Dami Hope springs eternal. Or so Love Island (Virgin Media One, 9pm) viewers have decided, with the Dublin microbiologist surviving an elimination vote that would have sent him packing. He is spared along with his Casa Amor partner Summer, with Jay and Chyna instead receiving the boot.
Hope is Love Island’s last remaining Irish contestant this year (farewell Jack Keating, we hardly knew you – or indeed saw you on camera). But he has blotted his romantic copybook pretty spectacularly, having ditched Indiyah for Summer.
Now he’s realising he’s made a huge mistake. That Indiyah-Summer situation has got out of hand. He and Summer aren’t soul mates, and the one he is meant to be with is Indiyah.
“Yesterday put a lot of stuff into perspective,” Dami confesses by the pool as he reflects on his narrow escape. “It was needed for me to see what I wanted. I’m grateful to be here.”
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What he wants is Indiyah. That is despite both parties breaking off their partnership last week. Dami even got a zinger in as he gave her a public kiss-off, saying “Summer is not over, it has just started.”
Only now Summer really is at an end, and Dami is desperate to get back together with Indiyah. “What would have hurt me most is not being with Indiyah,” he says. “I appreciate I have another chance to do that.”
Indiyah is paired with her Casa Amor paramour Deji, but she isn’t feeling it either. “I really like the boy,” she says, referring to Dami. “I can’t put it into the words. I would have been gutted [if he’d been voted off].The grass isn’t greener. He [Deji] is not Dami. It’s not the same.”
Love Island has been criticised in the past for portraying contestants in a negative light. And there are worries Dami is being set up as this year’s villain. He’s certainly on the receiving end of social media abuse, to the point where his family has disabled comments on his Instagram.
Still in the villa, he’s happily unaware of it all. Off on a mindfulness jaunt with the rest of the guys, he’s also unaware the producers have parachuted in another male contestant: Love Island veteran Adam Collard.
Collard is straight down to business, chatting up several of the women. However, out in the real world his inclusion is likely to prove controversial. Collard was accused of emotional abuse when he appeared on the show in 2018.
“In the 2018 series of Love Island, we saw Rosie rightly call out Adam for his unacceptable behaviour, which included gas-lighting and emotional abuse,” the UK charity Women’s Aid said this week. “We hope that ITV recognise how serious this issue is and that it must be learned from, considering they have asked Adam to return to the show.”
It is a reminder that, though Love Island is often seen as harmless fun, contestants are real people with real feelings. Dami’s reality TV odyssey will continue for another few days at least. When he finally returns home, the hope must be that the abuse ends and that ITV lives up to its promise to provide participants with the aftercare they need.
