If the truth be known, everyone is looking for that perfect partner…a little happiness. But are people just too busy for love? Would they know their soulmate if they walked past them in the street?

Well here is the answer in the form of Streetmate, and playing cupid to some of life’s singletons is Holly Willoughby.

What is the concept behind Streetmate?

Well, Streetmate is a dating show which is about real people with their real reactions, going on real dates. There’s no set-up involved, it’s has a very fly-on-the-wall feel, and I think it shows what people could do if only they were a little braver. There’s no audition process for the show so it’s giving people that maybe wouldn’t normally go for these types of shows a chance. It’s very off-the-cuff. When we find the people to go on the dates, they had no idea when they got up that morning that they were going to end the day as part of a television dating show!

Where in the country do you take your Cupid’s arrow?

Where don’t we go? All over, literally everywhere. Edinburgh, Glasgow, London, Belfast Dublin, Manchester, Birmingham, Durham, Cambridge, Exeter…everywhere!

Are there any particularly funny stories which happened during filming?

Goodness, there were so many. One that springs to mind is when I turned the tables on a builder by wolf whistling him and yelling, “Show us yer bum!” through a megaphone. He was high up on a scaffold and bared his bits to the whole of Birmingham! When we were in Liverpool, I was asking a group of blokes if men from there were romantic. To prove they were, two of them picked me up and dragged me off to show just how romantic they can be! And in Newquay, a rather hunky topless surf dude called Serge sent me all the girls on the production team into such a spin we had to have a break to cool down.

Is there a specific couple you have your eye on who you think make a great pair?

There have been a few and some I’m really quite excited about. There’s been a lot of snogging, which is always good. It’s great when there are people who you wouldn’t except to get along end up actually getting along really well. The thing with Streetmate is that it’s a lot on face value, and whether the person likes the way this guy or girl looks. What can happen is that somebody might like what the other person looks like facially and is absolutely who they go for, then they can go on the date and mess it up by acting like a total idiot. Personality does overrule quite a lot. And I don’t know in advance how the dates are going to go. You can’t second guess.

What was it like running up and down the street literally accosting people and asking them if they were single and fancied a date?

I’m getting better at it! Obviously at first I was a bit, “Oh my God!” and I’m thinking, “I’m about to ask somebody what their sex face looks like”, which is quite a tricky question to go and ask somebody you don’t know! But after the first few dates you begin to realise how much this approach actually works and you think, “Wow, this is brilliant”, and it works so well. After that there isn’t an element of embarrassment in me anywhere because you just know you’re doing it for a brilliant cause. It really just becomes quite normal.

Did you watch Streetmate when it was hosted by Davina McCall?

Definitely, I loved it! I used to watch it all the time and thought Davina was amazing. There’s a really funny story here, actually. When I was doing my showreel to get into television I re-enacted Streetmate and got my friend to film me going up and down Carnaby Street in London. Then cut to several years later then I’m actually going up and down Carnaby Street presenting the show for real. Very weird!