The Word, Series 3, Episode 14, 12/02/93

The Word – Series 3, Episode 14 (12 Feb 1993) — the Valentine’s special that treats romance like a contact sport and journalism like a dare.

Cupid’s got a hangover and Channel 4 hands him a mic. Tonight’s “love edition” opens with the promise that unlike Blind Date, this show “goes all the way”—which turns out to mean blindfolds, condom spot-checks, and a prize trip to Paris. Our heroine is Amanda K., last seen proposing on live TV and getting jilted; now she’s back as The Word builds a dating Thunderdome: astrologers, a computer-matchmaker, and a brisk rummage through the boys’ rucksacks to confirm they’ve at least heard of safe sex. Losers are dispatched to “Lover’s Limbo.” Dignity left earlier.

Paula Yates swans in, equal parts boudoir and bombshell, to discuss motherhood, tabloids, and why all advice sounds naughtier in a cut-glass accent. She’s witty, spiky, and just reckless enough to make the compliance team reach for the antacids. Sharing the couch (and the raised eyebrows) is Henry Rollins—punk poet, muscle-bound monologuist, and the evening’s unlikely voice of stern romance: love hurts, art hurts, and please stop asking him to smile.

Music slaps the heart rate monitor:

Living Colour tear into “Leave It Alone,” reminding everyone that virtuoso funk-metal is a perfectly valid love language.

Huggy Bear detonate a DIY riot—Valentine’s roses replaced by feedback and zines.

Tasmin Archer supplies the tuneful balm between bouts of televised courtship warfare.

Elsewhere, Danny jets to L.A. to flirt with the grunge pack, and “America’s biggest Barbie dolls” offer Katie dating tips no school would endorse. Back in Wales, Amanda’s selection process escalates from chat-up patter to physical trials, because apparently romance now has a fitness test.

By the end, we’ve learned: Paula can outflirt a cameraman at twenty paces, Rollins can glare a pick-up line into a confession, and Amanda may yet find love provided it survives panel quizzes, public weigh-ins, and a Paris weekend with a film crew. It’s messy, horny, and very 1993—The Word proves once more that nothing says “Be mine” quite like a studio audience chanting for content.