Trips to the cinema, shops and museums need no longer be lonely experiences after this week's UK launch of a company which rents out friends for innocent dates.
Rent A Friend has already proved a big hit in the US where 2,000 people, each paying 25 pounds a month, have access to an online database of over 218,000 potential companions who have registered themselves on the website.
Popular friend-dates have proven to be trips to the movies, shopping expeditions and cultural visits to museums and galleries.
The venture is the brainchild of 30-year-old Scott Rosenbaum, from New Jersey, who saw a gap in a market in which most other imaginable forms of human interaction already catered for.
"I wanted to go a step back," he said. "No one was offering friendship."
Any members who offer sex or the promise of a more meaningful relationship will be expelled from the site.
Copyright 2010 AFP European Edition
