The cruel truth about life after ‘Love Island’
Andy Warhol got close. In 1968, he predicted, that “in the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes”. Half a century later, if you’ve been on reality TV, that might eke to 15 weeks. If you win, give it 15 months, but that charge will be draining like a phone battery.
That’s what happened to Mike Thalassitis, who took his own life at the weekend. The former footballer and part-time barber was parachuted into ITV2’S Love
Island in 2017. A bronzed Adonis with hazel eyes, he swaggered in 10 days after the other Islanders. “I’m the Greek god these girls have been waiting for,” Mike bragged, reading lines scripted for maximum conflict. He was named “Muggy Mike”, evicted after one week, voted back in, and then thrown out again.
A fleeting debut, big enough to land him on Celebs Go Dating.
But after, interest waned and he became his grandmother’s carer, hoping to open a café amid mounting debts. Friends say Thalassitis was a sensitive and thoughtful young man, nothing like his Jack-the-lad persona. That has the ring of truth. The 26-year-old’s apparent suicide comes a year after the stillunexplained death of another contestant, Sophie Gradon. “Horrific” comments from trolls had left her “the most stressed and anxious” she had ever been.
For a Love Island fan this is distressing. The fun we all have watching has made the show a huge hit. It’s a guilty pleasure, but will the guilt outweigh the pleasure if former contestants suffer mental health problems as a consequence?
ITV said: “Care for islanders is a process the show takes very seriously … We ensure all of our contributors are able to access psychological support before, during and after the show.” That claim is disputed. And
Towie’s Mario Falcone said TV shows don’t do enough to help contestants who “feel like puppets”. Yet that’s exactly what they are. Scientists use fruit flies for experiments because its metamorphosis is fast and cheap. Similarly, contestants are malleable enough for producers who want to ramp up drama.
They are relatively cheap and disposable and there are thousands ready to take their spot. Almost four times as many people applied to Love Island this year as applied to Oxbridge.
Fiction has always put characters through the mill for entertainment. But this is the first time in history that human beings have been used as pawns in a narrative constructed by faceless people off-camera.
We all make mistakes when we’re young, but the errors of Love Island contestants have the dubious distinction of being both transient and indelible. Most are in their 20s, a decade whose vulnerability is always underestimated. They are called “reality stars” when, in fact, they are more like candles on a cake, destined to burn brightly and briefly, and fiendishly hard to relight once they’ve gone out.
We cannot know for certain if Thalassitis’s despair stemmed from his time as a contestant. Still, it must be fearfully hard to accept that your 15 months of fame has slipped away.
Contestants are not fruit flies whom the TV gods can use for their sport. A duty of aftercare is the very least producers should offer the people it plucks from obscurity, along with a grave warning about the destabilising effect of overnight celebrity.
Arriving on Love Island, Mike Thalassitis said he was a Greek god. It turns out he was just a vulnerable boy.