CAN'T BUY ME LOVE?

Calls to find a 6ft 5in man working in finance with a trust fund were everywhere at Glastonbury, harking back to a viral video. It's all a bit tongue in cheek, writes Olivia Petter, but it does reveal a truth about dating during a cost of living crisis

- Olivia Petter

Did you see the “finance guy” at Glastonbury? No, he wasn’t one of the DJs. He was instead an imaginary, idealised figure who loomed large over the festival – on flags that bore the words “LOOKING FOR A MAN IN FINANCE”, as well as via the phones of numerous attendees, who blasted out clips of a viral musical number celebrating him and his kind.

If none of this is ringing a bell, allow us to introduce you to a TikTok video created by performer Megan Boni, which carries the refrain: “I’m looking for a man in finance / Trust fund, six five, blue eyes.” Over the past couple of months, the 19-second clip has racked up more than 50 million views and thousands of comments. And across the internet, people tapping into the trend have declared that they too would like a partner who fits this bill. But where is this man? And why is everyone desperately looking for him? And even though it’s all fairly tongue in cheek, what does his sheer omnipotence say about the sorry state of modern dating?

Much has been made of the fact that the likelihood of finding a man with such specificities is not particularly high. According to calculations made by Rae Hodge, a Los Angeles-based corporate strategy director, there are just two men in the US who fit this description. That’s after you’ve considered the number of men who work in finance (1.7 million men in the US), have a trust fund (1.2 per cent of Americans), are 6ft 5in (0.1 per cent of men in the US), have blue eyes (27 per cent of men in the US), and of whether they’re single or not.