It’s called ‘Toffee’. Set up last April by a brave lady called Lydia Davies, and immediately, predictably, lampooned by endless (privately educated) journalists writing for things like the FT and the New Statesman.  Who, in my opinion, have completely missed the point.

We’re not simply on the hunt for posh, wealthy, idiotic, Hooray Henry’s, Henrietta’s and Sloanes.

Around 5% of the UK population is privately educated, and, in my all too many years’ experience at the dating game, it is almost only those 5% who understand where I’m coming from.

“How would you cope at a dinner party where everyone’s comparing their children’s private schools, their hunt, and where they keep their yachts?” I’ve started asking anyone ‘messaging’ me on Encounters.

“I can’t think of anything worse,” is the normal answer.  So good.  Nobody’s time or money has been wasted on stuffing unnecessary calories into my mouth.  While that sort of evening is by no means taking place every night of my life, ultimately, it’s deal breaker – for both parties.  Anyone partnering me to such a thing will have to be bloody clever/interesting/funny/eccentric/open-minded, if they’re not familiar with the private school thing, if it’s going to work.

So. Toffee!  The answer to my prayers! What I’ve been looking for, for practically ever!

Well the first problem is, you can only get it by signing on to an app, whatever that is, on an up-to-date i-phone.  Eh? How many privately educated people like me have got those? Why restrict the service to so few?

This has meant I’ve asked darling Faye to sign me up on her Dad’s hand-me-down. She started asking me questions about how much I like sport, Henley etc. So of course I said I love the whole lot, just to make me have loads in common with everybody on the app.  I had to say what my favourite starter, main course and pudding are, and if I were a drink, what would I be? All this, trying to use the titchy keypad on Faye’s phone. It’s driven me demented and prevented me from contributing anything individual or witty.  And you can only use one pic, of your face, like Tinder.  And, like Tinder, you have to ‘right’ or ‘left’ swipe.  Anyhow – we managed to wade our way through all of that and cough up the requisite £4.99 til at last I found my posh matches! Three of them! All in their forties, educated at very minor schools such as Shiplake, and living 200 miles away from Dartmoor.

Faye is so unkeen about all of this that I havent succeeded in getting her to look up people of her own age yet; but maybe the real problem is that we’re on holiday in Spain’s Costa del Sol; so the likelihood of a single Old Wykehamist, Harrovian, Etonian, Radleian etc, apart from me, being within a million mile radius, is almost certainly zero.