The former Love Island contestant Chris Hughes has accused this year’s batch of fame-hungry frottage merchants of faking their romances. For the uninitiated, Hughes was a firm favourite with fans in 2017 because of his bromance with fellow contestant Kem Cetinay and a onscreen gaffe that launched the Jason Staythumb meme.
It’s hardly the first time the authenticity of the reality show’s couplings have been called into question. Last year, incel icon Dr Alex had a crack at a fauxmance with Ellie Brown, even if she did look like she was in a hostage situation for most of it. The authenticity of Hughes’ own onscreen romance with Olivia Attwood was questioned and they eventually split in a screeching row while the cameras rolled on their spin-off reality show, Crackin’ On.
But, even if the Love Island hook-ups are artificial, this art of the “showmance” is hardly something to get worked up about. The idea that putting a group of gym-honed mirror-lovers into a luxury villa is enough to make them want to get naked is an unrealistic one. After all, the contestants aren’t really on the show to find love. They could easily pop their fake tanned chests on Tinder and await the avalanche of right swipes. What they want is fame. And what better way to get that than by “doing bits” in a hot tub with the aim of becoming one half of the nation’s sweetheart of a couple?
Creating showmances is a positive move for both parties in a mock couple, and it would be naive to think that viewers aren’t in on it. Last year’s Love Island winners, Dani Dyer and Jack Fincham, are set for life after walking away with the prize, which is much more than just the 50 grand in cash they got from the show. After leaving the villa, the couple enjoyed a whirlwind of public appearances, TV appearances and magazine deals, fuelled by a fascination around their life and first home together. There’s no doubt Jack’n’Dani were more marketable as a pair. Ultimately, their on-off romance ended the day after Dyer’s autobiography/self-help guide (yes, really) came out, fuelling suggestions that it was a coupling-up of convenience. Another Love Island graduate, Georgia Steel, said she was “guided” to stick with Sam Bird to boost their careers after they had left the villa, although they later split, only coming together to air their dirty laundry on Love Island: The Christmas Reunion.
Love Island is filled with schemers, eel-like in their smoothness, who have no qualms devising a cheeky strategy to try to win the prize, so fibbing to the viewers hardly seems much of a stretch. Being part of a couple means more screen time, which leads to more fans rooting for them and a bigger chance to imprint their faces and catchphrases in viewers’ minds. It has emerged that this year’s contestants Tommy Fury and Maura Higgins share the same management team, so it’s only natural that she should fall for his romantic meal of cheese sandwich and ketchup. But, after the success of last years’s flighty love juggernaut Megan Barton Hanson, perhaps Higgins sees the value in notoriety: in a showmantic twist she has styled herself as the resident lascivious predator and is currently racking up the Ofcom complaints and riling Piers Morgan with her attempted advances towards anyone who stands still for long enough.
Pretending to be a loved-up sexbot for a few weeks is no torture if it unlocks access to the likes of Celebs Go Dating, I’m a Celebrity or, for the lucky few, their own ITV2 spin-off show. This is how celebrities are made. Viewers know it and the lines between reality TV, scripted reality and good old-fashioned reality (you know, the one where things happen spontaneously) are increasingly blurred.
Besides, TV showmances are nothing new. Ever since the early days of scripted reality, love has been used as a tool to hook in viewers. The Hills’ Kristin Cavallari has admitted not only that her 2010 romance with Brody Jenner on the MTV show was fake, but that he was dating someone else at the time. Dating shows are no different, from the early days of horrifically scripted one-liners on Blind Date to the realisation that although Take Me Out is real, the promised land of the Isle of Fernando is actually Tenerife. Reality star Megan McKenna admitted that MTV’s Ex on the Beach is scripted, but that doesn’t mean viewers won’t tune in to see who’s reuniting via the medium of “tashing on” (or kissing, if you don’t speak Geordie Shore).
Love Island is a land where real romance is as rare as body hair, but that doesn’t make it any less addictive. It is, as they say, what it is: a TV show with a relentless filming schedule that every night has to bring drama, lust and scandal to satisfy viewers with demanding attention spans.
