Gillian McCallum looks me in the eye with glee and poses the matchmaking world’s thorniest question: “Do you know what’s the number one deal-breaker?” She means the single quality in a man or woman that’s most likely to make them un-dateable to someone else. McCallum’s certainly going to know the answer, as CEO of Britain’s oldest and best-known personal introductions agency, Drawing Down the Moon (DDM), which is currently celebrating its 35th anniversary.
I duly run through a long list of the kind of attributes, or habits that might put a lonely heart off a potential partner: smoking, poor personal hygiene, misogyny, declaring yourself a rampant feminist, living on doughnuts, having no income, NSOH (no sense of humour), watching Mrs Brown’s Boys, asexuality, religious zeal? She keeps shaking her head and eventually I cave in. “What is the top no-no?” McCallum leans forward and says crisply, “Brexit!” Not only are her clientele’s thoughts on leaving the EU totally non-negotiable, McCallum says Remainers are far more vehemently opposed to Brexiteers than vice versa, “They won’t even consider meeting someone who voted to quit. They spit tacks.”
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