Finding love the new way…

As Valentine’s Day looms, Olivia Utley, 26, says internet dates still produce true romance

Throughout the first few years of the 2010s, my favourite party story was the tale of how I met my boyfriend.

It was my first day of university, and my lovely new flatmates – on discovering that it was also my 19th birthday – threw an impromptu party. Keen to show my gratitude, and reasoning that I was a sophisticated Londoner who could handle her booze, I chugged down glass after glass of vodka and Coke, prosecco, and a strange sort of ‘punch’ concocted by an eager but inept young ‘mixologist’.

It turned out that, at 19, having spent the last seven years at an all-girls Catholic school, I wasn’t quite as streetwise as I’d imagined. By 8pm, I was fast asleep in front of the fridge and doused – for reasons I still don’t quite understand – in soy sauce.

One of the second-years instructed to keep an eye on us found me lying there, stepped over my sleeping body and made his merry way off to a nightclub. His friend gallantly stepped in, and I was carried off to bed.

I don’t think I ever met my knight in shining armour again. But Mike, the one who made the rapid exit, is now the proud co-owner of my cat – and will probably be stuck with me for life.