The Welsh city of Newport is only really famous for its proximity to a big bridge and this song but now it's reportedly set to make dating history.

According to the South Wales Argus, which I don't normally read, a pub in the town is going to host the UK's first eye gazing night.

Eye gazing is like speed dating but instead of speaking to someone for two minutes, you just silently look into their eyes and work out if you've got a connection. Apparently it's the big thing in dating in America. Well I'd never heard of it. Just because it comes for America, are we supposed to think it's good? I fell for that once with Kellogg's Pop Tarts, these days I'm warier.

For starters, I've been to Newport, and I imagine that if you stared at someone in one of its pubs for two seconds they'd try to hit you, let alone two minutes. The only people in Newport who stare at things for that long have done a lot of drugs, or are sheep.

My return to dating websites this week has been like getting reacquainted with a crack habit. That familiar warm, fuzzy feeling came flooding back as I perused the legions of smiling thumbnails, luring me back into their lonely world with hot promises of everlasting love.

After a recent period of cold turkey from online dating, I was apparently rehabilitated. I had no cravings, no regrets. But now that I'm back online, chatting to a brunette from Dulwich calling herself "Sandy80", that's all gone out of the window and I'm wondering why I ever left. I've got the buzz again. And it has brought with it waves of clarity. I've suddenly worked out why online dating is so addictive

One of my long-standing issues with these sites is the amount of ugly people on them. I'd estimate the proportion of monsters at roughly 85 per cent. Very often a message will pop into your inbox, prompting a jolt of excitement, and then you'll see the sender's face and be disappointed. It stands to reason that

One of my issues with dating is how samey it all is. I invariably go on dates to the same pubs in the same areas and chat about the same things to girls who all look and behave similarly. When you're a regular dater, this gets a bit tedious.

So I was intrigued by a new dating website called Doing Something, which works on the philosophy that dating is better when you combine it with an activity. Members are asked to come up with a faintly zany date suggestion to attract their fellow singletons.

I was willing to try it, although some suggestions were more appealing than others. Here's a selection of date ideas proposed by girls...

Teaching me to play ukulele in a park somewhere in London
This sounds like quite a nice thing to do but the girl is limiting her options. There can't be many Londoners who can play the ukulele, and I have a suspicion that a large proportion of the ones that do are really annoying.
Verdict: Swathes of nice men will feel excluded by this idea.

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