Viewers cringe as First Dates disaster sees former couple reunited on the show — after he dumped her by text
Had fate brought Emma and Peter back together after he brutally dumped her 18 months before in the worst possible way?
FIRST Dates took a turn for the painful last night when two people who'd already dated were matched on the Channel 4 show.
To make matters worse, the bloke involved — Peter — had dumped the woman — Emma — by text, and she was still sore about it.
Poor mum-of-two Emma arrived first and looked very shocked indeed when Peter walked in, 18 months after he abruptly ended their romance.
Amazingly she did not walk out of the restaurant, and the pair had to sit together discussing what went wrong over dinner.
Viewers were on tenterhooks to see whether tough nut Emma would give smoothie Peter another chance, particularly as he soon apologised for dumping her by text.
"I just think you could have done it in a better way. I don't do text dumping," Emma said.
"Well now I can say sorry," Pete replied, before a waitress in the restaurant came over to the table to judge Pete's thoughtlessness.
"I need to just take a breath because I'm literally in shock," Emma later told a friend on the phone in the bathroom, before asking for advice about what to do.
Emma - who called her date the first person she'd "really let her guard down with" - had met Peter on her birthday in a nightclub, and was told by her mates that he was a good catch.
Meanwhile Peter, who's also a parent, admitted he was hurt by a past relationship which could explain why he dumped Emma, and runs from relationships that are too "hot or serious".
He'd split from a past girlfriend, and the mother of his first child, three weeks before their wedding because she called it off.
Their own personal issues aside, neither Emma nor Peter could ignore how strange it was that they'd been paired up like this again.
"I'm glad this has happened," said Peter at the table, before Emma agreed: "It's really interesting that they've matched us and we're here."
After all that, Peter said he'd be "more than up for" going on another date with Emma, though she seemed very reluctant because of the way he tossed her on the scrapheap.
"I'm not gonna go out with someone, again, who's treated me badly," she explained.
Channel 4 later updated viewers via Twitter on whether it had actually worked out with Peter and Emma second time round.
Only one of them had been lucky in love since the date, and with someone else, who wears underpants, unlike Peter.
Viewers found the whole experience of watching the TV car crash rather invigorating.
- You can catch up with First Dates on All 4.
