The Millionaires' Matchmaker - The Times Newspaper Article 26th March 2009

 

Mairead Malloy plays Cupid to bankers and celebrities, but can she find love for our cash-strapped and serially single writer?

Tax evasion is not an obvious aphrodisiac, but this is what Simon and I are talking about within five minutes of meeting each other for the first time. We are on a blind date, sipping cocktails in the Dorchester hotel, Central London. “I was on my boat in the Caribbean,” he explains, “when Mairead called to say she had found me the perfect woman. And she was - for a while. But it didn't last, because she had to move for tax reasons.” Boat? Now he's talking.

Mairead Malloy, aka Cupid, is the blonde, Irish-born, fast-talking founder of Berkeley International, which, according to its website, is a “specialist agency offering an exclusive, discreet introduction service to find perfect partners and soulmates for discerning, affluent members”. To you and me, this translates as a dating agency for the very rich. Joining fees start at £6,000 and costs can go up to £40,000 a year (although the fees decrease in year two) “depending on how difficult our client makes it”.

Being a single 33-year-old journalist living in London, I have signed up to find out whether millionaire dating agencies are more effective than any other way of meeting a man - a pastime to which I have devoted the better part of 15 years and which, so far, has yielded relationships long and short, hilarious and tragic, fulfilling and flighty, but never one with the ingredients to last a lifetime. I have tried internet dating, blind dating through friends, even the odd drunken nightclub trawl. As any single person will tell you, it's a horribly disheartening and, crucially, time-consuming experience. I decided to find out if those who threw money at the problem had it any easier.

“Aren't they all a bit, well, sad?” I ask Malloy, 38, during our 90-minute chat - the standard interview process, after which she picks through her 2,000-strong book for the perfect mate.

“Not at all,” she assures me. “They are just really successful men and women who have little time to filter through the rubbish. They have to be financially successful to afford the fee, but this could range from a middle-aged bank manager from Cambridge with a bit of spare, to a seriously wealthy celebrity.” The male/female ratio, says Malloy, is 50-50 until the age of 60, then it swings to 60-40.

“If I feel that I don't have enough people on my books to suit someone, then I turn them away,” she says. Her matchmaking technique is entirely unscientific. At times our chat bordered on therapy (“what kind of relationship do your parents have?”) and, she says, people end up telling her things they would never admit to their best friend, partly because of her disarming manner (she is also training to be a psychologist) and partly, I assume, because if they are going to pay for the service, they want to ensure that they make it as easy to deliver as possible. “People tell me about the affairs they've had; the love for their best friend's husband; their desperation to get pregnant. Sometimes, it's better that I don't take people like this on.”

Malloy stumbled across her profession by mistake - shemanaged hotels in the South of France before meeting her business partner - and it's clear that what clients are paying for is Malloy's skills in friendship as much as her adept matchmaking. “The word that springs to mind when I meet clients is loneliness,” she says. And it was her calls and texts that made my blind dates fun.

“Can I take you out for a drink? Mairead says you're gorgeous,” Simon says in his text. Desire responds to desire. I already felt wooed by Simon, unlike when I've traipsed off to meet an internet date in a pub. “You're going to love him,” Malloy followed up, which meant that I also felt safe. I am a relatively easy case, apparently, because I am not too fussy (I'd said that I would date anyone between the ages of 32 and 48, with or without children, but he had to be funny and confident). Her youngest client is 19, her eldest is 83.

“The men are often shallow and go on looks alone - demanding anything from neat cuticles to exact weight,” Malloy says. “No one will go out with a smoker. Some people want to know what school grades their date got and one or two want the DNA of their date's family.” Some clients pinpoint the person they want to meet, she says, and ask her to fix it. “But those tend to be the famous ones.”

She has picked three dates for me, though if I were a client the supply would be endless. Two are in London and one in New York, where I am going for work (she also operates out of Cannes, where she lives with her dentist boyfriend). Boat aside, Simon, 48, is surprisingly good company. Surprising because I'd assumed that anyone who has to pay to find a date would be, at best, lacking in imagination and, at worst, have major problems communicating with women. That said, he spends rather too much time telling me about how many businesses he owns and I find it hard to get over tax as his opening subject. After an hour, he looks at his watch and tells me he has to go to a dinner. Overall, it's the kind of blind date that works even when it doesn't - quick, interesting and no time wasted.

The next day I get a text from Malloy: “He LOVES you!!!,” it reads. “Oh dear,” I reply. One of the reasons I imagine that Berkeley International does so well (a 75 per cent success rate; defined as a relationship that lasts longer than six months) is that its founder's enthusiasm would encourage even the churchiest of mice out a second time. A distraught Malloy calls me to guide me through my reply. She has had to end many relationships between clients, she says. I prefer to do it on my own. I call Simon and say that I fear I'd be wasting his time.

Next is Khalil, 45, who lives in New York and works in hedge funds - Berkeley International's sister company, Premier Match, has set me up and our preliminary phone chat has been ominous - a stark illustration of the difference between dating in the two cities. “What are your particulars?” Khalil asks on the phone, by which he meant that he wanted to know what time I was free. “That way we can dovetail your drink into your overall plans.” I told him that a drink would be great but that I had dinner plans. Small, shy and dressed in a beige suit, he approached me nervously in the lobby of an uptown members' club and shook my hand. We sat in huge armchairs, metres apart, and made polite conversation about the drop in share prices while I gulped a martini and he pineapple juice, before making our excuses and leaving. “Not so good,” I text Malloy.

Her enthusiasm made up for the wane in mine. “I think you're really going to like Mike,” she says on the phone. At first, it looked positive. Tall, slightly balding but open faced, Mike, 35, had sent a text to say that he would be the nervous-looking one by the bar. He was the closest to me in age and demographic - he lived in London, worked in finance and seemed interested in what I did - but soon I found my mind wandering, as he talked me through his to-do lists and his passion for olive oil. An hour later I left, feeling footloose and fancy free. Enough was enough. Exclusive dating agencies may work for those rich enough to try them, but I'd rather save the money and leave it to fate.

 Click on the link to see the full article
http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/relationships/article5976349.ece

 

 

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