Love Island review: The Joe-Lucie-Tommy affair is a ridiculous spectacle of a car crash

I confess that I haven’t been following developments on Love Island quite as assiduously as I ought to have. So I am sorry to say that I arrived at episode three a little under-briefed. Rather like some of the chaps on the Island, I suppose.

Just as well that there is just the one story to get acquainted with, and that’s the Joe-Lucie-Tommy “love triangle” as it's described, though it’s a pretty lop-sided one, you might say obtuse, given that Joe – it seems – hasn’t a chance in hell of winning Lucie back and can’t get his tiny mind around the central fact that Tommy, the boxer, has just turned up and commandeered “his” woman, as the rules of the show permit/encourage.

Joe, the rather old-fashioned “catering company owner”, is emotionally wrecked because his day-and-a-half long “relationship” with Lucie has been shattered. He kissed her once, and spent a total of about 35 minutes in her company. Even so, he’s behaving like he’s just gone through an acrimonious divorce after a 25-year marriage with kids and grandchildren and a Labradoodle and a nice house and a BMW X5 and a pension pot to divide up, and all because she’s been shagging her personal trainer since the honeymoon and he now finds out he’s not the kids’ real dad. By contrast, I’d imagine Joe hasn’t even found out whether Lucie’s a veggie yet or what her middle name is. I’m not surprised he admits that he’s lived a “sheltered life”.

Joe’s humiliation seemed complete when Lucie and Tommy skip off for a dinner date, sipping champagne and nibbling canapés under the stars. Poor Joe, who basically sells sarnies out of the back of a van for a living, was left to enjoy the toasted s**t sandwich served up to him by Lucie.

But, but, but… Joe’s maybe not such a tuna cheese melt after all. He uses all the charm and people skills he’s acquired in the bap business – a thick layer of “Factor 50” flattery as they say on the Island – and wins Lucie back.

For now. Of course Tommy, brother of Tyson Fury and knocked down in the second round, dusts himself down and gets himself up and tries a fightback. This was only partially successful because he gets distracted by Amber (21, beauty therapist, of course), a straight-talking ballsy Geordie. She resents his incessant pleas with her for DMCs (Deep Meaningful Chats).

The only fair way to end this Darwinian struggle for custody of the ovaries of Lucie Donlan (21, Newquay, surfer) is re-stage a version of the 1971 Benny Hill classic single “Ernie, the fastest milk man in the West”. Ernie, like Tommy Fury, had a competitor, uncannily like the meals-on-wheels guy Joe. As the song went, “Ernie/Tommy Fury had a rival, an evil looking man Called Two Ton Ted from Teddington, and he drove the baker’s van. He tempted her with his treacle tarts and his tasty wholemeal bread, and when she saw the size of his hot meat pies, it very near turned her head. She nearly swooned at his macaroon, and he said now if you treat me right, you’ll have hot rolls every morning, and crumpets every night. He knew once she’d sampled his layer cake, he’d have his wicked way.”

Somehow, then, Joe has to get some of his baked goods smuggled onto Love Island, and deal with Tommy the Benny Hill way: “The concrete hardened crust of a stale pork pie caught him in the eye and Tommy bit the dust”.

Despite Amy giving Lucie the essential insight that she’s got two mega-fit blokes grafting over her (as I believe the saying goes), she doesn’t seem all that happy about it. In fact she is in tears throughout, and, to be honest, she looks like she’d be happier getting the first boat out off the Island, heading to the nearest nunnery and pledging herself to love the good lord Jesus. Being a Love Island love cheat does not seem to suit Lucie.

As for the rest of Islanders, they were more or less wallpaper during the proceedings, which was fine, because the Joe-Lucie-Tommy affair was such a ridiculous spectacle of a car crash you were happy just rubbernecking. (Which is actually all the necking anyone’s gotten out of Lucie thus far.)

I still want to know, though, who is going to get the pleasure of having to shave the ultra-vain Anton’s backside for the rest of their life, taking over from his dear old mum who undertakes this tricky task on her 24-year old son at the moment. He’s been usurped for the love of Amy by someone called Curtis, who is, if anything, even more self-absorbed than Anton. At present, then, Anton is in the delicate formulation of Joe, “technically single”. But those perky, evenly tanned butt cheeks aren’t going to shave themselves, and mummy is far, far away, back home in Airdrie.

Never mind the love triangles: The Great Love Island Hairy Arse Crisis of 2019 is fast approaching.