I SAW YOU
WE SAW YOU
I SAW YOU playing with Lego in
Jenners on Saturday. You looked quite lovely from a distance. Dark, spiky hair. Lovely honest smile. You’re probably taken or not so good close up? (2009)
We saw you List reader, sending your I Saw Yous into the magazine for 15 years this issue, and making an institution of our ‘missed connections’ service. From the achingly romantic, to the depressingly desperate, to the truly foul there’s a lot of Glasgow and Edinburgh love to reflect on. Here we choose some of the very best I Saw Yous from past issues
I SAW YOU at Big Shuggie’s tattoo parlour last Saturday. You were
having an attractive unicorn rampant etched into your left buttock. I was having stitches tattooed across my throat. Let’s get together and swap
skin stories. (1995)
Dec. You wore a fetching safari suit and pith helmet combo. I think you also had a false leg. I was half naked I SAW YOU in Tesco buying carrots and cheese. Odd combination but it works . . . like we did. I wish we could
and in love. Call me. (2006) work again. (2009)
I SAW YOU sweeping the floor at the galleries – you are hot! Far too hot to sweep. Come to my house and
I SAW YOU working in the GFT café. You’re small with a missing tooth. I love your gappy looks. Make me feel
I SAW YOU in the City Café on Fri 16 hoover instead. (2008)
like a woman again. (2002)
I SAW YOU tall, luminous, yellow jacket, orgasmic. Me: quiet, soft- boiled egg, waiting to be whipped into a frenzy. Do you want my particulars?
(2009)
I SAW YOU at Liberty’s in Dundee.
You were stuck in a cubicle being sick with your pants around your ankles.
Plenty glam though pet. (1997)
I SAW YOU wine-coloured Astra. Me: pale blue Rover 75. You couldn’t but
attract my attention. Your deft dive around me on the approach to the Dumbarton turn-off was a pure
turn-on. (2009)
I SAW YOU stitching my face at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. Thanks, and sorry for being a nightmare
patient. See you next festival! (1999)
I SAW YOU Scotland. For seven years you rained on me, gave me
terrific hangovers and took me from 19 to 26. I will be back you grumpy, mad, proud, passionate country.
(2009)
Place your I Saw You ad online at www.list.co.uk/i-saw-you or drop your I Saw You postcard off at one of the boxes around Glasgow and Edinburgh.
I SAW YOU at Central Station on Saturday: tall, slender, graceful, beautiful, as you walked on by. You saw me: small, fat, with a custard stain on my Linux
T-shirt. You know you want me. (2006)
I SAW YOU: THE FACTS
The I Saw You column made its first appearance in the 1995 Valentine’s special issue of The List. We were off to a good start, with gamblers, fetishists and trekkies reaching out to each other.
And it works! James Barbour was studying at Edinburgh Uni when he saw the woman of his dreams in a student bookshop. One ad and 14 years later, they’re still together, and have two kids to show for it. The secret of his success? Keeping it simple. ‘I interrupted your phone call, bought some books, chatted, but left without asking for your number. My mistake.’
The idea hasn’t gone unnoticed by the wider David Nicholl’s script for List-influenced TV
world. Notably, Arab Strap wrote a song about our feature titled ‘I Saw You’. It features the immortal line, ‘I thought it was a good idea at the time but I was pissed / I tried to find her by sending an ad into The List.’ The feature has also been the influence
behind a 2000 short film, penned and directed by Ewan Morrison, that sticks with the title I Saw You. The award-winning short takes the idea into slightly creepier territory, updating the see-and-be-seen idea for a paranoid CCTV-ridden society.
romcom, I Saw You, has been filmed for Scottish TV on two different occasions. The States have also cottoned on to the idea’s filmic potential, with DreamWorks rumoured to be producing a film based around this year’s graphic anthology, I Saw You: Comics Inspired by Real-Life Missed Connections.
Lastly, there have been unconfirmed reports that an I Saw You letterbox has made its way into the scenery of Scotland’s most glamorous television show, River City. If you see it, be sure to let us know. (Niki Boyle)
26 THE LIST 4–18 Feb 2010
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