In August this year, inspired by a particularly horrendous date he'd just had and fed up with the trials of single life, journalist and author Rhodri Marsden invited his Twitter followers to send in their worst ever dating experiences (in 140 characters or less, of course). The result was astonishing. Within hours Rhodri was flooded with 1000s of crazy, shocking and hilarious true stories of dating disasters. And as the word spread, people all over the world began to submit their calamitous experiences, sending Rhodri's Tweet viral and attracting the attention of newspapers, TV shows and online magazines drawn to this incredible story.

Crap Dates is the best from Rhodri's hilarious collection of real-life dating howlers, and is guaranteed to bring a smile to anyone who has ever had a bad date . . . everyone:

AdeleLBamber: He drank A LOT & talked about his sister A LOT. I left & he phoned +20 times. Last voicemail was him singing Billy Ocean at 4am.

emilyhill1982: Told him I liked reading, he said he wanted to burn all libraries and then talked about football for hours. I hid in the loo.

Abzbyrne: I had one who turned up, on a warm summer evening, in a huge arran jumper because he thought I'd like that being Irish.