It was my French flatmate who alerted me to the clunkiness of British idioms. She taught me tenir la chandelle
– the eloquently captured French idiom for the third wheel on a date.
The image of a third person holding up a candle while two lovebirds
enjoy a dimly lit dinner is perfectly rational. You can imagine Miranda
Hart doing it for Carla Bruni and Nicolas Sarkozy.
The English
equivalent – playing gooseberry – is frumpy and seemingly obscure. The
etymology is less allegorical here: the "gooseberry" is the unwanted
guest; it was once synonymous with the devil, or a bored chaperone idly
picking bitter fruit while two lovers sneak off to expose a daring bit
of ankle to one another in a nook of the orchard.
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