A Love Island episode where contestants spat cocktails into each other’s mouths felt like a low point – even for British TV

Always on the lookout for new lows in British television, naturally you get drawn to Love Island. With the introduction of the winter edition, and the need to fill the airtime void that is ITV2, there is ample scope for the producers to allow their imaginations to roam free and their creative spit-balling session to bear fruit.

And so, at Love Island’s Casa Amor, we witnessed the “Cocktail mix-up Challenge”. This was, nominally, a sort of competition where teams of the glabrous boys and girls were tasked with mixing a cocktail and transporting it from one table to another.

Sounds like one of those jolly old It’s a Knockout games eh? Except that the method of transportation in this instance was via a chain of Love Island contestants’ mouths. Thusly, the jugs of strawberry mojito, Pornstar martini (natch), Pina Colada and Sex on the Beach (wearily predictable) were moved gobful by gobful, as the young lovelies basically spat into each other’s mouths.

So yes a low point. As one of the young women thus humiliated put it: “When I think about it makes me feel sick,” and for once I find myself in complete accord. But, at the time, they were all up for it. My long-time favourite Love Islander, the entertainingly named Siannese Fudge, described how she caught up in the excitement: “I was just like, ‘guys stay focussed. Just get as much liquid into my mouth as possible and let’s just get this done”. Quite.

Obviously, as Ms Fudge suggests, the challenge was to spit, not swallow, any of the precious liquids, and they mostly succeeded in filling their respective jugs. I do hope none of the Love Islanders had fallen behind on their dental heath regimes, but then again I suppose gingivitis wouldn’t show up in a strawberry mojito, in any case. Imagine if any of them had had bronchitis.

It was all a bit unsavoury, even by the ever lower standards of contemporary realty TV. I think recent evictees Mike and Rebecca (nice couple) might feel relived that they missed out on this particular lark. Basically there was more sputum and phlegm flying round than you’d see on an Ebola ward.

I read somewhere that young folk – the Love islander key demographic – are watching less and less continental television and playing more video games. What seems to be happening is that the proliferation of digital and satellite stations – and the vast empty prairies of airtime they have opened up – have at last exceeded the ability of the world’s television makers to fill them with anything worth watching. Which is why we have stuff like Love Island trying to fill up the capacity on ITV2. Anyway, the kids don’t seem to be interested in watching what was a bit like a live broadcast from a dentist’s chair, and have found better things to do. Can’t say I blame them.