Aidan Smith: No more office romances? It'll be the end of civilisation as we know it

I may have said this before. I’m sure I’ll say it again, when the next relationships survey appears: thank goodness I’m not still out there, bumbling around.

Thank goodness I met my wife in the gym - at a bodypump class, no less - because chances are that in the current climate we wouldn’t have got together at work.

In a crackdown that seems likely to be copied by other employers, ITV have ordered staff to declare any office relationships, be they romantic or completely platonic. They might just as well have carried out a full sweep of their studios, pouring bromide in the tea urns.

Thank goodness, too, that Lucy laughed at my jokes because, according to research by the University of Queensland, GSOH - a good sense of humour - isn’t so crucial after all. (This is serious, guys - what else have we got?).

Thank goodness, again, that our first date was an erotic film - “The most sexually extreme mainstream movie ever,” proclaimed the posters for 9 Songs - because going by a study by the University of California if we were embarking on a romance today the sex scenes would have left us uncomfortable and there might not have been a second date.

And, once more, thank goodness we didn’t have Tinder and specifically the new facility enabling friends and family to vet, and presumably veto, potential partners because in our case the reaction of both camps was one of surprise, if not mild alarm - though this was perhaps understandable because the first time we introduced each other was to say we were getting married.

Really, it was just as well internet dating wasn’t around for us. I don’t really know how it all works but if preliminary questions before hooking up are involved, and one of them is “Nice weekend?”, then we might have binned each other there and then. A typical answer from me would have been: “At the football.” Lucy might have said: “My branch of the Countryside Alliance held a fund-raising ball.” But, hey, opposites attract. Seventeen years and counting.

All of this - the relationship surveys, the relationship gizmos, the relationship strictures - have conspired to muddy the already quagmire-ish mating scene in just the past few days. Now, “smug marrieds” is a description sometimes given to those for whom everything worked out fine in the end. Honestly, I don’t feel smug right now. It’s more scrambled-back-from-the-precipice relief.

Before everything worked out fine in the end I had office relationships. Who hasn’t? Before the internet, the office was where you intermet. Before WFH, a third of your life was spent there. Eyes would meet across a row of gonks atop computer screens. From unpromising raw material - shared gripes about IT/fridge thieves/the boss - a friendship could develop into something more. Ignoring the stained carpet tiles and the flickering strip lights, the office was fertile ground for the blossoming of romance compared with a booming, overcrowded disco. (What do I mean: “How old am I, really?” At least I didn’t say discotheque).

I am - after just tallying them up - old enough to have had work relationships almost extending into double figures. “Lazy enough you mean,” says the wife. Hang on, though: they weren’t all in the same place or one after the other. They were spread out over a lengthy period with some being simply flirtations. “Still sounds like a good-going career as an office predator,” she adds, suddenly making me feel like I’m in the stocks on one of Matthew Wright’s old shows debating the moral low ground.

Now, the new “guidelines” at ITV are a response to the Phillip Schofield controversy and the ex-This Morning presenter’s “unwise but not illegal” affair with a male colleague. They’re covering themselves against any possible repeat but, if this catches on elsewhere, love will struggle to bloom by water-coolers, in smoking shelters and during emergency evacuation drills.

Some companies like and actively seek full disclosure of workers who’re in a romantic relationship but ITV’s scrutiny of friendships seems heavy-handed, paranoid and a threat to a harmonious office environment. For instance, what would be etiquette after a colleague at a neighbouring terminal fails to include you as a friend when she’s top of your list and the one you always want in the Secret Santa draw? Would you, like Tim in The Office getting back at Gareth, be entitled to stick their stapler in a jelly?

I am not sure it is any of my employers’ business who I am friends with, just as I don’t think it is any of my business who the Smith girls, 15 and 12, eventually pluck up the courage to bring home to meet the parents. So I won’t be helping them choose boyfriends, even if invited to do so. But be warned guys: like in the movie Meet the Parents, your challenge will be to carve an ornate altar for the garden out of a sturdy tree.

Maybe on that first date Lucy and I should have chosen Meet the Parents, although that would have been just as presumptuous about the future of our romance as 9 Songs.

And our film choice still makes me laugh, especially when young people today confess they’re nothing like as sex-obsessed as my generation, as in the survey revealing they want to see a whole lot less of it on screen. I mean, what’s wrong with them, flirting not with each other but the end of civilisation as we know it? Sneaking into X-rated flicks underage, having darkened my bum-fluff moustache with shoe polish, was one of the great thrills of teenhood.

And I just hope my HR department don’t take that the wrong way …