Beauty queen April Banbury hopes absence truly makes the heart grow fonder as Covid is keeping her from a model she fell for on TV’s The Cabins.
The reigning Ms Great Britain is longing to see Ryan Darvill again after both 31-year-olds clicked while filming the reality series.
They shared a luxury log cabin complete with hot tubs, crackling fires and glasses of champagne for the ITV2 show, dubbed the Winter Love Island.
But since the series was recorded in November, lockdown has made life for April, like all of us, feel more like cabin fever.
The day after leaving The Cabins, which was shot near Carlisle, Cumbria, Ryan met April’s friends and helped her decorate her Christmas tree.
She went to his place the week after, met his pals and did some Christmas shopping.
April said: “Everything was going great. Then Covid struck and we got the new lockdown, it’s thrown a spanner in the works.”
Both live in London but rules mean they cannot meet up.
April, the current Ms Great Britain in the newly created over 28 category, is volunteering at a Covid testing centre.
She said: “We can’t mix, we can’t risk giving each other Covid. It would be detrimental to our work. I have found it particularly hard.
"I so want to see him, to see how it goes and to progress on a romantic level, building on what we’ve got. We’re taking things slowly, we have no choice.
“I don’t know whether it’s going to ruin things, but I hope not.”
She added: “I work ten-hour days. We test 300 people a day, five days a week. I’m on the standby list for the jab.”
They speak every day on the phone and Ryan said he was “excited” to see where the relationship goes. April said: “I don’t want to put too much pressure on it. We got on so well together. A lot of things we did they didn’t put on TV. We were laughing lots, in fits of giggles just like kids each night. We got told off most nights.
“We were talking till 4am. We had the friendship foundation there.”
April lost her bridal designer job because of Covid cancelling weddings but said the show helped lift her out of a “dark hole”.
She became an ambassador for SEED, an eating disorder and mental health charity. She had struggled with food issues for over ten years after her mum left.
She said her “dating life sucked” until a casting agent and Facebook friend helped fix up The Cabins.
April said: “The more I get rejected the more it hurts. I can be quite cold with men sometimes, but with Ryan I’m not cold or aloof, I liked him and let him know.
“As soon as lockdown’s over we’re meeting. We plan to do pottery and all sorts of fun crazy activities.”
She also aims to enter Miss GB again, when the contest can take place post-lockdown.
