Few things have brought as much strife into our house as Love Island. Sure, me constantly reading passages of Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science to my (committed homeopathic) wife almost brought us to divorce, and our general disagreement about domestic colour schemes is often a buttermilk beige powder keg, but it is in our annual viewing of Love Island that things most frequently fall apart. 

We find it hard enough to settle on something we can watch together – we struggled through Poldark, after being lured into watching it when we heard it had loads of riding – and there is, as 30% of each episode is made up of slow-motion side-saddle cantering along the Cornish coast. But after the third season we realised that Poldark was actually just Emmerdale in a tricorn, and that if we wanted to see urchins living in squalor and succumbing to the plague we could just spend time with our kids. 

Love Island, on the other hand, is meant to be an escape. Smugly watching it from Terminally Settled Peninsula should be a source of joy – we are here on West Egg, smirking as we gaze out across the bay at a bunch of cut-price Gatsbys and their increasingly desperate attempts to find happiness. Look at them there, I chortle; if only they could find happiness like us, as I slouch on the sofa in faded pyjamas with paint on the leg, applying my fungal nail treatment. For old married couples like us, Love Island should be akin to a night out at the Roman Colosseum, watching these poor fools fumble around looking for love or anything that might vaguely resemble it, desperately trying to avoid dumped from the island before they got to properly milk their 15 minutes of fame. In a week all we will recall is their hair. 

We bicker throughout the season. Of course, if we could just watch the show in silence, and keep our thoughts to ourselves, then all would be fine. But no, that’s not how married life works – you have to start discussing who is right and who is wrong in the various micro-dramas in the villa, or possibly even discussing the stupidest topic of all – which housemate would you couple up with? (We both said Ovie, obv). But somewhere in the background of all our stupid arguments about how gloriously mismatched everyone in the villa is, there lies the bigger question – if we could go back, would we? If we could rewind all this, and start over, decouple and recouple or whatever, would you do it? Love Island is a window on the past – it is watching your younger self, muddling through life, before all your greatest lessons were learned; an ode to innocence and selfishness, when it’s all about the benefits of well defined abs and never about defined benefit pensions. I feel like the Ghost Of Couplings Future, reaching through the screen in spectral form, to whisper at them about what little I have learned; maybe spend less time in the gym, maybe be a little less self involved, maybe don’t expect anything from this show except a small amount of fame, a reasonable amount of money, and a worrying amount of abuse. But when you leave, view your soul as you do your body, and work on that for a while, because the flesh fades and soon all you will be left with is your jeggings and XXXXS shirts, yearning for someone to bicker endlessly with about important issues such as whether subway tiles are still in or whether lavender oil actually does a damn thing.