I didn’t watch Love Island at all for about five weeks. Then I saw a couple of extracts with my 13 year old son, snorting at the ridiculousness of it, the ‘melts’, ‘salts’ and ‘mugging offs’. He announced to our cat that he’d like to ‘couple up’ with her. Sadly, like Icarus, I watched slightly too long and then fell into the blaze of the last two weeks. I didn’t have the app, I didn’t watch any of the spin-offs. But I did see all the remaining episodes.

Having now observed some snippets from earlier episodes I realise I missed most of the good stuff. The ‘recoupling’ sections I saw were completely yawnworthy for the most part.

‘Who would you like to couple up with?’

‘The same person I’ve been with for the last week.’

Oh.

Repeat five times.

There were some exceptions obviously. Jack (or OluwaJack/Blackjack, as some desperados tried to claim him as part of the brethren).

‘I’d like to couple up with Laura.’

Not ‘old’ Laura you understand, who he’d been tongue-tonsilling with only a day or so earlier, but ‘new’ young fresh Laura. It was unfortunate that the Laura who was older had also been in the villa longer, as there was a contemptuous tone to the tweets decrying her desperate has-been behaviour at the grand old age of 29. It would have been excellent telly if ‘old’ Laura had ‘misunderstood’ and gone stampeding up to reclaim Oluwajack, but she had her own plentiful awkward moments at other times, revealing that she is a tad insecure and perhaps not suited to maximum exposure on TV. Getting jealous and snippy when Plank’o’wood Paul, as gorgeous as he is dull, told her he’d kissed Britney Spears in a music video. When she asked him what they would call their children on Day 2½ of their acquaintance. Or sniping bitchily at gorgeous Alexandra’s sexy attire.

There was the whole Dr Alex conundrum. From what I can gather he was on the shelf for a large portion of the show, then acquired Alexandra, dumped her, reacquired her, redumped her…he’d probably still be at that, if let. We had the magnificent speech from the wronged lady… ‘You’ve wasted my time, you’ve wasted your time. Shame on you.’ Not quite up there with ‘I have a dream’, but in terms of trash reality telly, pretty damn fine. As indeed is Alexandra, who is so hot you could fry eggs off her.

Alex didn’t seem to see it. He might be gay, as some slack-jawed commenters believed – who could NOT fancy Alexandra?! However, it’s more likely to be the elephant in the room that I’ve not seen mentioned anywhere, she’s not the same social class as him. She’s bright, beautiful, sexy, kind, but he’s a doctor and he’s ultimately going to want to ‘couple up’ with a horsey girl from Surrey called Julia who’s a university educated ABC1. This is not a judgement on him, or a suggestion that I think he’s better than her. They are just too different and the long term success of a couple usually involves being from the same background. He thought for a while that ‘new’ Laura might have been his Julia, there’s a sense from her ‘I’ve travelled everywhere’ manner and surfer-girl chick that she could have done a spell on Made in Chelsea first, but Oluwajack had better lines so he snaffled her. Mea culpa Alex, you were almost Nasty Nick, but not quite. I’m sure your Julia will be along soon. And I bet your friends actually call you Xander, not Alex.

Jack and Dani, ‘JANI’, were always going to win by a ginormous landslide (79%). Not only are they perfectly matched, they do seem to genuinely like each other. Of the last four couples, they are the ones most likely to last. Even in our cynical, Brexit-worn days, we can see this. As for the other three…? Megan will probably ditch poor dear Wes for a Premier League footballer before the year is out, Josh will probably ditch poor dear Kaz for someone who would normally date a Premier League footballer before the year is out, Paul will probably ditch Laura before the summer is out – is Britney available?