From Love Island to Just Good Friends Villa to The House of Undisguised Revulsion in 60 short minutes
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy,” wrote St Paul in his letter to the Corinthians, and if anyone has a carbon copy of it lying about then do fax it without delay to a roof balcony somewhere in Mallorca where, at time of writing, five inexplicably glammed up women may still be incarcerated in the name of public safety.
Certainly, none of them should be released until they can demonstrate they have no intention to kill or otherwise harm a performing arts student called Georgia and a Welsh solicitor called Rosie, who have both now been scooped from the primordial orange soup that is Love Island central casting and fired into the villa like a lipstick shaped rocket.
Until the newbies arrived, and we’ll come back to that thermonuclear incident later, to be frank, Love Island 2018 stood on the brink of catastrophic failure.
Eyal doesn’t fancy Hayley. Hayley doesn’t fancy Eeyore, a man she has now slept in the same bed as three times yet still imagines to have been named after a cartoon donkey she has in all likelihood never heard of.
Dani doesn’t fancy Jack, and after psyching herself up to end their relationship for a period of time only slightly longer than the length of the relationship itself, went and told him as much, as he perched on a formica counter top and spectacularly failed to style it out.
“It’s fine babe it’s sweet yeah it’s fine babe it’s sweet yeah it’s fine babe it’s sweet yeah it’s fine babe it’s sweet yeah,” was all he could say as a bit of his heart broke at the very same moment he became a human gif, it’s fine babe it’s sweet yeah it’s fine babe it’s sweet yeah, playing out on loop for as long as the viewer could bear not to click on something else.
It’s fine babe it’s sweet yeah I’m just, erm, gonna go over there and erm, live in the same room as you for the next seven weeks while you, in all likelihood, have sexual intercourse with someone else within my earshot.
The ITV hub replays are proving inconclusive but I’m still prepared to swear that just for a split second, the bioluminescence levels in his teeth dropped as well, becoming briefly safe to look at without the aid of that bit of welder’s glass that’s been in the kitchen drawer since the solar eclipse of 1999.
The bit where the parents turn up is not meant to happen for seven long weeks yet, but if Mr and Mrs Jack Senior do eventually arrive, they should brace themselves now for the sight of the their darling biro salesman son, rocking backwards and forward on the immaculate astroturf, lying to himself and the 65 high definition cameras and the TV audience of millions that it’s fine babe it’s sweet yeah it’s fine babe it’s sweet yeah it’s fine babe it’s sweet yeah.
Indeed, so traumatised was Jack that, hours later, he would find himself dressed for the evening and giving his own reflection a pep talk. “He’s pulled it off again! Casual but smart, again!” he boomed, evidently unable to see what everyone else could, which was brogue style ankle boots teamed with formal shorts, a combination traditionally only worn with great reluctance by Australian postmen.
Kendall, we must assume is not a diligent student of the ongoing Brexit negotiations, as she would surely have learnt that the have-your-cake-and-eat-it strategy is not one likely to be successful. Adam, we must assume, is still on the go, but the final “coming-up-next” shots show clear and present tongues between first-love Niall and new girl Georgia, inter-spliced with Kendall wearing a mask of purest hatred. That saga's got legs.
Laura, just moments after discovering Wes had once spent £1,000 on a single date appears to have subjected him to a radical reappraisal. Quite where 20-year-old Wes has acquired that sort of cash is a secret we are yet to be let in on, although almost unnoticed above his granite abdomen sits the wrinkled forehead of a man of at least 35, so perhaps that's what’s earning the money.
Whatever it is, it was enough to convince Laura to whisk Wes off to the daybed for a snog, then issue a full statement on the subject first to her fellow females and then direct to the ITV cameras, each element combining to form a PR campaign with all the studied subtlety of last year’s Taylor Swift and Tom Hiddleston “paparazzi” shots.
But all this was to come to nothing, when the men “hosted” a “drinks party” for the two new arrivals, with the other women uninvited and forced to watch from the balcony above.
Oh, the hatred. The undisguised, untrammelled, purest hatred. “Why’s he got a shirt on? Why’s he got a shirt on?” said Laura of Wes, temporarily unaware of the at least four hours of beatification she herself had been through in order to stand on a balcony and abuse some total strangers.
Still, it’s the public that’s got the most to answer for. For reasons best known to them, they voted for solicitor Rosie to go on a date with A&E doctor and general fun sponge Alex, who had spent the previous hour telling anyone who would listen that he “still had to prove to people in here and outside that I have a lot to offer”.
Just to say again Alex, you’re a qualified doctor, a saver of lives. The general public is not holding out for you to show yourself the possessor of an as yet concealed capacity to generate hashtaggable phrases ideally featuring the word muggy, and become the instagram front man for all inclusive holidays to Cancun.
And we can expect poor Rosie to tell him precisely that, before running either for absolutely anyone else that will have her, or failing that the hills, come Friday’s recoupling.
