The Honeymeade Introduction Agency of Lower Wickham has stopped introducing people to one another. Its founder, Mrs Constance Fairlee, announced the change last week in a video that has since been viewed 2.3 million times.

Mrs Fairlee said the decision followed a year of reviewing her numbers. Footage of clients describing their ideal partner, filmed before any introduction took place, consistently drew larger audiences than footage of the same clients on actual dates with the people they had been matched with.

"The hope was the product," Mrs Fairlee said. "The dates were overhead."

The agency's most popular video, in which a 41-year-old beekeeper named Douglas Pell described his ideal partner as "patient, and not allergic to anything," has been viewed 800,000 times. Mr Pell was subsequently introduced to a woman who matched this description exactly. Footage of the two of them enjoying a quiet lunch together has been viewed 212 times, 140 of which Mrs Fairlee attributes to Mr Pell's mother.

The new terms

Under the revised contract, clients pay a monthly retainer of 40 pounds to remain single and hopeful on camera. Introductions are explicitly prohibited. Any client who finds a partner independently must notify the agency within seven days, after which their retainer lapses and their segment is retired.

Fourteen of the agency's nineteen clients have signed the new contract. Three declined, found partners within the month, and now appear in a spin-off series about people the agency describes as "no longer with us," a phrase Mrs Fairlee confirmed refers to their relationship status.

The clients

Mr Pell is among those who renewed. He films his segment each Tuesday in the agency's converted garden shed, seated on a wooden chair beneath a lamp that Mrs Fairlee adjusted three months ago and has not moved since.

He described the arrangement as satisfying. "I know what I want," he said. "That's what people come to see. If I met her, the wanting would stop, and then what would we film on Tuesdays."

A second client, Miss Rosalind Beckwith, 35, said she had been hopeful for eleven months and intends to continue indefinitely. Her segment, in which she describes wanting someone who reads, performs 40 percent better than the agency average. Mrs Fairlee said no one at the agency has asked Miss Beckwith whether she reads.

Mrs Fairlee said she has no plans to reintroduce introductions. The agency recently hired two camera operators and is negotiating use of a second shed.

"Matchmaking was always about finding people what they were missing," she said. "It turns out what they were missing was an audience."