COMMENT

So... what’s love got to do with it?

THIS isn’t Love Island, it’s Treasure Island with a potential £50,000 cash prize for prurient porn.

That’s what one of these performing-seal couples could win tonight for making Last Tango in Paris look like a children’s tea party.

This isn’t making love, it’s making money – with dozy hunks and busty pin-ups looking for instant celebrity.

But they’re being taken for a ride, as well as taking each other for one.

ITV has hit the jackpot with record viewing figures and multi-million

PAUL ROUTLEDGE

deals to sell the show round the world. Putting cameras in a double-bed dorm is cheap telly with immense financial rewards and the promise of yet more series.

Creator Richard Cowles says the show allows people to see love blossom, “a window into the perplexing world of modern dating”. This is a fancy way of saying the viewer is a Peeping Tom. The same behaviour has got hot young Brits kicked out of hotels elsewhere in Majorca because the Spanish don’t much care for public bonking.

I share their reticence. Sex is a private, thing. The idea that gawping viewers should score performances for the sake of TV ratings is as obnoxious as it is cynical.

I doubt Richard Cowles would want cameras in his bedroom, so we can only score him for his trashy show: 0/10. I shan’t be watching.

16/1: The outsiders as some ask whether Gabby is “faking” romance