DESERT THIS HATED ISLAND
O I'D really loike the public to use their initiative," pleaded Shane Lynch, Love Island's answer to Big Brother 's extreme Oirishman Spoiral.
They are, Shane. They're not watching.
"The emotions are running high," added presenter Patrick Kielty. Which is more than can be said for the viewing figures.
Surely the poor saps in charge of this fools' paradise are not shocked by their flagship reality show's failure to take the nation by storm.
The last series was hardly the smash hit of the year.
And it remains a mystery why barrel-scraping ITV bosses decided to revive a rubbish production that was a flop the first time round.
But here we are again drowning under a tidal wave of contrived garbage as the Fijian fiasco fizzles in the sun.
They promised that the new improved tropical sex show would send temperatures soaring. But it looks the same as the last one to me.
And so far the entire tawdry enterprise has been about as exciting as the incessant drizzle that put such a dampener on the dreary opening two days.
I don't blame the non celebrity contestants.
I rather like some of them - especially former Boyzone heartthrob Shane, Streets star Leo the Lion and laddish Hollyoaks actor Lee "Harvey" Otway.
The girls - including ex- Eternal beauty Kelle Bryan, Paul Gascoigne's 18-year-old stepdaughter Bianca and party girl "Lady" Victoria Why-the long- face? Hervey - seem pretty much OK too.
"I wish everyone would stop treating me like a kid," Bianca said before bursting into tears and adding: "I miss my mum."
When one of the bikini-clad beauties yelled at Pinky and Perky sound-alike, Strictly Come Dancing hunk Brendan Cole "You know you're a w*nker don't you?" - it was tragically clear that he did not.
"I've been known to go with a bit of posh totty," boasted ballroom Brendan, who has also dated Natasha Kaplinsky.
Nope, it's not the participants' fault that they're trapped in a rigid format that the average pre-pubescent teenager would find unacceptably juvenile.
And while the viewing figures might be bemusing TV executives, it is far from surprising that millions are not tuning into the unromantic island of doom.
Because this feeble excuse for a show achieves something rather special. It's no mean feat to be unpleasantly nasty AND excessively tedious.
"Super" model Sophie Anderton may well be a self obsessed dullard who bored her love shack companion Lynch into a virtual coma with her non-stop "me-meme" stream of unconsciousness.
But when the fragile former drug addict wasn't chosen as five guys picked their favourite babes it was painful to witness her distress over such a humiliating rejection.
"I've got six guys waiting at home," she sobbed. Yeah - and they're all called Mark Bosnich.
Back in the shack she talked excitedly of how much she fancied nice guy Shane.
Who promptly refused to join her in the four-poster bed and told the aquarium-style diary room: "Oi just don't have any physical attraction to her."
Unaware that she was cruising towards an emotional bruising, Sophie was all little-girl giggles as the circus of cruelty's ringmaster Kielty and his sinister sidekick Fearne Cotton begged her to open her heart to the uninterested Mr Lynch.
Just so it could be broken in front of Love Island's hundreds of viewers.
Poor Alicia Douvall, the surgically altered victim of the first unbelievably shambolic eviction which broke new ground in amateurishness.
The daft blonde can't cook, thinks Portugal's in Scandinavia and stumbled at "g" before abandoning her brave bid to recite the alphabet when she got to "j".
Kielty and Cotton roared with vicious laughter. Just as they did when horrible Hervey couldn't find the US on a map even though she lives there. Leave 'em alone! They're only dumb animals.
I owe Big Brother a huge apology. Next to L.I., BB7 is a TV masterpiece. Especially after Friday's entertaining ejection of fraudulent numbskull Nikki.
Memo to the sea sick-crew at the helm of sinking Love Island: Time for a reality check!
Sundaymirror
