SMELL MY BEADS, it's time to catch up on all the action - and reaction - from the Love Island villa with Daisy Buchanan's Mid-Week Mug Off!
Jiminy Christmas, just what is going on in that villa? There has been so much devastation and chaos that we genuinely long for the day, about a thousand years ago, when Adam chose Kendall. That felt like a relaxing massage with whale music and complimentary birch water compared with the maelstrom of drama we have suffered since...
It all started to unravel, fast, when Megan turned up. Now, everybody in there is almost too gorgeous to look at, but Megan looks like Marilyn in The Misfits, if Marilyn time travelled to 2018 and was given ten grand to do a collab with Boohoo.com. Eyal, in particular, was looking at Megan as though she was made of magic mushrooms. If he’d bowled up to her and murmured “Is your hair weaved from dreamcatchers?” we might have forgiven him for the rest of his watery spiritual bellendery. However, for all of Eyal’s self declared depth, he really only cares about his length, so he just drooled on the ground like the rest of us. “I like Megan. I like women!” he told Love Island’s mysterious invisible Diary Room Deity. “Not girls!” I think that was supposed to be a devastating put down for Hayley, but it really just sounded as though Eyal was channelling a dodgy seventies DJ in an accusation heavy press conference.
Of course, if Eyal was a little more broadly spiritually attuned to the goings on in the villa and not so far up his own aura, he might have been able to pre-empt the most shocking shock news – before Tuesday night’s edition, Island Officials announced that Niall had left! Now, silly and serious theories abound, and we should say that if Niall is having issues with his physical or mental health, his family or anything warranting serious concern, we send much love and sympathy, and we sincerely hope he’s OK. However, some of us are truly hoping that he’s left to tell Kendall he loves her (apologies to any Kem-dall shippers in the house), the rest of us are crossing our fingers and wishing that he’s finally got his Hogwarts letter, and the Daily Mail have the maddest theory of all – it’s because he’s “insecure about his ears”. Right. The only good news in the wake of this tragedy is that the pressure on the Islanders has eased off. None of the boys or girls are going anywhere, so we can relax and enjoy the gentle, tender friendship that is blossoming between Samira and Alex, while zoning out to the soothing sounds of Hayley’s singsong Liverpudlian nonsense. Close your eyes and think of the Brexit trees, lifting their leaves in the wind as they drift away, shutting the trade routes behind them…
The gang are summoned for a load of picnic dates, in which they are forced to sit on the scratchiest grass I’ve ever seen in my life – Samira and Charlie make the shocking discovery that they’re both looking for a life partner who they like and get on with, and Eyal and Megan “enjoy” an extremely performative snog which has me googling emergency plumbers until I figure out that the strange whirring sucky noise is just coming from the telly. I kept my dinner down by breathing through my mouth and focusing firmly on that hay bale.
Alex does not kiss Megan and implies that he expects a prize for being a gentleman who doesn’t put out on the first date. (I am imagining him in the Tesco queue now. “I am a man of medical science, and unlike my caddish counterparts, I do not force myself on women. I deserve to go straight to the front and I want all of your Computers for Schools vouchers.”) However, Alex seems to have a genuine connection with Megan, and she’s giving him some serious signals. Even when he tells her she’s brave to “admit” to her old stripping job. I would argue that Alex is the brave one, nobly choosing to work in one of the country’s most unfairly reimbursed professions when he could be earning thousands of pounds a night for wearing nowt but his stethoscope.
While I am complaining about things, I need to talk about how much I hate all of the games. I am a party pooper. A jolly-no-roger. All I have learned from the activities is that Hayley claims not to know what an earlobe is, which makes me think that the only dumb thing about her is the fact that she believes we’ll all buy that she’s that stupid. Even in these smartphone times, you cannot be as ignorant as she claims to be and still be alive. Unless there’s an amazing Alex Mack style twist, in which we discover that she’s incapable of retaining any facts because many years ago, Wes accidentally zapped her with a nuclear ray gun. And my goodness, I’d rather watch The Human Centipede on a continuous loop than see the islanders mouth-feeding each other spitty spaghetti.
Bad Adam has now been told off by Laura for his shocking treatment of Rosie and Kendall. Laura was gentle but deadly. When millions of us would have loved to shake Adam by the shoulders and scream in his face “WHY? WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS?” Laura simply said "You don’t want to be with someone who is insecure, you’ve already said that, but your actions are making girls insecure. Just take some responsibility," she said. On behalf of heterosexual womankind, thank you Laura. Adam miraculously managed to stop everyone in the country from hating him by coming up with one of the best lines of all time – not just in Love Island, but on television. With Charlie, Adam hatches a plan to give Alex some time with Megan, while distracting Eyal. They start with some hippy nonsense about astronomy – “What’s the North Star? Is that over Newcastle?” and then, when Eyal looks over to Alex at a crucial moment, Adam yells “SMELL MY BEADS!” which brings us straight back to The Human Centipede. Heartbreakingly, Adam’s whiffy bracelet is not enough to alter the course of true love, or true shagging. Alex and Megan appear to come to some sort of tender understanding – AND THEN SHE GOES OFF AND SNOGS EYAL! I want my license fee back. Yes, I know we’re watching ITV2 and I don’t care.
Biggest grafter: Once again, Adam, who might be the Worst Potential Boyfriend In The World ™ but put in some serious effort on behalf of his pal. And he was much more imaginative than the rest of us, who would have distracted Eyal by saying “Look over there! They’re giving away free salt lamps!”
Most Melty: Sadly at the moment, no-one loves anyone as much as I love this tweet, in which @alice_redknap’s little sister pointed out that it was a bit naughty of Wes and Laura to drink champagne in the hideaway after brushing their teeth.
Pie time: Bloody Megan not only mugged poor Alex off hard, but she’s pieing him with a man-child who almost certainly rubs a crystal under his armpits instead of using actual deodorant, because his image of himself as an environmentalist is much more precious to him than the actual environment of everyone around him. Karma will get you, Megan – if not in the next few weeks, then at Bestival, when you miss Grace Jones because Eyal is making you sit in a prayer circle instead.
