Love Island is sending people off the rails
On Sunday morning I stood on Wimbledon Common for two hours while drinking overpriced coffee.
Like a sleep-deprived womble spotter I waited and I waited and then I saw it — the first of my four friends rounding the corner of a muddy woodland trail looking not too shabby for someone half way into a 13-mile run.
For me the thought of running 13 miles is ludicrous. I’m not unfit but I just hate running, plus I’m very bad at it.
Not only that but having to negotiate swarms of dog walkers, ramblers and cyclists — who had all completely disregarded the no entry signs and had decided to intermingle with the hundreds of runners — without physically assaulting them would be near impossible for me.
All of this meant when I greeted the group as they crossed the finish line just under an hour later I was exceptionally proud of them. These were kings amongst men, I thought as I firmly shook four sweat drenched hands.
Fast-forward two days and this quiet respect had been completely and utterly crushed.
Two of the group had gone off the rails and, in my opinion at least, crossed the point of no return all in the space of a 90-minute TV show.
Two hundred and eleven. That’s the number of messages exchanged over the course of the premier of the new season of ITV 2 reality show Love Island.
I shouldn’t be surprised, I had to endure 11 weeks of our all-male WhatsApp group chat being decimated in a similar way last year.
I tried to join in, I watched at least 15 minutes of this rubbish, but I just don’t get it.
For those lucky enough to have avoided it Love Island is a show, this year featuring Danny Dyer’s daughter, Dani Dyer, where young and single people who either think they have or actually have good bodies go on dates and then almost certainly sleep with each other. And people can’t get enough of it.
In my opinion this show is the single reason why older generations have decided so-called millenials are going to destroy the planet.
It’s a scourge and it’s destroying young lives.