THE SHOW THAT HAS WOMEN HOOKED

...it’s like the Club 18-30 holidays we never had, says one Love Island addict

WARNING. The following contains scenes of a sexual nature, nudity, adult themes, filthy language, thongs, smoking, lots of snogging – and is highly addictive. Keep young children away from this show. And adults, too, unless, like me, you want to risk addiction.

Like many who perhaps ought to know better, I’ve been watching Love Island with two of my children (aged 20 and 23). Why? Well, it’s definitely not the dialogue. ‘What’s your star sign?’ and ‘Do you want to see my trainer collection?’ are two of the real zingers so far.

No, the hook is this: it’s like all the reality TV shows you’ve ever seen, but with all the boring bits edited out and with only the juicy bits you want to see left in.

It’s snappily edited and there’s a kooky voiceover actor who uses words like ‘scumbaggery’. Oh, and all the participants are stunning – the girls look like pole dancers and the men are mainly tattooed ‘personal trainers’.

This conspires to make it compulsively watchable, a guilty treat, a Double Caramel Magnum ice-cream every day.

It’s on nightly on 3e and there’s a show called Aftersun on Tuesdays that brings all the latest Love Island gossip.

It’s all summer fun to a soundtrack of syrupy love songs. But the reason it’s the Balearic break-out hit of the season is not that it’s about sex, although there’s plenty of that. It’s actually about… relationships.

Love Island regularly draws more than two million UK viewers, and they’re all hooked on the romantic intrigues of its barely clad ‘stars’.

For the uninitiated, the show, now in its third series, throws together a group of telegenic strangers – usually wannabe models – in a villa, this year on Majorca. They each choose a partner to share a bed with, as well as a possible romance – and occasionally, on-screen, underthe-duvet sex.

To pass the time, the contestants play intellectually challenging games such as ‘sexy charades’. They all sleep in a dorm, so the under-the-duvet action is not only in full view of millions of viewers, it’s also in full hearing of other ‘Islanders’.

The public regularly vote to keep their favourite couple in the villa, while the pair with the fewest votes are shown the door. After seven weeks, the most popular couple win £50,000.

Yes, I know there will be plenty who find it sleazy. Some no doubt are berating the broadcasting authorities. But I swear the reason we are watching is not for the heaving duvets.

Perhaps in a world of horrific events it’s simply the sort of mindless escapism we all need. The Club 18-30 holidays we never actually dared to go on. Fun.

For me, though, the real attraction is because it shows that Love Hurts. The gripping storyline of last week, for example, concerned Jonny and Camilla. To cut a long story short, Camilla wanted to ‘take things slowly’. Jonny reckoned things would move faster with Tyla, a sloshpot you’d never take home to meet your mother.

So he dumped classy Camilla, who refused to get intimate, watched not only by a roomful of people but millions watching at home.

A minute later he was snogging Tyla while Camilla was crying her eyes out on a sunbed.

Honestly, I haven’t been on an emotional rollercoaster like that since – gosh, a quarter of a century ago, when I was dumped in a restaurant in Notting Hill by the man who would eventually become my husband.

I’m still getting over it. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

‘The real attraction is that it shows that Love Hurts’