Jana Hocking on why ‘stunning’ April Banbury can’t get a man

“Stunning” April Banbury has dated 100 men but can’t get a boyfriend. And there’s a very sad reason why.

I have a shamelessly shallow dating trick that gets me out of the dumps whenever I’m having a “Gaaaah, what’s wrong with me?” moment.

You know what I’m talking about. This kinda moment usually hits around the time of your birthday or Christmas, or when you’re about to attend an event that you know will be filled with yucky happy couples.

It’s that feeling you get when you are feeling horribly single. Perhaps you’ve been on a couple of dates that week and nothing has really kicked off from any of them, or you’ve been ghosted. You start thinking … umm … is it me? Am I the problem?!

Do I have bad breath and no one’s told me about it? Queue the wretched “Gaaaah what’s wrong with me?” moment.

Mine tends to spiral into a deep character assessment, usually at around 2am in the morning. Always a good time to make a list of everything that is wrong with you. Go to sleep Jana!

Jana Hocking sometimes has a crisis in confidence in the middle of the night. Picture: Instagram.

I came across an article recently that had a headline that was too irresistible not to click on. It stated, ‘I’m Miss Great Britain, I’ve been on over 100 dates and still can’t get a boyfriend’. The woman in the article, April Banbury, was stunning! Not just pretty, she was stunning. So I’m not going to lie, I thought, “Oh she must be hard work.”

I know, I know, a horrible thought to have, but nevertheless I read on.

April Banbury has dated 100 people with no success. Picture: Instagram.

Jana presumed April must be hard work. Picture: Instagram.

However, I found myself nodding to every single reason she listed as to why she was still single. No blokes chat her up when she’s out. Yep … I’ve noticed that too. Everyone’s too busy swiping right, they’ve forgotten how to actually talk to a girl IRL, and the reasons continued.

So I invited her onto my Kinda Sorta Dating podcast for a good chat and I have to say, I left our conversation thinking, “Nope she’s not hard work, this dating game is just pure hard work!”

Seriously, how many times did you hear your parents rant on about how “back in my day you just picked someone, got married, and that was that!”

Nope, turns out we’re now going on around 100 dates that ‘weren’t quite right’ and throwing our hands up in the air with exhaustion.

Why? Because it’s normal these days to be dating more than one person at a time, which always leads to far too much head noise.

Then there’s the texting while on a date. No joke, just this week I sat looking into space for 10 minutes while my date got back to an important work email … at 7pm at night. Nothing stops the bonding process quite like a quick scroll of the emails mid conversation.

Oh, and don’t even get me started on the dramas that arise from dating and social media. You might think you’ve been on some grand ol’ dates with a guy, then some chic starts leaving love hearts under his Instagram picture, or you notice he’s started following five hot girls. Queue paranoia and a hint of disgust.

So what do we do? Mute them on Instagram (yes, that one does actually work), politely ask our date to not look at there phone on a date (hmm … that seems a tad too bossy) and just ignore the fact that the guy we’re dating is also dating one or two other girls.

Honestly, I don’t know what the correct answer is. But I sure would like to go back to those ‘good ol’ days’ our parents are talking about.

When a boy had to call your house phone and ask you on a proper date, when social media and mobile phones didn’t exist. So we had no idea what they had got up to in the week between dates, and you couldn’t get dumped by text.

All I know is, that unlike lovely April, I’m prepared to go for another round of 100 dates. Hey, blame it on my Disney upbringing, but I do genuinely believe that my bloke is out there.

Oh yeah, and as for that shamelessly shallow dating trick that gets me out of the dump: I keep a list in my phone of ridiculously famous hot women who have been dumped (like Sandra Bullock and Jennifer Aniston who had two horribly public dumpings) and think … sheesh if even SHE’S been dumped by a bloke before … maybe there’s nothing wrong with me, maybe men just have bad taste in general.

Jana Hocking is a podcaster and collector of kind-of-boyfriends | @jana_hocking