IT was an intriguing invitation: “Dinner w/Marc” followed by a mobile phone number, slipped into an advertisement for a home office on page 89 of a glossy furniture store catalogue. Obscure though it was, hundreds of curious women went on to ring Marc on the off-chance of a date, writes Sarah Baxter.

At the other end of the telephone was bachelor Marc Horowitz, a 28-year-old Californian conceptual artist and photographer’s assistant on the catalogue in question. His stunt has revealed the lengths to which women will go to meet a stranger.

“I don’t think I’m looking for a wife out of this, or even romance, but you never know what can happen,” said Horowitz. He scrawled his number on a white noticeboard in the photograph, thinking the picture needed livening up. He expected “five calls” but went on to receive more than 500 after the catalogue for Crate and Barrel, a popular furnishing chain, was delivered to 1m homes in August.

“It was a spur of the moment thing. I kind of saw it as free advertising and then it just took off.”

Horowitz has sweet-talked 75 callers into joining him for dinner. They are being lined up for what he is calling a National Dinner Tour of US cities, during which he will be accompanied by a documentary film-maker. “We need to open ourselves up to chance and this is an opportunity to get outside of our bubble,” he said.

Kelly Chilton, 28, a New York magazine designer, has dinner booked for February. “I wasn’t sure it was real but when I called the number, it was like, wow!” she said.

Chilton said she had just begun dating again after breaking up with a long-term boyfriend. “I went on this date a few weeks ago. It occurred to me then: I can go out to dinner with anyone. When I heard about this dinner date, I wasn’t nervous at all to sign up.”

Fellow New Yorker Jill Whittnebel said she had dialled the number twice. “I felt I just have to be this guy’s dinner date.”

Another caller, social worker Evelyn Figueroa, decided not to go to “dinner w/Marc” herself but is sending her two teenage daughters instead.

Crate and Barrel was initially cool about the stunt but is beginning to enjoy the joke. “Fortunately, we all have a sense of humour,” said a spokeswoman. “I’d say he owes us all dinner.”

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