We have all been on first dates where awkward conversation has been punctuated with long, empty silences as someone desperately tries to think of something witty to say.

Sadly, more often than not, what usually ends up coming out is a mixture of the incomprehensible, unamusing and offensive.

Now a pair of enterprising women believes they have hit upon a novel idea to overcome that initial nervous encounter by urging first daters to draw what they think.

Friends Madeleine Meadows and Clarence Singleton stumbled upon the idea at a seminar on alternative ways to communicate where they were each asked to articulate what they were thinking by doodling on a pad.

The experiment left the pair in stitches and, soon after, they decided set up Doodle Date – the city’s first non-speaking speed dating event.

Now their business is flourishing, with scores of pubs across the city wanting the pair to host evenings.

For more information visit www.doodledate.eventbrite.com What is the strangest first date you have ever had? Tell us below.