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Love Island
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Love Island (formerly Celebrity Love Island) was a British television programme. It was originally presented by Patrick Kielty and Kelly Brook, with Fearne Cotton taking over as female host in the second series. It is aired in the UK on ITV. The first series aired in the summer of 2005, and it was won by Jayne Middlemiss and Fran Cosgrave. The second series began in July 2006, dropping Celebrity from its name. It was won by Bianca Gascoigne and Calum Best.
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Love Island (formerly Celebrity Love Island) was a British television programme. It was originally presented by Patrick Kielty and Kelly Brook, with Fearne Cotton taking over as female host in the second series. It is aired in the UK on ITV. The first series aired in the summer of 2005, and it was won by Jayne Middlemiss and Fran Cosgrave. The second series began in July 2006, dropping Celebrity from its name. It was won by Bianca Gascoigne and Calum Best. The theme tune for the first series was "Wish I", performed by Jem. A specially-composed summer theme by Daniel Pemberton (later released under the title "From Fiji With Love") was used for the second series. The show was axed in November 2006.
Series One (2005)
The first series was broadcast during the summer of 2005.
The show attracted controversy from the moment it was announced by ITV. It was marketed as a rival for Channel 4's popular reality show, Big Brother, which returned for a sixth series soon after the show's launch. Many commentators felt that the format of the show provided low quality television as an excuse to attract high ratings.
Following the launch of the show, the celebrities were criticised by viewers for being boring, and the celebrity status of some of the participants was questioned. There was some suspicion that the contestants were simply using the programme as a free holiday, and the tabloids claimed that producers held crisis meetings to figure out how to keep things interesting.
Soon afterwards, tabloid reports claimed that the show's presenters, Kelly Brook and Patrick Kielty, were engaged in a bitter feud. The problems between the pair allegedly started after Kielty told viewers on the live show that Brook had previously been involved in a relationship with one of the contestants, Paul Danan. However, even the promise of fireworks between the two hosts was not enough to keep viewers interested, and one episode of the show only attracted less than 2 million viewers. Producers later hired model Nikki Ziering to spice up the show.
The show was also resented by fans of long-running ITV soap Coronation Street. ITV decided to move its flagship programme from 19.30 to 20.30 on Monday nights, to provide a successful lead-in for Love Island, in the hope of increasing ratings. Writers John Fay and Daran Little complained to the press about the treatment of the show. ITV argued that it took the decision to move the soap very seriously and only did so when absolutely necessary. A meeting was requested with ITV programming director Nigel Pickard to discuss the issue.
On June 10, 2005, although ratings were beginning to pick up, with the show close to overtaking Big Brother in popularity, a strong storm over the islands of Fiji disrupted the programme. A live eviction show had to be cancelled as 6 foot waves made it impossible for crew-members to cross over to where the celebrities were staying. Instead, ITV was forced to repeat the episode from the previous night with unseen footage.
The show was so badly received by viewers and critics that the word 'Celebrity' is now seen as tainted by UK television companies. An interesting example was Sky TV's celebrity golf tournament, broadcast on Sky One on the August Bank Holiday weekend 2005, was called All*Star Cup and Sky ceased referring to "celebrities" in trailers. On ITV, the 'celebrity' version of The X Factor was called "Battle of the Stars".
Series Two (2006)
The second series first aired on 10 July, and ran for seven weeks, a little longer than the previous year's series. It was announced in late May 2006 that Fearne Cotton would be Kielty's new co-host with Series 1 winner Jayne Middlemiss presenting Aftersun with Matt Brown on ITV2. It also has a new sponsor, popular chocolate bar Bounty.
On 6 July the list of contestants was announced, with the news that the word "Celebrity" would be dropped from the show title .
July 10–August 28, seven weeks, 17 contestants and 3 houseguests:
Houseguests on Love Island
Returns
- In week two, in a bid to boost the ratings, the producers decided series one contestant Paul Danan would be put on Love Island as a regular contestant hoping he would provide the rating winning actions of the previous year. Paul was known by most on the Island especially friend Lee Otway and Lady Victoria Hervey whose sister Isabella was involved with him in the first series and for a short period afterwards.
- On 7 August series one finalist Calum Best entered Love Island for the second time, where he attracted a lot of female attention, especially from Bianca Gascoigne, with whom he struck up a romance.
- After Sophie Anderton and Chris Brosnan were seen getting closer, evicted Lady Victoria Hervey returned to the Island for a day and hid in the secret suite where she confronted her friend Sophie and poured a bottle of wine over her head for moving in on her man.
- On August 20 Leo Ihenacho made a surprise return by jumping out of a cake, to the resort for one night only to confront Calum and Bianca over their relationship. He left the next day.
Head to Head with Big Brother
The show did not always go head to head with Channel 4's Big Brother, as Big Brother aired at 9pm on Tuesdays, Saturdays and Sundays and only clashed on Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays with Love Island at 10pm. However, many terrestrial viewers in Wales could only watch Big Brother at a fixed 10.00pm slot every night on S4C which also broadcast the show due to many Welsh terrestrial televisions failing to receive Channel 4. Love Islands audience was about half the size of that for Big Brother.
Cancellation
On the November 24, 2006, ITV revealed that a third series would not be made and that it was axing Love Island.
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