FANCY coming face-to-face with your future husband or wife at the altar?

If the answer is ‘yes’, then Oxfordshire radio station Jack FM’s social experiment could set you up for life.

The station wants to marry off two people, who will not even clap eyes on each other until the day of the wedding, just to prove the adage ‘love is blind’.

However, the Jack idea – which mimics a highly-criticised competition by a Birmingham radio station which employed TV host Jeremy Kyle as a DJ at the time – has been branded cheap and risky by Oxford church leaders and relationship counsellors.

Sue Carter, 106 Jack FM and Glide FM 107.9 programme director denied ‘Two Strangers and a Wedding’ was a stunt.

She said: “We have all got friends who have met someone and fallen in love via the internet, a crowded bus, or even in the line at a supermarket, so why could you not meet the person of your dreams, talk to them, and get to know them, date them and fall for them with help from a radio station?

“As one of our listeners, who has been blind since birth said, I do not see why it should not work. I have been married to my husband for 21 years and I have never seen him!”

The ‘experiment’ invites single men and women to nominate themselves as the ‘ideal perfect partner’ in marriage.

A potential bride will be selected over the next couple of weeks.

The station listeners and employees will work with the friends and family of the finalist to pick a suitable spouse.

The pair will have heard about each other via the radio station and will meet while blindfolded, but will not see one another until the day they pledge to spend the rest of their lives together.

However, Rt Revd Colin Fletcher, the Bishop of Dorchester, expressed his discomfort at the idea.

He said: “The Church of England values marriage.

“We can’t help feel this a cheap and possibly risky publicity stunt that might not have the happiest ending for the couple involved.

“We encourage engaged couples to take a responsible attitude to the lifelong commitment.”

Dr Taj Hargey, of the Summertown Islamic Congregation in Oxford, said it belittled the sanctity of marriage.

He said: “Marriage is one of the building blocks of our communities.

“If Jack FM wanted to match the couple and then ask them after two or three months, at the least, whether they still feel like getting married that would be better.

“Also to meet blindfolded is ridiculous. You may be turned on my someone’s personality, but turned off by their physical appearance.

“I would advise whoever dreamt this up to go back to the drawing board. “ Emer Glynn, who offers marriage guidance, relationship counselling and sex therapy, said the idea was ‘ridiculous’.

Ms Glynn, who is based in Wolvercote, said: “It’s about body language, eye contact and reading someone.

“Blind people have to live without that but have other heightened senses to make up for it.

“People have got to spend time getting to know one another.”

CAN IT WORK?

TWO Strangers and a Wedding was first created and hosted in Australia, in Adelaide and Sydney in 1998. The couple are believed to have split several months later, but are now married to other people and have children. In the UK Birmingham radio station BRMB has married two sets of couples. In 1999, the first couple were matched by a panel of relationship counsellors and astrologers The groom was 28 year-old Greg Cordell and the bride was Carla Germaine, a 23 year-old former model. The couple married but soon split after the wedding. Ms Germaine later met and married ITV chat show host Jeremy Kyle who at the time was one of the radio station’s DJs. They now have a family together. In 2006, another couple were married, but were reported to have split four months later.