something blonde. “Probably to the point that you could take all your clothes off and stand naked in front of them and say, ‘take me’, and they would just look at you and walk away.”
Indictments of the red-blooded Scottish male don’t come more withering than that. And the problems for Highland women like Vanessa don’t stop there. Not only are Highland men supposedly inadequate, there aren’t enough of them. In many small, remote villages such as Vanessa’s home in Gairloch, Wester Ross, single men are vastly outnumbered by single women. It seems a new Highland clearance has taken place, this time of single male totty.
The reasons are not hard to divine. When families split up it is usually the woman who stays in the village with the kids and the man who leaves to find love elsewhere. Among the single women of the Highlands, this hard fact of life is usually accepted with stoicism.
But last summer eight women in Gairloch aged between 30 and 60 decided enough was enough. They were going to take matters into their own hands.
These women were so fixed on finding themselves a man they were prepared to risk the indignity of a reality television programme to do it. The results can be seen in When Love Comes To Town, an eight-part TV series starting next week on BBC1.
The premise is simple. Eight single women from Gairloch invite eight single men from a village in Devon to come to the Highlands for a week to see if love can blossom with a little help from two matchmakers.
Less gruesome than Celebrity Big Brother, less artificial than Blind Date, the show could become addictive Sunday night viewing for the winter nights ahead — a bit like Love Island with midges.
Gairloch is a heavenly huddle of small communities stretched along a beautiful series of bays and beaches in a remote corner of Wester Ross. It boasts a golf course, small museum, a few hotels and . . . not much else. But in a setting like this, with Atlantic sunsets to the west and gnarled mountains to the east, it doesn’t have to try too hard.
BBC researchers identified a number of Highland communities where single men were scarce, but Gairloch’s visual splendour meant it ultimately picked itself. The village of Chumleigh in Devon was chosen for the men because single women are in short supply and because its social profile fitted that of the Highlands.
When the Gairloch community was first approached by BBC programme-makers the reaction was initially hostile.
“I was totally against it, to be honest,” says Frances Wade, a 56-year-old care worker who, it should be emphasised is not one of the eight manhunters. Her husband Allan is the janitor in the local school.
“I’ve watched some of these Big Brother things and they terrify me. They show people at their worst. There was a feeling with some people that this was going to take our nice women and show them up in a bad light.”
But the BBC’s smooth-talking production team persuaded the doubters that they were not interested in the kind of reality TV that turns people into grotesques.
Frances was won over to the point that she was persuaded to act as one of the programmes two matchmakers — the other being a 60-year-old farmer’s wife from Devon called Heather, with an accent as thick as creamed rice.
Frances was not the only convert. “It has won people over completely,” she says. “When the men eventually arrived, everyone in the village wanted to mother them. We all wanted to help them.”
The scene when the men and women meet for the first time is charged with all the hormonal ferment of an end-of-term school disco.
The women, crimped and made up to within an inch of their lives, stand giggling on the steps of the Shielding Lodge hotel while the coach carrying their delivery of Devon manliness snakes up the drive.
Inside the coach, a 31-year-old car mechanic called Mike cranes his neck for a first peek.
“Ooh! They’ve dressed up!” he says excitedly. “I tell you what . . .” His voice trails off and you can almost see his mouth going dry in anticipation. “They’re smiling.” Then a frown crosses his brow. “But are they going to continue smiling once they see us?”
Inside the hotel the ice is broken with a ceilidh, which necessitates some impromptu instruction in how to do the Gay Gordons.
Just the thing to bring out a chap’s inner 16-year-old, as shown by the following excited conversation between Devon men Mike and Neil.
“The one who’s attracted to you — she’s a handful.”
“She just takes control.”
“You man enough for her?”
“Crazy Scottish bird!”
“Feisty! Feisty!”
The woman they are talking about is Ailidh, a 31-year-old mother of two girls who has lived in the Highlands all her life and whose dark beauty immediately attracts most of the men’s attention.
She knows only too well the perils of being a single woman in a Highland village. “There just aren’t any men unless you go for a tourist who is just passing through,” she says. Ailidh went into the programme with her eyes open. “I’m not into fairytales,” she says. “It’s not about this princess waiting for her prince to come. You go on a journey to find something. I’m looking for somebody to come on the journey with me.”
In a way the programme is an exercise in optimism about the power of love. But can you throw 16 strangers together and be assured romance will blossom?
The rules of the programme give the power to the women. Each has two dates — one with a man of their choice, another with a man the matchmakers think is more suitable. The men get no say.
Most TV dating shows specialise in the young and beautiful. When Love Comes To Town revels in its variety of ages, shapes and cultural backgrounds — from Beth, the 51-year-old Gairloch music teacher worried about her weight, to Neil, the rake-thin, hippyish artist who specialises in heraldic devices.
Right from the start there are signs that for some of the participants, love is always going to be a tall order. For John Murrin, 40, a 6ft 6in estate manager with a gentlemanly manner and darkly rugged good looks, this was never going to be a likely outcome.
“I went into it on the basis that I wouldn’t like any of them,” he says. “I thought I’d just get on with people, but I wouldn’t find romance. If I did it would be a bonus. But at the back of your mind you wondered.
“Then, when we were on the coach taking us to the first meeting with the women, we were shown a DVD of a get-together they had. I knew right away I didn’t fancy any of the people.”
This could have been unfortunate for the producers, because Murrin immediately catches the eye of almost every one of the Gairloch women, with two of them choosing him as their number one date. One of them is Suzanne Laing, a bubbly, 51-year-old widow from Cheshire who moved to Gairloch seven years ago with her two sons after the death of her husband from a brain tumour.
In her alter ego as DJ Pinkie, she is the breakfast show host on Two Lochs Radio, which is probably Britain’s smallest commercial radio station. In her spare time she is a pilot; flying got her back on the dating circuit. “When I started to fly I started meeting people. The first time I encountered a man it was four years after my husband died and he was my flying instructor. I got fresh with him and he was a young boy! It was a girlish crush. Then he left and I got a crush on the next one.”
For her date with John, she plans a four-course meal at her home overlooking the sea. It is not a success. One problem turns out to be the low cottage ceiling, which means John bangs his head whenever he tries to move. Another is that by the time he has had two G&Ts, a glass of champagne and two glasses of wine, he has eaten only a small bowl of soup.
At one stage John mutters, sotto voce: “If this was Star Trek, I’d say beam me up now.”
Ultimately, the optimism shown by the programme proves justified. Love can indeed be kindled, even under the watchful eye of the reality TV camera.
It is understood the series does produce one genuine, lasting relationship — although the identity of the couple is still a secret. So, one out of eight. A poor result? Certainly not for the Gairloch girl and the Devon boy involved.
All those involved have been left pondering the lessons of their experience and where it has left them in the dating jungle.
“I quite enjoyed learning to flirt again,” says Suzanne. “I also learned that maybe I don’t know how to behave at times on a date! I think I was talking about marriage on one of them and I think I frightened him off. That’s a nono.”
Her hopes of being swept off her feet by a dashing English gent are, however, to be dashed. Devon men, it seems, are just as timid as their Highland counterparts and it is the Scots women who do most of the chasing.
“It’s woken me up a bit. I was a bit of a grieving widow for a few years,” she says. “This was a great experience. It’s made me realise I’m too young to lock myself away.”
John agrees that all those involved have learned something from their experience — even if it’s that you have to be prepared to risk rejection and ridicule if you want to find love.
In the song that gives the series its title there is a line: “When love comes to town, I’m gonna catch that flame.” For Frances the matchmaker, the programme has a heart-warming lesson for the lovelorn. “You have to make a wee effort if you want to find love,” she says.
“This was a massive effort these people made and I think they’re really brave. They were never going to do it, these women. Then they tried to back out and were persuaded to stay. Now everyone of them knows that making the effort was worth it.”
When Love Comes To Town starts on January 14 at 6.15pm on BBC1
