Hillie Marshall Talks Dinner Dates

Back in 1989 Hillie Marshall launched Dinner Dates, today it's one of the country’s leading dining and social events companies for single people. She now has over 16,000 members nationwide.

This year Dinner Dates is celebrating it's 20th anniversary so I caught up with Hillie to talk about how her career has taken many unexpected paths and what lies ahead for her.

- Dinner Dates is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year so for anyone who hasn’t heard about it what is it all about?

We are a social event and holiday company for single people we put on dinner parties every week for thirty two people, an equal number of men and women of a similar age, we put on buffets and take people to the opera, ballet, theatre, musicals.

We do six black tie balls a year we take people on cultural days out and we hold sporting events such as clay pigeon shooting, horse riding, tennis, golf, go-carting.

Then in the summer we do special events like Royal Ascot, Henley Royal Regatta, we take people to polo as well as doing cultural events, last Sunday we went to Bletchley Park where the Enigma machine is, and we are going to the Household Cavalry Museum soon and the Churchill Museum.

We also do holidays and this year we took a group to China, we went to Cologne, we took a group skiing, we are

just off to Budapest, we have been to Turkey, Portugal and we are just in the process of organising a holiday to Vietnam next year so there’s something going on all the time and there’s something for everybody. 

- Is your aim to bring people together...

Well yes everyone that joins us is single and everybody would like to meet someone but we do say very strongly to people when they join that we don’t promise to introduce them to their perfect partner, as far as we are concerned that is an impossible thing to promise anybody there’s a hidden X-factor that nobody can account for. 

Also to think that you are going to pay thousands of pounds, well not with us it’s actually £200, you are going to spend a lot of money with an agency and the person that you have been looking for all your life is sitting in the middle of their books it just doesn’t happen.

But saying that people have met through us and they have also met indirectly through us so we say to people we promise to hundreds of other single people and dating is a numbers game the more people you meet the more chance there is of meeting someone right for you but you will make loads of new friends and you will meet their friends and it just has a knock on effect.

- Was Dinner Dates set up in way that is more social than matchmaking, because the whole blind date thing is still quite embarrassing?

Well I will tell you how it stared it was twenty years ago and I was going through a dreadful divorce myself. At the time I was a theatre producer and I had a couple of girlfriends in the car and we were going off to see the latest show that I had on and we started a conversation about how people meet each other and I said that there was absolutely no way I would go to a dating agency because I would be absolutely terrified meeting someone under the clock at Waterloos Station with a red rose in my button hole or something.

And my friend Julie said well why don’t people do dinner parties like you used to? I used to be forever matchmaking my ex-husbands single friends with mine. Anyway I got given a dare, made up the name Dinner Dates put an ad in the paper and to my utter amazement loads of people kept phoning, I have obviously found a niche in the market and that is how Dinner Dates was born. I used to book up places that I personally wanted to go to, the sort of restaurants that I used to enjoy and all the clubs that I had ever wanted to go.

I found that I had a huge following that enjoyed doing the same things as me and really that’s how from absolutely nothing it grew up and we now have 17,000 members.

- So how has Dinner Dates grown and changed over the years?

Well when I started there was nothing like us around, it was just dating agencies, and there was no internet, and  I just started off with dinner parties and then I though after a while maybe we could try something else.

So I took them to Royal Ascot and gradually, over the years, we have started introducing new things, I remember the first holiday group that we took away, now we just do everything but we don’t do one to one match making.

I suppose I have always thought if I was to go to something I would want something that you feel comfortable with, it’s a bit like going to a wedding where you don’t know anyone at all you might know the bride or the groom, so with us we have everyone’s details and photos so when they turn up we have memorised their faces and names and we immediately greet them with a smile and their name and begin to introduce them to people. And they all say that within about ten minutes it’s like being at a friend’s party where they have know the people for years.

- How have your clientele changed over time?

When we started off there was a bit of a stigma and people didn’t want to tell others what they were up to but now it seems that people just don’t mind, most of our new clients comes from client recommendations which is completely different to what it was in the beginning.

I think that people are more fussy and choosy new-a-days, at the beginning everyone just wanted to go out and have a good time they didn’t mind what they got up to, now-a-days people are a bit more pernickety really.

- Before all of this you were into music and theatre and had your own production company so how did you go from that to event planning extraordinaire and agony aunt? How did you make and find that transition? 

(laughs) I mean when I first started Dinner Dates I was still singing all over the country and putting on shows so I was jolly busy and then I started Dinner Dates and I became super busy. There I was going through a divorce, two tiny children, and I became a workaholic, something I had always deprived my ex-husband from being, and there I was doing the same.

I don’t know how I got into the agony aunting I think someone called me up from a magazine and asked me if I would like to answer some questions and then at one point I got launched as the world’s first global agony aunt, and this was right at the beginning of the internet days.

Then I worked as an agony aunt for various magazines, I love doing it, if anybody had said to me when I was at school that was going to be a writer or whatever I would have laughed, I think the teachers would have as well.

But I think that I’m able to help people because just about every ghastly thing has happened to me during my life and I have come through smiling really, whether it’s been health problems, divorces or whatever, so I think it’s good to always to advise people when you have actually experienced their problems yourself.

As for writing a book again a publisher, completely out of the blue, phoned me up and asked me to write a book and I said: ‘Oh yes why not?’ I signed on the dotted line and it wasn’t until a year later when the advance when suddenly the advance publicity came through that I phoned him up in a panic and said ‘I have something to confess’ and he was ‘what?’ and I told him that I hadn’t written a word.

So he came rushing up, it had to be in the printers a month later, and we brainstormed this book and all the different sub-division of each chapter and he said that the first paragraph was going to be the hardest.

Anyway I did agonise over the first paragraph and then I just never stopped I would be sat in the middle of the Dorchester Hotel or the Savoy hosting dinner parties I would have my laptop and I would be tapping away, then when I got home I would open a bottle of red wine and I would ring my friends up at 3am and say ‘you have got to listen to this ace chapter’ and they would say ‘for goodness sake go to bed’.

A month later I had the book and I was posing in WHSmiths and Harrods and couldn’t believe what I had done.

- You offer all sorts of dating advice so over the years with Dinner Dates and all this how has dating changed and what differences have you seen?

Well I think, as I said before, people are a lot more choosy which makes life a lot more difficult for them (laughs).  They all seem to have a definite idea of what they want and I think that the media probably hasn’t helped; women especially believe that they can have the perfect man who really doesn’t exist.

Compromise has really gone out of the window nowadays and a lot of people, when things go wrong, just give up and people don’t work so hard at relationships anymore. Also people are very ageist nowadays they will ring up enquiring about Dinner Dates and they will say ’I look very young for my age, I look at least ten years younger’ and you don’t like to say well everyone tells me that (laughs). Older women want to have toy boys and older men want to have dolly birds so it does make life difficult for us.

- Today more and more women are staying single and putting their careers first so what advice would you give to them.

Well I think don’t wait too long. The trouble is you do forge your career and then the biological clock kicks in when you are in your mid thirties and you may not notice it yourself but desperation sets in and although you don’t realise that it’s transmitting itself it is, I see it many a time people walk in many a time and it’s off putting. 

I think if you have concentrated on your career and you think my goodness I actually want children and want to meet somebody you have to stop and think well hang on I’m just going to do everything I have ever wanted to do, I’m going to make a wish list and I’m going to toughly enjoy myself. I’m going to forget about men and join in loads of thing and if I meet someone it’s bonus and if I don’t I don’t.

But you need to think about the sort of person that you get on with and if you are sporty person go and join a sports club and if you enjoy bee keeping go and join a bee keeping club (laughs) just anything.

These are the sorts of places that someone your type might frequent I honestly don’t think that a crowd of girls going out to a pub or a club is going to work, I don’t think that you are going to meet your future partner in those circumstances because people who go t a club aren’t out looking for a partner they are looking for a good time.

Perhaps join something like Dinner Dates  join everything that you can think of and make friends with everyone, even if it’s making friends with married couples because everyone has single friends that they will introduce you to as it really is a numbers game, just network as much as you can like you would in business.

- You have touched on the media already how influential do you think, and possibly celebrity are, in glamorising divorce; perhaps glamorising is the wrong word?

I wouldn’t say they have made divorce look glamorous, I don’t think anyone wants to go through a divorce, and I think that you see through the media that people have a pretty tough time of it, Jordan and Peter And re it’s been pretty ghastly on both sides.

I think people are led to think that they should look younger all the time and maybe a lot of people get put off because they can’t look as glamorous as these celebrities and get gives them less self confidence going out.  

I would just say to people just be yourself a man doesn’t necessarily want a woman that looks likes Paris Hilton they just want someone they can feel comfortable with, have fun with and curl up on the sofa with to watch the TV.

Men are very very uncomplicated people they just want a hassle free time they don’t want problems and, having found this out from my members, men don’t like plump women they do prefer their women, ok everyone can’t be super slim, but who take care of their bodies. 

- So you say that men don’t like plump women so what don’t women like?

Goodness me I think that they don’t like men who take care of himself as well. But they do like a man who has a sense of humour, I think that’s a big think in both sexes; I think people just want to have fun.

One thing I would say the biggest off putting thing when you first meet someone is talking about past relationships maybe’ You will never guess what my ex husband did’ people just don’t want to hear about that, people just don’t want baggage this is new beginning and don’t dwell on the past learn from it but don’t drag it into your new relationship.

- Finally what’s next for you and Dinner Dates?

Well this Saturday we have a Halloween ball; it’s a black dies event, at the Millennium Gloucester Hotel in London. We are having about 200 guests so we are frantically getting that ready and on Saturday me and my staff will be up ladders and hanging cobwebs and spider and Draculas.

The following week we have a dinner party at restaurant called Christopher’s, we also have an art class going on as well. We are taking a group to Budapest for New Year, we have already got a ski holiday in place in March and we are taking a group to Vietnam in April so there are lots of holidays to look forward to.

But every single week there’s always something going on, we have just booked up the new Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Love Never Dies in April; we are always on the look out for new things to do.

FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw

Back in 1989 Hillie Marshall launched Dinner Dates, today it's one of the country’s leading dining and social events companies for single people. She now has over 16,000 members nationwide.

This year Dinner Dates is celebrating it's 20th anniversary so I caught up with Hillie to talk about how her career has taken many unexpected paths and what lies ahead for her.

- Dinner Dates is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year so for anyone who hasn’t heard about it what is it all about?

We are a social event and holiday company for single people we put on dinner parties every week for thirty two people, an equal number of men and women of a similar age, we put on buffets and take people to the opera, ballet, theatre, musicals.

We do six black tie balls a year we take people on cultural days out and we hold sporting events such as clay pigeon shooting, horse riding, tennis, golf, go-carting.

Then in the summer we do special events like Royal Ascot, Henley Royal Regatta, we take people to polo as well as doing cultural events, last Sunday we went to Bletchley Park where the Enigma machine is, and we are going to the Household Cavalry Museum soon and the Churchill Museum.

We also do holidays and this year we took a group to China, we went to Cologne, we took a group skiing, we are

just off to Budapest, we have been to Turkey, Portugal and we are just in the process of organising a holiday to Vietnam next year so there’s something going on all the time and there’s something for everybody. 

- Is your aim to bring people together...

Well yes everyone that joins us is single and everybody would like to meet someone but we do say very strongly to people when they join that we don’t promise to introduce them to their perfect partner, as far as we are concerned that is an impossible thing to promise anybody there’s a hidden X-factor that nobody can account for. 

Also to think that you are going to pay thousands of pounds, well not with us it’s actually £200, you are going to spend a lot of money with an agency and the person that you have been looking for all your life is sitting in the middle of their books it just doesn’t happen.

But saying that people have met through us and they have also met indirectly through us so we say to people we promise to hundreds of other single people and dating is a numbers game the more people you meet the more chance there is of meeting someone right for you but you will make loads of new friends and you will meet their friends and it just has a knock on effect.

- Was Dinner Dates set up in way that is more social than matchmaking, because the whole blind date thing is still quite embarrassing?

Well I will tell you how it stared it was twenty years ago and I was going through a dreadful divorce myself. At the time I was a theatre producer and I had a couple of girlfriends in the car and we were going off to see the latest show that I had on and we started a conversation about how people meet each other and I said that there was absolutely no way I would go to a dating agency because I would be absolutely terrified meeting someone under the clock at Waterloos Station with a red rose in my button hole or something.

And my friend Julie said well why don’t people do dinner parties like you used to? I used to be forever matchmaking my ex-husbands single friends with mine. Anyway I got given a dare, made up the name Dinner Dates put an ad in the paper and to my utter amazement loads of people kept phoning, I have obviously found a niche in the market and that is how Dinner Dates was born. I used to book up places that I personally wanted to go to, the sort of restaurants that I used to enjoy and all the clubs that I had ever wanted to go.

I found that I had a huge following that enjoyed doing the same things as me and really that’s how from absolutely nothing it grew up and we now have 17,000 members.

- So how has Dinner Dates grown and changed over the years?

Well when I started there was nothing like us around, it was just dating agencies, and there was no internet, and  I just started off with dinner parties and then I though after a while maybe we could try something else.

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