Online Dating: now it's the e-book, the uncut version of my romantic adventures

And it's not just what you may have already read on this site: it's the uncensored version of Julie's sex life with men that she admits, are far from normal.

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You can buy the e-book for a mere £1.99 by clicking on one of the three device options (right).

But if you need any more persuasion, why not find out a bit more about the wonderfully engaging Ms McDowall?

So Julie, tell us about the woman behind the blog: your bio, your personal background…all the bits (even though there can’t be many) that you’ve kept secret so far.

I've had a strange life so far. It was weird from the very beginning, starting from when my Dad took me to the local Protestant church to get christened, only to discover – years later and with real fury - that my Gran had spirited me away to her chapel to have me ‘done’ as a Catholic the night before.

Later, she needed assurance that ‘the wean’ would still be considered Catholic after going through a Protestant ceremony, and the priest told her ‘Julie’s soul’s now as white as Persil.’

Due to family politics, divorces and remarriages I’ve had three different surnames. On my last deed poll application I decided to scrap my boring middle name and replace it with something glittering and meaningful,  so a long night was spent debating between Morrissey, Scarlett or Ariel. I chose the latter.  

So, there have been two christenings, three surnames, 17 jobs, one nervous breakdown and a soul as white as Persil.

I’ve always felt a bit different.

There was one occasion when I got weary of being an outsider and decided to give in and go along with the crowd.

I was 12 at the time and had a furious crush on Michael Caine. My sister’s half of our bedroom was slathered in shiny posters snipped from Smash Hits, whereas my half of the room had yellowed newspaper cuttings torn from the TV section of the paper, advertising an upcoming Michael Caine film, with a tiny, grainy picture of him.

These were the solemn days before the internet so you couldn’t buy huge posters of him looking mean and sultry in his 1960s cool. In fact, the only way to find out if a Michael Caine fan club existed was to write a letter to our local newspaper who had a section devoted to readers’ questions and handy tips.

I wrote a letter, in my best schoolgirl handwriting, to ask if anyone knew if there was a Michael Caine fan club. My mum was watching over my shoulder and made me rip up the letter and start again; as we were writing to a newspaper we had to sound posh, so I was made to call it ‘a Michael Caine appreciation society’. (There is one, on Oxford Street, and to this day I always buy property on Oxford Street when I’m playing Monopoly.)

Yes, it was hard loving Michael Caine, and I was jealous of all my friends who had crushes on pop stars and so had posters and stickers and fan clubs, not newspaper cuttings and appreciation societies. I decided to cross to the other side and asked my friend, Rosalind, for her Smash Hits magazines and I tore out the posters none of our other friends had wanted.

Most of the rejects were of one of the Take That men. Maybe Jason Orange? Howard Donald? One of the less famous ones. I decided he’d be my new idol. I skipped home with my slithery pile of posters and papered the walls with them.

Then, during a dinner (a plate of frozen Micro Chips and fish fingers, served on the carpet in front of the TV) I suddenly felt tiny and ashamed. Nuts to this, I thought, and ran into my room and tore all the silly Smash Hits posters down and lovingly and carefully blu-tacked my Michael Caine clippings back on the wall. I looked at the yellow and crinkling display with contentment. I’ll never try to be normal again, I thought.

So I was always glad to be an outsider - apart from my one hiccup - and my dating blog continues that theme: I’m looking for a fellow freak, just preferably one who’s not evil or mad, as so many of them have been thus far...

And this online dating thing: how did you get into that?

It was a cure for depression. Dating is cheaper than therapy and faster than pills.

I’m not making light of depression or, if I am, it’s because joking about the state I was in is a way of keeping it at bay.

I was first put on anti-depressants when I was 15. I remember being quietly proud of being on then as all great tortured artists are. (How ignorant I was!) I was on and off them for years.

I tried counselling when I got to university, but that was just a nice roly-poly woman giving me advice. I didn’t want advice: I knew perfectly well how to get out of my depression, but I needed the energy or will or decision to act on it.

Later I could afford a posh therapist in a leafy street off Byres Road in Glasgow, but I wore nice clothes and put make-up on when I had an appointment with her as I was hideously ashamed to let her see me as I was.

At one point in the therapy she denied everything I was telling her and said ‘But no! I see a bright young woman in front of me!’ I wanted to slap her, saying she was being fooled by Chanel mascara.

Then my friend asked if I wanted to go on a date with one her pals. I was so anxious about it that it jolted me out of my depressive slump. It’s impossible to feel anxiety alongside depression as anxiety is a surfeit of energy, whereas depression is a total lack of it. So anxiety came crashing in and elbowed some of the depression out of the way.

Going out on dates meant I’d spend time on silly things like doing my hair and make-up and picking out a nice dress, so that my mind felt eased and lighter. I was no longer sitting alone staring at the wallpaper, going over and over and over in my mind what had gone wrong with me. I was allowing myself to indulge in something frivolous and fun.

When the dates with this man petered out I was loathe to go back to my grim depressed self, so I signed up to online dating and the cycle continued: all the activity and nervousness and just plain getting out of the house soon started to clear my depression.

I’m not saying something as trivial as dating cured my depression, but it made me wash my hair, get out of my jammies and into company and conversation. It gave me a shove back into real life - if you can call hanging around with clowns 'real life'.

What’s wrong with old-fashioned blind dates?

I think impatience has ruled out the old-fashioned way. These days, as soon as someone tires of being single, they’ll make a coffee, join a dating site, and have three dates set up before their coffee is even cold. There’s no need to wait to meet someone, or go through the embarrassment of asking friends to scratch around to see if they know anyone they could set you up with.

Is there a danger that online daters aren’t entirely truthful?

 Yes, but men you meet the ‘normal’ way often aren’t truthful either. It’s just that there’s a temptation to lie in online dating as it’s so easy.

When my age on my profile changed from 29 to 30 I got fewer emails as there must be loads of men who just want a 20-something. I imagine they set their search critieria to a maximum age of 29. So, there was a temptation to just shift my age back to 29, but then that’s the start of a slippery slope...

And you can embellish your profile to make yourself sound more appealing. My main love is reading, but, of course, that sounds boring. Men on the dating sites don’t want to hear about my love of literature, they want to know about why I do trapeze. Books are my great love but my dating profile makes no mention of it, but it does contain a photo of me dangling from the trapeze bar. So, I suppose I’m lying by giving the impression that I’m a glamorous circus type, rather than a bookworm who loves a nice cup of tea.

So what if there’s a man out there who is witty and gorgeous and kind and rich but just happens to love trainspotting? He’ll have to lie about that as the dating profile is so unforgiving, and I think he’d be justified in lying as most people surely skim through profiles - as there are simply too many - and you can’t afford to have something like ‘trainspotting’ put people off before they’ve got to know you. Maybe he should just keep his geek hobbies quiet till he’s secured a second date.

I’ve also noticed that almost all men say they want children. Obviously, I just date older men, so I don’t know what the young ‘uns are saying, but the age criteria I search for - 35-50 - seems to suggest  that these men are desperate to be fathers.

Now, I just don’t believe this. I think they say it to attract women as it makes them look sensible and solid and caring and serious. They must think that women of their age group are cruising these sites looking for someone to impregnate them. Maybe some are, but I’m not. When Shug started pestering me about having babies it just made me seem suspicious. I didn’t dissolve into his arms, weeping with relief that I’d found a father for my future brats. I just thought ‘what’s he after?’

Maybe they think if they say definitely not it’ll deter many women or suggest they’re just in it for sex.

There’s always an option on these sites to tick ‘undecided’ to questions such as these. I say it’s best to be - officially - undecided about whether you want children or marriage, because how can you know until you get to know the person?

What’s been your best experience?

My delirious obsession with The Clown.  Life was never dull when he was around and, as I’ve said, my main joy in dating was that it kept me from lapsing back into the grey old existence I’d had before. Clown madness kept me sane.

And the worst?

I haven’t had anything bad happen to me, although the time I fell asleep on The Clown in the Glasgow Film Theatre was quite excruciating.  

Apart from that, the worst thing I’ve had to contend with is boredom and small talk and fretting about how to bring a bad date to a quick end. I simply can’t do small talk, so when it’s obvious me and the chap aren’t ‘clicking’ then I’m in agony as I can’t spin out the hour with light and breezy chatter.

Do your dates know you write the blog? Do they demand anonymity?

All the important ones know, but none of them have demanded anonymity, although both Shug and The Clown have grumbled about me giving away too much about them.

They’ve all had very different reactions to it. Shug was enthusiastic, being a drama queen, and was dying to be in the blog and was constantly texting me to ask when ‘his turn’ would be.  When it was first published, he declared ‘You’re going to be a star!’ He’d proudly share it on his Facebook page and urge everyone to read it.

The Clown is remarkably OK about the blog, given that I repeatedly call him evil and heartless and cruel and label him a man utterly without a soul.

The Silver Fox knows about it and is quite cool with the whole thing, but he can afford to be as he’s the only one - literally the only one - who has behaved with any decency and honour.

Have any produced a backlash after being featured in your candid revelations?

Shug loved the blog and had no problem with me implying he is still in love with his ex-wife and that he’s immature and that he may be in denial about his sexuality. No problem at all with any of this.

Then, suddenly, he flew into a huff when I made a silly joke about him, in the final line of Blog 16. He has since deleted me from Facebook, and blocked me on Twitter, and has said he’ll never speak to me again. The strange thing is that a few weeks after this happened, I was on a weekend break with another beau in North Berwick when Shug appeared at our breakfast  table in the hotel restaurant.

By an awful and hideous coincidence he was there for the weekend too. He came bouncing over to our table, all jazz hands and beaming smiles, to say hello. So, who knows what Shug is up to? One minute he’s blocking me on Facebook, the next he’s upsetting the milk jug at my breakfast table by bounding over to give me a hug.

And will there ever be a Mr Right?

 I don’t think so. I just can’t imagine it. It’s like trying to force your mind to think about what was here before the Big Bang; you simply can’t grasp it at all.

Finally, what will we read in the book that’s been hidden from public gaze so far? Is it really your warts-and-all story, with the kind of detail that a respectable website couldn’t publish?

Sex. Lashings and lashings of it.

I also reveal the horrendous and despicable nickname I gave Shug which caused him to storm out of my flat in the middle of the night.

I simply have no embarrassment about writing such things. The need to tell a good story always trumps the fear that my gran might read it.