Valentine's Day Voodoo with red roses from God knows where

Er, is that knife for me, darling?

Beware Valentine’s Day, it’s prime time for the psycho date, warns PAUL DUDDRIDGE

Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day and tomorrow night is the Hallowe’en of dating — the one evening of the year when every hobgoblin lunatic in the land can glam up and be taken on a proper date.

Apart from being an important evening to all the lovers in the world, it is easily the most auspicious evening of the social calendar to the ever-increasing band of psychos that roams the land.

What is a psycho? The term best describes those in our society who are a little highly strung, overly sensitive, somewhat dramatic and prone to tears. They hold two truths to be self-evident: 1 They are at the centre of the Universe. 2 They feel things more deeply than everyone else.

To the untrained eye, the psycho can appear to be calm, normal, perfectly level-headed and professional. Psychos are very capable of holding down a good job as as well as the partners of whom they are now suspicious.

Psycho symptoms can manifest themselves in many ways but there is a pattern that the majority of March hares display. First the psycho child will appear to be “delicate” or “gifted”. This can then lead to teenage “artiness”, which eventually results in the individual demonstrating all behaviour relating to being “unique”.

You’ve met psychos. You know psychos. They work with you, they travel with you on the bus to work, they could be your mum or dad, your brother or sister. It’s easy to be unaware of this as the full majesty of the psycho behaviour, or “tension” as it is sometimes euphemistically termed, usually remains completely hidden until approximately two hours after you’ve agreed to go out with them on a long-term basis. When discussing psychos I am not pointing the finger at either gender, particularly. I certainly don’t want to give the impression that all women are psychos, as men are just as capable of being nuts. On the whole, however, men are too lazy and too disorganised to mount an effective psycho campaign of destruction. It takes considerable multi-tasking skills to coordinate the shredding of a wardrobe of suits while hiding prawns in the curtains and logging on to eBay to sell your Maserati for £50.

Psycho dating is a universal pursuit open to all-comers. There is no discrimination based on gender, social class, or age. Indeed many experience it’s white-knuckle ride while still in their teens, as you can see from these examples taken from my book Ever Dated a Psycho? : “At 16 I met a girl and we started seeing each other. After only a few weeks she insisted on going to the pub at least an hour before me to make sure there was no one I could flirt with. I had to get up early, walk to her house and wait for her to get ready before getting a bus to college because she didn’t trust me to get on two stops after her. I had to wait for her to collect me after lessons at college and she would tell me to whom I was and wasn’t allowed to talk. The last straw was her having a go at me because I was on crutches and she couldn’t hold my hand and show everyone that I was hers.”

So back to tomorrow night, for instance. It’s the night of February 14; you’re in the restaurant. There is a better than even chance that at some point food will become involved. This might be the first chance to determine whether the person sitting opposite you is a little emotionally skittish. Food is an enormous issue to most psychos. They enjoy nothing more than traipsing around healthfood shops looking for palm oil to help to make some vile concoction that assists detoxification. Many psychos have eating disorders; most attend groups. Take this example: “The moment that I realised it wasn’t going to last with my girlfriend was the day we went to the cinema together. She was already heading for a bad mood when we left — I should have known then. I bought a mixed box of popcorn (half sweet/half salty). In the middle of the film she asked me to pass her some sweet popcorn.

“When I told her that this was impossible as it was all mixed up and the only way for me to tell which bits were which flavour would be to to eat it, she flew off the handle and started shouting at me calling me a w***** in the middle of the film.

“And the best bit was that she knocked the whole box in to the air, covering the two friends who were with us and stormed out, shouting, in the middle of the film, that I was being totally f****** selfish, unreasonable and greedy.”

I would suggest that you offer to pay or at least go Dutch tomorrow night. The psycho is legendary for being very cautious where his or her money is concerned. Happy to spend yours, though. “I dated a guy who was completely obsessed with money. He earned loads and would boast about it to anyone who would listen. He would tell everyone how expensive everything he owned was yet he would count every single penny. He would insist on going to expensive restaurants that he knew that I couldn’t really afford, and instead of just splitting the bill, he would work out exactly who’d eaten what and what they owed. If I asked him to buy me some chewing gum while he was at the shop he would ask for the money back. He kept an accounts book of every single penny he spent. About a week after we split up he sent me a text message saying that I still owed him £4.85 and could I send him a cheque!”

If dinner goes well you may get lucky and decide to take things further with your new love. The psycho in the bedroom offers you a whole new world of wonder and exhilaration. “My previous girlfriend was a nut. During sex she had an obsession with Fireman Sam and Trumpton (from Postman Pat ). She would scream out the names of all the firemen from Trumpton and the theme song from Fireman Sam. If she got them wrong I was made to spank her and she would start again. That was just the bedroom. When we were out on dates she would get so drunk that she would just leave the bar without telling anyone and always get a taxi to her nan’s house. We didn’t stay together long.”

Don’t be put off or indeed scared off going on tomorrow’s date. There are many upsides to dating a psycho: The running away keeps you fit. You gain enough pharmaceutical knowledge to retrain as a chemist. You have convenient access to the complete works of Dr Phil. You will have plenty of intriguing stories to tell your grandchildren.

I hope now you are feeling a little more prepared for tomorrow night. Statistics suggest that at least half of the population is a psycho. If after careful analysis your date doesn’t seem to be nuts then you can be certain that the only psycho at the table is you.

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!!!

xLx