Before any man is allowed to take Carla Bellucci’s daughter out, he has to get through Carla first.
Most don’t make it.
The 41-year-old from Hertfordshire subjects every potential date of her 20-year-old daughter Tanisha to what she describes as a full interrogation — questions covering sexual history, STI test results, earnings, family background, and whether his parents are still together.
She wants their social media handles too, while she’s at it.
She’s not apologising for any of it.
The interview
Carla’s approach puts her in the same camp as singer Jamelia, who this week told BBC Bitesize’s Parenting Teens that she runs an “interview or interrogation” with anyone seriously interested in one of her daughters — asking directly about sex and contraception to get the conversation started.
“If you’re not mature enough,” Jamelia said, “then you can’t have the conversation.”
Carla goes further. Her checklist includes how many sexual partners the man has, how many women he’s currently sleeping with, proof of a clean STI test, and whether he has children elsewhere.
Then she moves on to money.
“I like to know how much they earn, what their parents do for a living, and if they are still together,” she said.
“These men are rats nowadays — if you want my daughters, come and face me.”
The ones who show up tend to regret it.
“They’re very intimidated by me,” Carla said.
“She has lost dates because of the way I am, but I don’t care — they’d have been a total loser with no balls.”
Tanisha’s view
Tanisha, for her part, has asked her mother to calm down. Carla is unmoved.
“I drive Tanisha crazy. She says I need to chill, but you can’t — because girls nowadays get it so wrong, and then that’s their life down the pan.”
What Carla is looking for, she says, is specific:
“A well-spoken man and someone who earns good money, so I know that later on, when she starts a family, she will be looked after.”
Travel, opportunities, security. The whole package, pre-screened.
None of them, she notes, actually want to face her.
“That’s when I know they are only after one thing.”
Why it matters
Jamelia’s interview went quietly viral this week because it touched something real — the gap between how much parents know about their teenagers’ relationships and how much they feel they should.
Carla represents the louder end of that instinct, but the underlying anxiety is the same.
A generation of parents who grew up watching their own peers make expensive mistakes are now deciding how much interference is too much.
Tanisha presumably has thoughts about that. She hasn’t shared them publicly. Yet.
