People fall in love with New York at a glance. New Yorkers falling in love with one another proves more of a challenge. Paul Smith went speed-dating NYC style to find out why.

Ashley is 29, tall and slender, full of bust and long of leg, with hair that smells like Lyons Golden Syrup and eyes so blue you could charter a plane to them.

She's also scaring the living bejesus out of me.

Her gaze is unblinking and the passing seconds only widen her stare. The slivers of silence puncturing our conversation stretch into ravines of deathly quiet.

Ashley is playing for keeps tonight, and I'm simply not Jewish enough to fertilise her eggs. And I'm English, which she is incandescent about. I'm wasting her time - and her eggs – simply by existing on the stool in front of her. Oh for the love of god, stop looking at me like that.

Speed dating in New York can be brutal.

It's big bucks here, in a city that despite its cosmopolitan credentials is romantically stunted. Just walk the streets and listen to the cellphone conversations of twenty something women. Life, love and happiness - or lack thereof - are the all-consuming concerns of New Yorkers.

Tonight's Eight Minute Dating event aims to mend a few of these broken hearts. There are 32 of us, two groups of sixteen professionals in an upstairs bar near Manhattan's iconic Flatiron building. There are lawyers here, teachers too, architects, accountants and - in a cruel twist of irony - a wedding planner.

That’s Heather, my second date of the evening. Her oestrogen bomb isn't ticking quite so loudly.

"I can understand how she feels," says the 30 year old, sympathising with the future mad cat lady.

"A lot of people in this city are from someplace else. They get here, find so much to see and do that life passes them by. You can't afford to buy a place, there's no point having a car, so you're like a kid without any real responsibility. Settling down is an afterthought in New York, the place overwhelms you."