Applying was easy. I wrote a few flippant sentences about being from the seaside, uploaded a video of my band, plus a photo of me and a bulldog called Biggie I met at a party, and that was that.

I didn’t apply to be famous and I wasn’t so naive as to believe I’d meet the man of my dreams. Rather, I think the reason I decided to bare all on TV was to jolt myself out of misery – kind of like a dating defibrillator.

I’d split from a boyfriend of five years six months earlier. When we agreed to finish things I tried so hard not to be sad that I ended up talking myself out of feeling anything. My crushed-Coke-can chest hurt and I wasn’t ready to succumb to my inner Havisham. Instead, I’d boot around town wearing Dr Martens and a scowl, challenging any man who dared pay me a compliment.

By the time I applied for the show I was sick of being a battleaxe. I wasn’t sure if I was ready to date, but I thought I could fake it until I made it. Plus, I’d get to meet someone potentially interesting. And I'd get to eat.

In the filmed interview beforehand, questions about past relationships were a given, although I was surprised to be asked about my parents, my appearance and my views on immigration. It was a hot room and I can’t remember too much (although my dad was furious that I “bad-mouthed him to the nation” and made it look like I was from a “broken home” – it was all he could bang on about at Christmas).

Then paranoia sets in. You ask yourself firstly if you want to go on a blind date and secondly, if you want to do it on TV, probably accessible forever to every Tom, Dick, Harry, employer/boyfriend/future child’s headmaster. The anxiety was real but I didn’t think it would kill me. So on I went.

“The anxiety was real but I didn’t think it would kill me”: one woman on what it's really like to appear on First Dates