Once again, as sure as day turns to night, the pulsating slime-drenched Love Island ovipositor has retched into action, heaving out another phalanx of contestants. For many of us, Love Island Contestant Announcement Day is the highlight of the entire year; essentially a version of Apprentice Contestant Announcement Day that’s kinder on the soul because you know the assembled people haven’t thunk their way into an aneurysm trying to origami a double windsor in a mirror.
This year brings us Eyal, a model and former member of a boyband you’ve never heard of; Laura, a cabin crew member who once saw Channing Tatum on a flight; Niall, a student who likes to boast about what a noisy eater he is; Wes, who enjoys having lots of followers on Instagram; and there is Hayley, a model who “says what she thinks”.
And, of course, there is Danny Dyer’s daughter. Her name – arguably the best celebrity offspring name since Jermaine Jackson took leave of his senses and called his son Jermajesty – is Dani. Dani Dyer. God bless us.
Collectively, these contestants do nothing to dispel one’s belief that Love Island exists as a kind of overflow pipe for Take Me Out auditionees. But then that’s what everyone always thinks about Love Island contestants at first sight, isn’t it? They are younger than us, they have better haircuts than us and they are going to spend the summer dancing around the peripheries of sexually transmitted infection like Fred Astaire on rollerskates. Of course, your first instinct is going to be blind hatred. You’re only human.
But as we should all know, this is just the first stage of a long and complicated relationship. For Love Island tends to come at us in waves. This sense of disgruntlement, this sense of being tied to a chair and helplessly watching civilisation burst into flames, is always how it starts. But when Love Island actually begins next week, we’ll slowly get to know these people. And that’s when things will get complicated.
Wave two will be empathy. As the days wear on, we’ll begin to see past the sixpacks and blowdries, and start to see ourselves. We’ll see cracks of vulnerability. We’ll see their mistimed jokes and unconvincing bravado and think of all the times we’ve ever accidentally detonated a potential romance purely with the power of our own awkwardness. We’ll see kernels of genuine affection bloom one glance at a time, and we’ll remember what it’s like to be young and in love, and then without warning we’ll suddenly be rooting for them. In this crazy, mixed-up world, who are we to deny these people happiness? Even if it’s fleeting. Even if it’s ill-advised. These people are humans, and all humans deserve to feel some semblance of joy.
Wave three comes a fortnight before the end of Love Island, and it’s where all the broadsheet columnists pile on and over-intellectualise the programme in a doomed attack on the pulse of the nation. We shan’t dwell on this stage.
And then comes wave four, when Love Island ends and the contestants – now paired up and blissfully happy – try to pivot their notoriety into genuine celebrity. They will go to parties. They will give interviews to magazines. They will singularly fail to realise that we only liked them in the self-contained bubble of Love Island. They will push things a millimetre too far and then we will violently reject them for something newer.
Expect this last wave to happen faster than usual this year. Gone will be the breathless reportage about cheating scandals, the horrifying swimwear weddings on breakfast television and the inevitable, harrowing, dead-on-arrival musical careers. Because this is the fourth series of Love Island, and fourth series tend to mark a tipping point for shows like this. In the first, celebrities are created from novelty alone. The second improves on the formula, casting people with actual charisma. The third is the one that breaks all the viewing records because people want to see what all the fuss is about. And then, in the fourth, we look around and realise we can’t move for former contestants refusing to relinquish their 15 minutes, and everyone is instantly banished to obscurity as a result.
Big Brother 4 gave us Cameron Stout. The fourth X Factor was won by Leon Jackson. The breakout star of the fourth Apprentice was Raef Bjayou, a man subsequently most famous for appearing on Ready Steady Cook once. And so it will be with Love Island. Society is already brimming with fake-tanned people clinging on to the sidebar of shame like their lives depend on it, and the last thing we need is any more of them. So farewell Dani Dyer, we barely knew ye.
The secret of jazzy Jeff Goldblum’s success? A wife half his age
It says something awful about 2018 that, when Jeff Goldblum starts to trend on Twitter, your first question is essentially, “Is he dead or is he a pervert?” But this time, the truth is arguably worse. Jeff Goldblum is a jazz pianist.
At some point in the near-to-mid future, Goldblum will release his debut jazz album on Decca. It might be a solo album, or it might be recorded with his jazz group The Mildred Snitzer Orchestra. We just don’t know. All we really know is that this feels inevitable. Because, with his tics and quirks and the way he delivers lines like a man watching a confused moth circle a lampshade, Goldblum is essentially jazz incarnate.
So irrepressible is he, in fact, that cries of “vanity project” turn to ash as soon as they leave our mouths. Even if you don’t like jazz, the simple joy of Goldblum’s existence should be enough to forgive him for indulging his hobbies like this.
This is perhaps down to Goldblum’s late blooming as a style icon. Look at any recent photoshoot of his and you will see rings on his fingers and volume in his hair and clothes in colours that are rarely worn by 65-year-old men. Out of nowhere Goldblum is the internet’s boyfriend, assuming that the internet has deep-set daddy issues.
Goldblum has become a lifeline for men of a certain age; a clarion cry to rage against the dying of the light, a neon sign reading, “You too can be like this”. He’s interested and interesting and he refuses to be constrained by the limits of age. We can all be like Goldblum, and all we have to do is marry a woman half our age.
It’s no coincidence that Goldblum’s recent uptick coincides with his marriage to 35-year-old Canadian gymnast Emilie Livingston. They seem blissfully enamoured, and he has been reinvigorated beyond words by the relationship. In this dark and dismal time, it’s refreshing to know that true happiness can transform us all, and all we need to get there is to shack up with a woman who was only 10 years old when we made Jurassic Park. Jeff Goldblum, you are an inspiration to men everywhere.
