Dating with a personal touch (From Gazette & Herald)

Dating with a personal touch

Forget internet dating - old fashioned matchmaking is returning in Ryedale.

Lesley Brewer, 48, from Brawby, set up The Introduction Company to provide an alternative to impersonal internet dating, replacing cringe-making photographs and profiles with "the human touch".

"I've been doing it for a long time without a structure to it and people tell me I am a natural," said Lesley. She was so successful at setting up friends and relatives that she decided to go into business.

"I thought, wouldn't it be great if there was a sympathetic service available out there which would bring people together for love and friendship. A sort of dating agency for the discerning," she said. The mum-of-two researched how other agencies worked and decided that she wanted to do things differently.

"I decided that I was going to be in control of the matchmaking," she said. "I really try and get to know my clients face to face and use good old-fashioned instinct and intuition."

She doesn't tell her clients about each other, all they are told about each other is their first names.

"It's a blind date with a difference - I screen everybody, and I will reject people." she said. Lesley takes care of the dinner arrangements so that it suits both parties and asks for three types of identification for security purposes - passport, driving license and utility bill.

And Lesley has reassuring matchmaking credentials of her own, having been introduced to her husband Geoff by a mutual friend in the early 1970s.

"We met, got talking, and the rest is history," she said. "I have been involved with community life, getting to know many people for many years and wanted to help single people meet their ideal partners in a friendly, safe and non stressed environment, as I had done."

Updated: 09:37 Wednesday, January 25, 2006