Contrary to accepted wisdom, the customer is not always right. For proof, you only need to look at the obnoxious behaviour of diners in restaurants, pubs, bars and cafés across the UK.
French maître d’ and TV presenter Fred Sirieix has seen it all. “You meet an unpleasant person and you have to deal with it. I never had a problem dealing with people like that, but I was the one dealing with it because I was in charge—I’m the boss,” he says. “I know what to do: the tone, the words…”
“I remember one day a guy touching a girl’s bum, and I put him out,” Sirieix tells me. “He said: ‘But I’m not going to do it again’ and I said ‘Sorry, mate, this is not a second chance saloon. If it was your wife or your daughter, you’d go ballistic. It’s not a joke. So you can go’—decision made.”
Born in Limoges, France, Sirieix originally started training to be a chef before switching to front-of-house service and moving to the UK in 1992, working in high-end restaurants including La Tante Claire, Le Gavroche, Sartoria, Brasserie Roux, and Galvin at Windows. He credits his parents, both nurses, for his high standards at work. “My parents were consummate professionals,” he says. “When I’m working, whether it’s in television or whatever I do, I want to do the best job I can, and I want to surround myself with like-minded people. I can’t stand being around negligent, unprofessional people.”
Channel 4 snapped Sirieix up for their TV show First Dates in summer 2013. He’s since overseen more than 1,000 blind dates, also counting the spin-off shows First Dates Hotel and Teen First Dates, and he has appeared in other shows, including Million Pound Menu, Remarkable Places to Eat and Gordon, Gino and Fred: Road Trip with Gordon Ramsay and Gino D’Acampo.
With First Dates, Sirieix, 53 has also had to deal occasionally with a drunken or unruly guest, but more often he’s giving his attention to singletons’ nerves, shyness or insecurities. He’s also used to some of the daters slipping him their number or asking him out (“It’s nice to be wanted. Who doesn’t like it?”) but he’s off the market—in February 2025, he got married in Jamaica to a woman he publicly calls Fruitcake, who he’s been with since 2014. He also has two children from a previous relationship, one of them who is the Olympic diver Andrea Spendolini-Sirieix.
While there are many awkward and hilarious moments, First Dates has explored serious, taboo-busting issues over the last 23 series. Diners have shared personal accounts of adultery, death, childhood trauma, mental health issues and identity crises. There is no shortage of tears falling onto dinner plates.
The new series, currently showing on Channel 4 on Fridays at 10pm and available on catch-up, was filmed again at The Botanist restaurant in Bath, after early outings in London and Manchester. Episode one featured the show’s first polyamorous couple, who were hoping to become a trio. “I’m sure some people will watch it and say all kinds of things about them,” Sirieix tells me. “What I’ve learned is there’s nothing that’s not ‘normal’. It depends how you take it and who you are as a person. But, truly, everything is normal.”
Twelve years in, the First Dates restaurant is still doing brisk business. But the UK hospitality industry isn’t in such good shape. The likes of Tom Kerridge have warned of a crisis in pubs and restaurants. Sirieix, who also founded National Waiters Day in the UK and helped launch The Right Course, which provides training and opportunities in hospitality for prison inmates, is also concerned. “It’s very difficult, especially since Covid,” he says, citing restaurants reducing opening hours, cutting staff, slashing profits.
“Restaurants and hospitality businesses haven’t recovered. There’s a huge economic crisis in the UK, and a cost-of-living crisis. Energy’s very expensive. Food’s very expensive. The first casualty is hospitality because this is the thing people can afford to let go—they can eat at home.”
The new series of First Dates is on Channel 4 on Fridays at 10pm.
