We met on Blind Date & have been married 33 YEARS – now we’re a TikTok sensation & love revealing secret to our success
BEFORE couples got together on Love Island or Married At First Sight, there was a dating show wedding that captured hearts like no other.
Blind Date, presented by Cilla Black, brought together lovebirds Sue and Alex Tatham in 1988.
And three years later, over 17million viewers tuned in to watch them tie the knot at a village church in Walsall in the West Midlands.
The reason for the intense excitement?
They were the very first couple from the show to say “I do”.
In fact, the announcement of their nuptials was front page news and the ITV programme’s much-loved host Cilla was elated about getting a “new hat” for the big day.
Now, 33 years later, the couple have renewed their vows at the same church.
And Alex, 59, an IT company director, reveals that good fortune played a part in bringing them together.
In the popular TV format, which ran for 22 series, one picker had to select from three potential suitors hidden behind a screen.
Later, the couple would return to the show to give the verdict on their date.
On one very special episode, Alex was the man asking questions of three mystery women and deciding who had the best replies.
But he was too anxious to properly take in Sue’s answers.
He tells The Sun: “I was the most nervous I have ever been.
“It zoomed past.
“I had absolutely no idea who to choose.
“I was doing ‘Eeny, meeny, miny, moe’.
“And if you look at the clip, you’ll see that’s what I was doing.
“And, you know, fate lent a hand.”
When Sue, now a 59-year-old retired nursery school teacher, emerged for the first time dressed all in denim, the couple never imagined they would still be together three decades later.
Alex recalls: “When Sue and I walked off set, having taken our first ever glimpse of each other, we said, ‘We’re going to remember this for the rest of our lives.
“Let’s make sure that we’re friends for ever’.
“And that’s the attitude we went into that show with.”
But love blossomed over the next couple of years and, after marrying, they made a home in Balham, South London, and had two children, Emily, now 30, and Charlie, 28.
Bizarre circumstances are a theme in Sue and Alex’s relationship.
At the end of last year, a social media influencer stopped them on the street to ask how they met, not realising who they were.
The video went viral on TikTok.
Alex says: “Everyone goes, ‘Surely it was a set up’.
“But no, it was totally random.
“This bloke came up to us and said, ‘Can I ask you how you two met?’. I go, ‘Yeah, we met on telly’.”
Another twist of fate led to the couple renewing their vows on a very special date at St Michael & All Angels Church, in Pelsall, on the outskirts of Walsall, which was celebrating its 180th anniversary.
The vicar asked Sue, who grew up in the area, and Alex if they would like to be part of the event on October 19.
They gladly agreed.
Alex explains: “The vicar said that, on the Sunday, they were going to have a special service celebrating wedding renewals, and asked if we’d like to be part of it.
“That happened to be the date of our 33rd wedding anniversary.
“It was an amazing weekend.”
‘HEAVILY CHAPERONED’
The church was packed and ten more couples joined them in renewing their vows.
In the Eighties, the excitement around the couple’s romance was largely driven by the fact most of the show’s dates were spectacular failures.
Rarely did the suitors have anything in common.
And often they would have gone their separate ways by the final day of their weekend away.
Even though the staple of Saturday night telly started in 1985, Sue and Alex were the first ones to get wed — six years later.
And by the time Cilla’s run as host came to an end in 2003, only two more had made the same commitment.
Cilla, who died in 2015 aged 72, was replaced by Paul O’Grady for a reboot in 2017.
But that only lasted a couple of years and, sadly, Paul passed away aged 67 in March last year.
Alex and Sue both went on the show in 1988 with no expectations.
Sue says: “It was an adventure.
“I was keen to see how a TV show was made and how glamorous it was.
“It wasn’t.
“Finding a date and finding a husband was not on my mind at all.
“It’s amazing that it happened.”
The couple also did not do it for the holiday, which was often a wet weekend somewhere in Britain.
Alex felt lucky that their date was a mediaeval banquet in Ireland because the other couple on the same show had gone to Portsmouth.
And ITV was not chasing viewing figures with the kind of kiss and tell tales that are part and parcel of today’s reality shows.
Alex reveals: “For our date, Sue and I were put in hotels five miles apart.
“It was very demure, and they sort of tutted when we touched each other.
“It does feel rather a long way removed from Love Island.
“We were very heavily chaperoned.
“They were probably worried about sex before marriage.
“It was company time.
“They were nervous.
“There’s no question about it.”
Once the getaway organised by the Blind Date production team had ended, the couple were supposed to go their separate ways.
‘‘VERY MAGICAL’
Sue recalls with a smile: “We asked if we could go to a nightclub.
“They said, ‘No, your date’s over’.”
After returning to the show to tell Cilla all about their getaway, Alex and Sue kept seeing each other, despite living 130 miles apart.
Two years later, Old Etonian Alex proposed and thought it would be nice to share their happy news with Blind Date’s producers.
The story about his engagement to Sue, who went to a comprehensive, appeared on the front page of The Sun.
Little did they know that involving the TV show would mean six camera crews “in morning suits” were there to record their big day — along with host Cilla.
The couple, however, were not nervous about their presence.
Sue says: “Cilla blended in.
“She didn’t take centre stage.
“We had the wedding we wanted to have, even though it was filmed.
“She made sure it was our day.
“Very magical.”
Having got hitched on the Saturday, the highlights of the wedding were broadcast on a Blind Date special the following evening — which saw 17million viewers tune in.
But the couple did draw a line at any cameras following them on their honeymoon in Mauritius.
They went back on Blind Date again after their daughter, Emily, was born — and they stayed in touch with Cilla.
For a while their children were “appallingly embarrassed” looking back on the Eighties perm haircuts and shoulder pads their mum wore at the time, but now they think it is a “lovely” story.
There has been talk of bringing Blind Date back after the successful reboot of another Nineties TV hit, Gladiators, on BBC One.
And Alex thinks it is a great idea.
He says: “It’s changed my life.
“I can assure you it is still entertaining me every day.”
'A day I won't forget'
By Garth Pearce
I’VE interviewed virtually every major film star and the biggest names in rock music.
But nothing compares with the romantic thrill of the Blind Date wedding.
Bride Sue was from my old mining village of Pelsall, near Walsall, on the edge of the Black Country.
Alex was the posh bloke, educated at Eton, but without a snobbish bone in his body.
As for the church, built in 1844, it was personal.
St Michael & All Angels was where my grandparents married directly after World War One and my parents just a few weeks after the end of World War Two.
It was packed on that sunny day on October 19, 1991 – and I would think that half the village turned out to line the streets and applaud the wedding cars.
Cilla Black made her grand entrance, of course, seated in a large hat directly in line with the altar for filming purposes.
And those in the church seemed to raise the Victorian roof with the first hymn – Praise, My Soul, The King Of Heaven – directly before the ceremony.
The happiness seemed to come in layers thicker than the huge cake itself, which was waiting at the reception in Swinfen Hall, near Lichfield.
First was the fact that Blind Date finally had a wedding after six years of attempting to match up likely couples on television.
Second, it was with a couple who were clearly madly in love.
And third? A conviction among everyone attending, me included, that this would be a marriage to last.
THE DATE FROM HELL
WHEN Jaz Ampaw-Farr sat across from her Blind Date at a fancy restaurant in Austria she was hoping for a romantic evening.
But as John from Leeds took her hand and moved closer it wasn’t to whisper sweet nothings.
Instead, back in 1991 she suffered an “embarrassing” moment that she’s tried to forget.
Jaz, 53, a businesswoman and keynote speaker from Milton Keynes, recalls: “We’re having dinner, the food is amazing but it’s all small like nouveau cuisine.
“I thought he was going to whisper something beautiful.
“He says ‘I’ve got to go for a McDonald’s love, my belly thinks my throat’s been cut.’ And I’m squeezing his hand going ‘sorry, no, what? You’re not leaving?’
“He’s like ‘it’s alright, I’ll go to the toilet, climb out the window.’ And that’s exactly what he did.”
Jaz, who was later a contestant on The Apprentice in 2013, was left to spend the final evening of their holiday in Europe alone.
John’s ungallant behaviour did not impress Cilla, who asked him why he ditched the lovely lady at the restaurant.
He replied ‘when you’re hungry, you’re hungry. I could have eaten a scabby horse.’
That chastening experience did not deter Jaz from more blind dates.
In fact she met her husband Ed in 1999 after entering a competition in Marie Claire magazine to go out with their “man of the month.”
Jaz says: “I grew up in foster care on the streets. Success doesn’t happen if you sit around with your fingers crossed, you’ve got to get up and do the work.
“I’m a resilience ninja, you just kind of got to put yourself in situations outside your comfort zone.
“I applied, met him, fell in love, got married, had three kids, and have been married for 25 years. So it works sometimes.”
SCRIPTED ANSWERS
TOMMY Sandhu knows Blind Date inside out, having been a contestant before taking over from ‘Our Graham’ as the show’s voiceover man.
In the much loved format one picker asked a trio of potential romantic partners a series of questions.
Stand-up comedian and podcaster Tommy was the man who had to decide which woman had the best answers back in 1997, having not seen what any of them looked like.
But the 47-year-old from London reveals: : “What you don’t realise about the show is the ones who mess their answers up do a retake.
“When the retakes are done, you lose the gag or you lose the impact of what they were trying to say in the first place.
“So for that reason, the one that I picked was the slickest on the day.”
Although, Tommy says the fact she was an aerobics instructor also swayed him because “I’ve never met an unattractive aerobics instructor.”
Romance didn’t blossom in swanky Monte Carlo on the French Riviera because the then 20-year-old Tommy feels he wasn’t sophisticated enough.
He admits: “We were not compatible in the same ways because she wanted someone who’s gonna pick the bottles of wine, who’s gonna know what French things are on the menu.
“I was not that guy. I was like, let’s have some shots and I don’t think that really impressed her at all.”
On the final night they agreed to do their own thing, and Tommy ended up enjoying drinks with Formula 1 drivers Mika Hakkinen and Pedro Diniz.
The show was to change his life, though, because walking out in front of the audience gave him a “buzz” Tommy wanted to repeat.
He remembers: “You just get this feeling of electricity that runs through you want this all the time.”
Tommy was recognised in the street and opportunities opened up because he was the guy from Blind Date.
He worked as a presenter with Tess Daly on Sky’s Smash Hits TV and in 2002 was asked to replace Graham Skidmore, who died in 2021 aged 90, as the man who summed up the three potential romantic partners on Blind Date.
Tommy, who hosts a cooking show on Colors TV called Desi Beat and has a podcast Tommy’s Brownload, says: “It changed my life. The doors, Cilla opened up.
“She got me DJ sets. I deejayed for her 60th birthday party where Jude Law and Joan Collins are all hanging out.”
He is in favour of bringing Blind Date back.
Tommy concludes: “The dating thing is hot. I think there’s something quite cute about taking it back to the innocence of a proper blind date based on personality.”