Love Island’s first disabled contestant
A CRICKET star hoping to be a hit on Love Island is the dating show’s first disabled contestant.
Hugo Hammond was in the England Physical Disability team, playing in Bangladesh and Dubai.
The PE teacher, 24, said: “I was born with clubfoot. I had lots of operations when I was a kid.
“You can only really tell when I walk barefoot. I’ve got a really short Achilles heel.”
Also aiming to find love in the ITV villa is Oxfordshire civil servant Sharon Gaffka, 25, who is the only one in her circle of friends who is still single.
Sharon, 25, said: “It’s been a bit of a running joke...that I should apply, probably because I’m the most outrageous one of the group.”
The former beauty queen helped manage the delivery of Covid testing kits during the pandemic and admitted it had been “an intense year” at work.
Another housemate is events host Aaron Francis, 24, from London, who worked at the weddings of Princesses Eugenie and Beatrice: “It was nice and intimate.
You meet a lot of famous people...unless you’re Beyonce, I’m not really interested.”
They are joined by water engineer Jake Cornish, 24, from Weston-super-Mare, whose celebrity crush is reality TV star Billie Faiers; fashion blogger Kaz Kamwi, 26, of Essex who is “ready to be in a relationship”; Fife model and DJ Shannon Singh, 22, who calls her glamour
past “my glory days” plus Nando’s waitress and Birmingham marketing student Liberty Poole, 22, who once had a stranger propose to her in the restaurant. She admitted: “It was a bit unexpected!”
LauraWhitmore returns as host for this year’s series – Love Island was cancelled last year due to the pandemic. It starts on Monday at 9pm, on ITV2 and the ITV Hub.