London

Jimi Famurewa

Supper club dating
Jimi Famurewa at the Cobden Club

‘My table’s quite dirty,’ booms a girl in her twenties wearing a spangly gold dress. ‘We’ve just been talking about who we’d shag all night.’

‘Right…’ I say, wondering if I’ve been scrutinised for shagability. All this sex talk seems a little out of place in the Westbourne Park bar where I’m joining The Supper Club – a three-course dinner date service billed as ‘an exclusive club that organises dinners for gorgeous singletons’.

This is as far away from WKD-drenched speed dating in a Slug and Lettuce as you can go. I was expecting a nervy atmosphere, but when I arrive the guests are chatting comfortably and sipping vodka cocktails. I exchange ‘hellos’, ‘what do you dos’ and ‘isn’t this weirds’, and from a vantage point in the corner get a decent look at my fellow diners. There’s no age restriction on this event, so an array of ageing lotharios work the room with their chest rugs exposed. As I gaze at a particularly leathery old boy I’m told by a young French girl that Tamsin Lonsdale (The Supper Club founder) runs a night called ‘Old Diggers’ where ageing zillionaires can bag themselves a young wife. Money and flash-git glamour is very much the order of the day. Once we’re shepherded upstairs and seated at our meticulously planned tables, I learn I’m sitting with actors, city boys and novelists; Salman Rushdie’s son Zafar is at another table. The clientele are a long way from the desperate singleton stereotype – so why are they here? Feature continues

Jimi does his best to appear posh at the Supper Club

‘Just a bit of fun’ seems to be the consensus. ‘I’m just here because I’m moving to the area and wanted to meet people,’ says the intense-but-likeable actor’s agent to my left. I nod at her while chewing my pancetta – she’s got cracking legs. The liberating subtext is that everyone is available and looking to meet someone but it’s less of a meat market and more one of those fancy delicatessens with posh hams on hooks. As the meal unfurls, the table becomes a blur of cigarette puffing and wine pouring, and as people loosen up they visit friends’ tables and whisper amorous field reports – numbers are definitely being swapped. A girl in her early thirties with short hair and a permanent furrowed brow is panicked that she’s been sat with too many ‘young boys’. For all the civility of the event, there’s a whiff of school disco about these dating anxieties.

The Supper Club - more about 'courting' than 'copping off'

After the main course all the men move to their left so we can chat to a different female (and up our chances of success in the meantime). I get talking to a sexy 32-year-old called Anna, who tells me that most people bring a friend to the events; one girl even came with her mum.

After flirting our way through dessert, we all head upstairs to the dancefloor. I’ve promised a pretty young singer called Jen, who’s on her third Supper Club party, that we’ll do some ‘twirly dancing’. The upstairs bar has more of the noise and naughtiness you’d associate with a normal nightclub, but the mood is kept moderately decent by hip swing revivalist band The Puppini Sisters. The Supper Club ethos is quite old school – more about ‘courting’ than ‘copping off’, but there’s a palpable thrill attached to this kind of matchmaking. As I look round at the swirling skirts and flushed faces, and see people prodding numbers into mobile phones, it seems this take on vintage dinner dating brought bang up to date is working a treat.

For information on The Supper Club phone 020 7751 4403 or visit www.thesupperclublondon.com. This event was at the Cobden Club and the drinks were Smirnoff Blue capiroshkas and Smirnoff Blue vodka martinis. The next event is a cocktail party on August 1.