Amanda’s date with destiny
30 years after appearing on Cilla’s Saturday night favourite, Holden set to host show for singletons
THREE decades ago she was a fresh-faced teenager looking for love on Blind Date.
Now Amanda Holden appears to have confirmed she will step into Cilla Black’s shoes and host her own game show for love-hungry singletons.
The presenter, now 50, has revealed that she’s working with the BBC on a ‘special’ project – and realising her dream.
‘It’s always been a dream of mine to have my own dating show, so I’m excited that I’m working on something special with the BBC at the moment,’ Ms Holden told Woman’s Own magazine.
Ms Holden, who was on Blind Date as a contestant in 1991 when she was 19, was rumoured to be in talks with BBC producers last month.
‘Execs are thrilled to have Amanda on board. She is perfect for a dating show because she has a great sense of humour,’ an insider said.
‘Everyone working on the show thinks she has the potential to be just like Cilla was years ago on Blind Date. There’s a lot of excitement about this.’ The new light-hearted entertainment programme is expected to feature single women who are presented with a line-up of potential love interests from which to choose.
The rejected suitors will then be dropped through a trapdoor, in a similar format to 1990s dating show Man O Man, hosted by Chris Tarrant.
For Blind Date in 1991 – her first television appearance – Ms
Holden wore a low-cut black jumpsuit and revealed that her ideal man would be movie star Jack Nicholson, who is more than 30 years her senior.
She applied after seeing a poster for an audition and subsequently admitted that she hadn’t actually been single at the time and had been engaged. That relationship ended and in 1995 she married comedian Les Dennis – she was 24 and he was 41.
In 2000 she had a muchpublicised affair with Men Behaving Badly star Neil Morrissey, and she divorced Dennis three years later.
Ms Holden married record producer Chris Hughes in 2008. The couple have two daughters, Alexa, 15, and Hollie, nine.
While she is now best known for being a judge on Britain’s Got Talent, she has also acted in TV shows including Kiss Me Kate, Cutting It and Wild At Heart. Blind Date aired on UTV on Saturday nights from 1985 to 2003 with Cilla Black, who also fronted Surprise Surprise, as host throughout.
At its peak it drew millions of dedicated viewers. Paul O’Grady hosted a rebooted version on Channel 5 in 2017, featuring mixed and same-sex dating.
Other popular TV dating game shows have included UTV’s Take Me Out, presented by comedian Paddy McGuinness, which aired from 2010 to 2019, and Channel 4’s Naked Attraction, hosted by Anna Richardson.