Is plastic surgeon guy as fake as one of his patients? Sarah considers whether she’s been ‘catfished’

DON’T worry, she hasn’t sent $50,000 to an account in Nigeria. But there is something not quite right about the man who claims to be a plastic surgeon.

I’m going fishing- and not for cats.

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JOURNALIST Sarah Swain has been single (but dating) for longer than she cares to remember. That’s because it’s tough out there, as any single will tell you, so to bring hope to others across the city, she’s sharing her no-holds-barred adventures on the Sydney single scene every week.

HAVE I BEEN CATFISHED?

I think I might have been Catfished.

Don’t worry, I haven’t sent $50,000 by Western Union to Nigeria or anything.

But I’m not sure the David Gandy look-a-like I’ve been chatting to is actually who he says he is.

(For the uneducated, Catfishing is when somebody pretends to be somebody they’re not online, often in relation to dating).

So, I met him on OKCupid.

I say met. We sent exactly 42 messages.

He looked like a grey version of model David Gandy. Picture: Christian Gilles

We seemed to have loads to talk about — and he looked absolutely lovely in his photos,

He had a silver fox quiff, wore nice suits, and was also snapped in a convertible vintage-style car (as opposed in car selfies in Commodores like most blokes).

And HONESTLY, I didn’t care that he dropped into the conversation that he’d just “been out on his yacht” to see Vivid.

I mean, I believed him too.

sarah with net- have I been 'catfishes?'

Also, he was a “cosmetic, plastic and reconstructive surgeon.”

And while images from that old Channel 9 TV drama about plastic surgeons Nip/Tuck flashed into my head it didn’t put me off.

And maybe he could, you know, give me some Botox or something.

(I’ve actually already had it — I did an interview with a plastic surgeon once and he got his needle out so I could try it. It hurt a bit but my forehead was smoother than a peach for a good while.)

Anyway.

I also asked if he wore scrubs. (yes, was the answer). I love scrubs.

And while images from that old Channel 9 TV drama about plastic surgeons Nip/Tuck flashed into my head it didn’t put me off.

He also bought his suits at Ermenegildo Zegna, he told me.

I mean, I’d be happy with Top Man, but nevertheless.

But it wasn’t all just cosmetic.

We talked a lot about what we were looking for, our passions, and his dog.

He was eloquent and interesting. He was a bit older than me — and we had a 95% match on the site — the highest ever.

That showed he’d answered heaps of the profile questions, which generally means the guys are not just messing around either.

And my friends swooned too when I showed them his photo.

It was all shaping up to look pretty perfect.

And when he told me where he had plastic surgery practices, I decided to google him.

However.

I couldn’t find any surgeons with his name who ran practices in any of the areas he told me he worked.

Nor could I locate anybody with his name who’s a plastic surgeon in Sydney.

And true, he might have told me a fake name for the purposes of internet dating — but I couldn’t find any plastic surgeons who looked like him in the city either.

It was quite an operation.

I spent ages hunting for cosmetic surgeons in the areas he said he worked ...

I also searched through the work archives to see if we’d maybe written about him, or taken his photo.

We hadn’t.

But despite now knowing what a gynaecomastia is (removal of man boobs), how long it takes to recover from a nose job (two weeks) and getting a bit obsessed with looking at ‘before’ and ‘after’ photos, I was more clueless than a beauty pageant contestant about what was going on.

And I was getting a little bored of messaging.

So I said that maybe it would “be nice to talk in real life?”

He said he’d love to — adding he’d call me the next day.

Five days later and my phone had remained silent.

And I dropped him a line asking how he was, and if he still wanted to talk?

“Of course” he said, but he was away for work in Melbourne, and “didn’t want to make me wait.”

Well, that was exactly what he was doing — and I was running out of patients, sorry patience.

Anyway, more than two weeks later, there was still nothing.

I mean, what’s the point in exchanging all those messages, sounding interested, sharing details about your (so-called?) life and then saying you’re going to call but not?

Julian McMahon, Kinsey Packard and Dylan Walsh in 2004 TV show Nip/Tuck

I mean it happens when you chat to somebody olive I admit — it often just dies out when you run out of things to talk about, and you never get to find out if they could have actually been your soulmate.

But this one had sounded so hopeful.

So one night, after a few vino’s I messaged him.

I figured I’d put my cards on the (operating) table, and make no bones about it.

“It was nice to chat but if you’re not going to get in touch I take it maybe you’re not who you say you are?”

And it obviously put his (perfect) nose out of joint.

He replied: “Hmm, that’s not true, but I don’t want to waste your time.”

And then, he DELETED HIS PROFILE.

I wrinkled my forehead.

Was this guy as synthetic as one of his patients?

Is is he actually a hospital porter from Blacktown with a tinnie?

Or did I just make a massive boob?