Joey Essex becomes Love Island’s first ever celebrity contestant as hit reality show returns
Reality TV star Joey Essex has entered the Love Island villa as the show’s first ever celebrity contestant.
The 33-year-old, who rose to fame on The Only Way Is Essex, has said he is taking part in the show because he is “extremely single right now” and hopes to leave the island “hand in hand with the love of my life”.
The ITV dating series returned on Monday, introducing more contestants to the villa in Majorca, Spain, with host Maya Jama making an entrance in a white dress.
Jama told the contestants: “Well it’s good to see you’re all settled in, as you know you are in Love Island, you must always expect the unexpected.
“So please welcome Joey.”
The TV personality said he was “the king of Essex” who wanted to find his “queen”.
ITV says he is the show’s “first celebrity contestant”.
Essex chose to apply to be on the show himself before ITV bosses worked hard to keep his involvement a secret, according to The Sun.
Speaking exclusively to the newspaper before flying out to the villa, Essex said: “I feel like Joey Bond, ‘the name’s Essex, Joey Essex’. It felt like a military operation, not even the journey itself but the process of even getting through the application process and to this point… I’m extremely single right now, so I’m praying that I’m going to walk out of the villa hand in hand with the love of my life, that’s my main aim and all I care about.”
Following his appearances on the The Only Way Is Essex between 2011 and 2013, Essex featured on similar shows including I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here!, Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins, Celebrity MasterChef, Celebs Go Dating and Dancing On Ice.
Before Essex’s appearance on Love Island, Jama told the other contestants: “First impressions count. Boys and girls, I now want you to rate each other in order of who you think has come across the most like boyfriend and girlfriend material, right down to who has given the least relationship vibes.”
Jama then revealed the rankings would mean who they were paired with.
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The couples included Mimii Ngulube, 24, a mental health nurse from Portsmouth, and Munveer Jabbal, 30, a recruitment manager from Surbiton; and Nicole Samuel, 24, an accounts manager from Aberdare, and Sean Stone, 24, a salesman from Hertford.
Other partners were Samantha Kenny, 26, a make-up artist from Liverpool, and Sam Taylor, 23, a hair stylist from Chesterfield; Harriett Blackmore, 24, a dancer and personal shopper from Brighton, and Ciaran Davies, 21, a surveyor from Pencoed, South Wales; and Jess White, 25, a retail manager from Stockport, and semi-professional footballer Ronnie Vint, 27, from London.
Ayo Odukoya, 25, a model from Canning Town, and Patsy Field, 29, an office administrator from Orpington, were also joined together.
Patsy, who was born with Erb’s palsy – a paralysis of the arm caused by injury to the upper group of the arm’s main nerves resulting from a difficult birth – revealed that she shares her bed with her mother.
She explained that her mother did not have a place in her home for her to stay except for in the same room.
Elsewhere in the episode, Ciaran admitted to “being with” a woman over the age of 40 when he was 18.
Love Island continues at 9pm on ITV2 and ITVX on Tuesday.
Donald Trump has said he is considering “taking away” the US citizenship of actress and comedian Rosie O’Donnell, despite a Supreme Court ruling that expressly prohibits a government from doing so.
In a post on Truth Social on Saturday, the US president said: “Because of the fact that Rosie O’Donnell is not in the best interests of our Great Country, I am giving serious consideration to taking away her Citizenship.”
He also labelled O’Donnell, who has moved to Ireland, as a “threat to humanity” and said she should “remain in the wonderful country of Ireland, if they want her”.
O’Donnell responded on Instagram by posting a photograph of Mr Trump with Jeffrey Epstein.
“You are everything that is wrong with America and I’m everything you hate about what’s still right with it,” she wrote in the caption.
“I’m not yours to silence. I never was.”
Rosie O’Donnell moved to Ireland after Donald Trump secured a second term. Pic: AP
O’Donnell moved to Ireland with her 12-year-old son in January after Mr Trump had secured a second term.
She has said she’s in the process of obtaining Irish citizenship based on family lineage and that she would only return to the US “when it is safe for all citizens to have equal rights there in America”.
O’Donnell and the US president have criticised each other publicly for years, in an often-bitter back-and-forth that predates Mr Trump’s move into politics.
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This is just the latest threat by the president to revoke the citizenship of someone he has disagreed with, most recently his former ally Elon Musk.
But the two situations are different as while Musk was born in South Africa, O’Donnell was born in the US and has a constitutional right to American citizenship.
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Amanda Frost, a law professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, said the Supreme Court ruled in a 1967 case that the fourteenth amendment of the constitution prevents the government from taking away citizenship.
“The president has no authority to take away the citizenship of a native-born US citizen,” he added.
“In short, we are nation founded on the principle that the people choose the government; the government cannot choose the people.”
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