What It’s Really Like To Live On Love Island

Ex Love Island contestant Chris Williamson talks about what life is really like inside the Love Island villa. Any questions or comments? Get in touch below or head to - https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx - Video editing & production: Dean Hindmarch - https://www.instagram.com/deanhindmarch_/ Rob Anderson - https://www.instagram.com/robandrson/ - Listen to all episodes online. Search "Modern Wisdom" on any Podcast App or click here: iTunes: https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/modern-wisdom - I want to hear from you!! Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Email: [email protected]

• 0:06Speaker 0

  So the reason I wanted to do this podcast is twofold. 60% of the reason of why I wanted to do it was because I was on Love Island on season one, and the filming and editing process is interesting, and I know that it's a very popular TV programme. I think that fans of the show would like to find out some of the stuff that goes on during the process. 40% of the reason is due to a pure time management perspective that I get asked the same questions over and over, and now all that I need to do is link them to this single podcast. But even 10

• 0:48Speaker 1

  minutes ago, you got a text saying what was Love Island like. Hi mate, what was it like on Love Island? So now all that I need to do is create a

• 0:56Speaker 0

  shortcut on Alfred or on uh text correction on my phone.

• 1:01Speaker 1

  Life hacks one.

• 1:02Speaker 0

  Life acts one. That camera. Um that why not that one? Someone's not looking at me, mate. I

• 1:10Speaker 2

  see. Very

• 1:12Speaker 0

  clever. If you are if you are listening through iTunes, we are in a room surrounded by technology. But it's been offset by the fact that I've got some lovely candles over the far side.

• 1:23Speaker 2

  So just say technology was too much.

• 1:26Speaker 0

  Yeah, exactly. So did either of you watch Love Island when I went on. I'm talking for people who don't know what I'm on about Love Island is a reality TV programme in the UK. Um it is a little bit like a cross between Take Me Out and Big Brother, I think it's probably pretty fair to say. It's not as sort of cheesy or raunchy as X on the Beach, which is an MTV show, or as Jordi Shaw, it's not kind of as extreme as that. It's kind of flu it's quite fluffy in a way, I guess. Um and yeah, I was on the I was the first person through the door on season one, and I was there for three weeks, three and a bit weeks I was there, and yeah, it was um it was three no two and a half years ago now, but it has just been released on Netflix.

• 2:14Speaker 1

  So you've had another surge of interest.

• 2:16Speaker 0

  Well, I mean the the people are grilling me about stuff that I did two and a half years ago when I can't remember what I did this morning.

• 2:23Speaker 1

  So I guess the first thing is have you re-watched it or rewatched any part of it to refresh your memory? Or when people just remind yourself around Johnny

• 2:32Speaker 0

  to find

• 2:32Speaker 1

  me.

• 2:34Speaker 2

  So what's happening is I'm trying to find a comfortable place to sit, and my um glute mead keeps cramping. Why is that? Because my legs are so long. No, it's not because you didn't do ROM one time. Oh,

• 2:47Speaker 0

  that's

• 2:48Speaker 2

  well, yeah, okay, fair. Fine. So Life Axe One Life Acts One,

• 2:51Speaker 0

  Life Acts One and One. So, what was your question? Oh,

• 2:55Speaker 1

  has there been more? So have have you watched anything to refresh your memory or when people ask you about specifics, is that like, oh yeah, I did that thing.

• 3:02Speaker 0

  If I'm honest, my memory of what happened now is almost exclusively from the TV viewers' perspective. Right. So my memories of being no, that would be an exaggeration. It's 50-50. 50% of my memories are watching it from the angle of the camera.

• 3:21Speaker 2

  So when you when you see it, can you think like, oh, I remember to a to a degree, but I suppose you're only seeing a very you're seeing a very filtered version of what actually happened, aren't you?

• 3:31Speaker 0

  But even that, like obviously I was there. But it's just it's just something strange about watching yourself on TV, really, really weird, especially because it is edited quite nicely and stuff like that. But yeah, so that's it. I think the there's one question that everyone asks, it's the first question that everybody asks about Love Island, and it's is it scripted? And it's not at all. Which I think surprises a lot of people. Zero structure. Okay. So what they say is is it scripted? And I think a lot of the reasons for that are when you take a normal conversation, normal discourse, day to day, and you put like uh Justin Bieber song in the background and like have a drone flying around or like some cool music and a camera floats around on a boom arm and you chop it up cleverly.

• 4:19Speaker 0

  You the whole point is to make it seem cohesive, right? It's to make these people that are on the show seem cool and aspirational and interesting to watch and engaging. And by virtue of that, you it has to look polished, which I think can lead to people thinking that's contrived.

• 4:37Speaker 4

  That's

• 4:38Speaker 0

  bollocks, which isn't true. Um it's not scripted, however, there are what's called villa producers, and these are the um point of contact between the cast, the primary point of contact, between the cast and the production team, and what they'll do is they'll come into the villa into the garden, which is usually where everybody is, and just take people off to one side that are having it. So me and you have had an argument because both of us like Yusuf and It's the trousers, man. It is it's I can't believe the first time that we videoed a podcast, you decided to wear

• 5:21Speaker 2

  Sorry, go on. We the first podcast we ever recorded, he wore bright green trousers. You still got those.

• 5:28Speaker 1

  I still have. I won the other day. You promised me you wouldn't burn them. I promise I'd burn the green high tops. So

• 5:35Speaker 0

  I mean just I just fucking despair, don't I? Um anyway. What was I saying? What was that scene? That's your one chance to pick that glass. I know. It goes back on the carpet, it goes back on the carpet. Um yeah, so Villa Producers, they come in and me and you'll have had an argument about the fact that we like Yusuf. And what she'll do is she'll come over and she'll say, So, Johnny, how do you how do you feel about uh about your chat that you just had with Chris? Oh, well, you know, like I'm a little bit worried because I thought me and Yusuf were gonna get it on, but it's turned out that he actually likes Chris instead now, and I'm feeling a bit weird. What I think you should do is maybe grab Yusuf, go over the far side, have a little chat with him, and then you go over. Are you touching your boobs, Warren? You are you are you're used to audio only, and we've got video today.

• 6:23Speaker 0

  So I'm just well then you're doing self-cupping, trying to go. I mean, well, yeah, you're just immune, aren't you? So and then say go over the far side and have a chat, but when you go over the far side, you will see like they've set up shitloads, an army of cameramen outside of the boundary of the house, all pointing in your direction.

• 6:41Speaker 2

  Right.

• 6:42Speaker 0

  So they don't the the show is not scripted, but is there a structure? Yeah, absolutely. The thing that everybody needs to remember when they're watching Love Island is that there's only 24 hours in a day, and if you produce any content as a cast member, as a islander as it's called, up until 4 a.m. ish the next night at 8 pm, that will be edited and be on TV.

• 7:08Speaker 1

  How many editors do they have? They must have a team.

• 7:11Speaker 0

  So we there's a whole bunch of things that are surprising about it. Probably one of the most surprising things was that the villa that we were in, I think it's a different villa now. I haven't watched season three, so I'm not sure. The villa that we were in was very, very nice and had the largest natural water pool in all of Europe. Was huge. It was massive. So I was uh like it was absolutely huge, and it was sold water as well. So it's just crazy. This millionaire French guy, French investors' house, uh villa, and he had the exact same villa brick for brick in France. So you just went over the front. The exact same one, the same the same, yeah, the same layout, the same masonry work.

• 7:52Speaker 1

  But if you just do command A and select all the time, Command C, Command V,

• 7:57Speaker 2

  yeah, return. It's worth it.

• 8:02Speaker 1

  Don't stop the formatting then, don't hold that shit. No,

• 8:04Speaker 2

  when you you're copying it over and it'll be it'll like have the layout, if any of it's red, then you can't. Oh yeah, you won't, yeah, you have to have the right like book book but

• 8:13Speaker 0

  what if you run out of fun? Well, you wouldn't have run out of funds because he was mega rich. So we go out of the villa sometimes, I'll get to that in a second. When we went out of the villa, it looked like Basra. There is rows, and this is without exaggeration a hundred industrial units, corrugated iron, like what you'd see on shipping containers on the back of these huge freighters that are coming over, and in there's four in a row production office, all with huge air conditioning units on the back, two in a row, Caroline Flax changing room, five inner circle uh task team, the guys that do the challenges, like and the uh woodwork shop and all the rest of it, and all of these have just been shipped over, and you go out and you have no you're just this tiny little gnat, like doing just going,

• 9:03Speaker 3

  oh I fancy that bird, and you shouldn't fancy me

• 9:06Speaker 0

  back, and you go outside and you just like just fucking hell. It's really haunting, actually. It's a very you got it that's

• 9:14Speaker 1

  sci-fi horror kind of scenario. You just

• 9:16Speaker 0

  realise how much, how much of a bastard that operation is. It is and this was the first one, and it's got exponentially bigger. So season one was probably a quarter as popular as season two, which is probably a quarter as popular as season three. So I can only imagine that that level of extremity is getting taken further. So yeah, you go out and then so the number of producers and and um

• 9:42Speaker 1

  It'd feel like you're living in a simulation. Yeah,

• 9:44Speaker 2

  like

• 9:45Speaker 1

  it's like the

• 9:46Speaker 2

  Truman show, isn't it? Where everything's engineered, like conversations are engineered the environment's engineer,

• 9:49Speaker 0

  everyone's watching everything that you're doing. Yeah. Well, I mean, the first time that I went outside, I couldn't believe just how many of these things there were. There's a full on site canteen. They've got bus drivers working. On rotation 24 hours a day shipping people from the accommodation where they've bought a whole hotel for like two and a half months while what just for the team just for the team just for the production team. They've got a like a team of 60 security who are on rotation at all times. Round the villa. Round the villa, but also just around the production place. Right. And they're checking in at the top, like beep

• 10:21Speaker 3

  beep,

• 10:22Speaker 0

  we've got a uh grey Ford Mondeo just driving down the hill. John, can you have a look? Shh, I no, no worries, mate, no worries. It's just the uh it's just Domino's guy again for Joanne.

• 10:33Speaker 3

  Um

• 10:35Speaker 0

  so yeah, is it scripted? No, it's not. And but do they poke the storylines? Yeah, they definitely do. I

• 10:41Speaker 1

  suppose it has to be a narrative, like, and I think editing you can create any narrative you want from quite a small amount of data, which I guess is why you know, with politicians they so you know the Ed Millerban video that was going round where it looked like he was just psychotic because he just kept repeating weird phrases, and it's be caught but it's because they just someone uploaded the entire take of five minutes, but he knows that he's gonna get chopped into 20 seconds or something, so he has to keep repeating, so then. He just said it in

• 11:08Speaker 0

  45 different ways, yeah. Eventually got it right. Put

• 11:12Speaker 1

  down the rhetoric, put it aside, get onto the negotiating table, and come together and then just keep it. Just in every every different

• 11:19Speaker 2

  iteration of that available.

• 11:21Speaker 0

  Right. Well, I mean one of the things that you can't do, which actually sucks a little bit, is there's no second takes, and if it was scripted, there would be. Like you can't do stuff, and you don't get a second chance to say the same thing to people in terms of an impression, and that means that the reaction can't be contrived. Like the guys that are going on here, the guys that do Jody Shaw, they're 16 seasons deep, they probably could have had sufficient media training to actually be able to fake a response. You've picked fucking Stephanie, 18, hairdresser from Wigan, and dropped her in the middle of Morca and said, Right, Stephanie, we're just gonna have to take that again. Can you just do the same reaction, please? Your head's gonna explode. Yeah.

• 12:05Speaker 2

  So that's so it's all first time, there's no nothing ever

• 12:11Speaker 0

  gets done again. Uh so the challenges that they do, there's challenges to win dates and stuff like that, those do get second takes. They're much more highly produced, and the dates are as well. Right. One of the reasons for that is that in the villa, you've got um controlled camera setups. We've come in today and we've done this. Is the first time that we're videoing something in here, it's the first time that the guys that are that are recording it have had to come in and set up and the longest amount of time of anything was set up. But if you were to come in and do it again, it would be boom, dropped straight in. So, little known fact about Love Island. On the week before we went in on season one, they did an entire six-day dry run with a whole separate cast, exactly the same, purely so that they could get the camera angles and the lighting right.

• 13:00Speaker 0

  Wow, just so they don't have to do all of that while you're there. So there was a pair of Italian twins that come in on mine, like season two or season three or something like that. Uh sorry, episode two or episode three. Oh, okay. And they had a different pair of twins. So everything was the same, the same storylines. Jess Hayes, who's the girl that won was in the dry run and was producing such good content during that that they said, right, pull her out. We're gonna put her in the main one next week. And there's a girl called Naomi, who was the one that actually got quite a bit of backlash, she was like fairly fit, blonde one, and she was supposed to go in at the start, and they were like, she ended up being what just waiting in Majorca for like two and a half weeks ready for her to go in because she'd been like slipstreamed by this girl who'd been proven to be interesting.

• 13:52Speaker 0

  Um but one of the other things, and go to try and sort of go from start to finish so that I don't miss anything. Before you go out there, you guys might remember this because we were sort of in pretty good contact when I went out. I went out and spent everybody does all of the starting cast spend a week of media lockdown in Mallorca in the south coast of Mallorca with a chaperone who doesn't let you out of their sight 24 hours a day for a full week before you go. So I got picked up on the Sunday morning going in on the Friday, or the Saturday morning going in on the Friday following, and from that moment did not have phone, laptop, access to the internet, access to friends, knowledge of anything that was going on, and you then are basically kept under lock and key.

• 14:37Speaker 0

  You're allowed to go out and you can go to the gym and stuff like that, but each cast member has like a geo-fenced area that they're allowed to move within. So you can't interact with other there's no chance that they would be out having a coffee and you bump into that person. And the reason that they have you on media lockdown is twofold. Firstly, so that you are beginning to get conditioned, you get a bit of a tan, you start to chill out, you start to think about the what's sort of coming up, so they've got control over you, um, so that you can go and do media obligations when you need to. You've got an interview with a reveal magazine later on, and then we're gonna do some press shots and then we're gonna do whatever. The other thing is so that they can start to reveal stuff about the cast members to uh online and to the public back in the UK without any fear of you seeing it.

• 15:29Speaker 0

  Right. So if I was to go into a corner shop, I wouldn't be allowed to go in without my chaperone.

• 15:35Speaker 2

  What

• 15:35Speaker 0

  and

• 15:36Speaker 2

  he make sure you don't see he's like if I'm if I

• 15:38Speaker 0

  it's like to make sure to have a look at your phone, right? Exactly. Um and we had slots in the gym, so I was in at 8 a.m. which was fine for me because I trained on the morning, but yeah, we have slots at like 8 a.m. until 9 and then a half an hour window where the next person would go through, and I didn't notice. I've got you

• 15:58Speaker 1

  fully on lockdown then. That's incredible. Can't watch TV.

• 16:01Speaker 0

  It's no, no, no TV. I took it like a hard drive out with me and was able that was the first time. I've said this before, it's the first time that I finished the book because I had no distractions. And what did you do? So sunbathed a lot, trained a lot, I was in a deficit, so I hated my life a lot. Um which was just I just thought about food. No, it was good. It was honestly that week was probably one of the most liberating that I've had. If you think about it, you don't have to think about it. You don't have any anywhere else other than exactly where you want to be. You can be as present as possible with no sense of guilt.

• 16:36Speaker 1

  That like this is a weird situation, I've got a chaperone and so on. But once I guess one once the novelty of that's gone, it's like I can just see. I've

• 16:44Speaker 0

  I personally I found it incredibly liberating. I think a lot of the guys I know that were cast when I was there, struggled a bit more. If you are naturally social, heavily social, you're really gonna struggle because it's just you and this person, and for the most part, they've got tasks that they need to be doing because they're still at work. It's just that they're at work whilst babysitting you and making sure that you don't run and grab a couple of things. So it's an

• 17:10Speaker 1

  introvert's dream, but

• 17:12Speaker 0

  it was perfect for me, right? Yeah. Well, not really because you've got someone watching you the whole time. Thankfully, thankfully, my the the chaperone talked to me. You know, you don't

• 17:21Speaker 1

  it's like being in a taxi, like you can talk to them if you want to, but like I would give an Uber driver a five-star rating if they just didn't talk to me. Would you want a

• 17:30Speaker 0

  hello

• 17:30Speaker 2

  and a goodbye?

• 17:32Speaker 1

  Maybe, but I'm not that fast.

• 17:34Speaker 2

  I hate a hate forced low-level interaction with people.

• 17:39Speaker 1

  Yeah. Which is why either of us on Love Island, I think would I like honestly, I think I would become clinically depressed. Like not

• 17:48Speaker 3

  with not with the pre pre-bit,

• 17:50Speaker 1

  just the actual prove it was great. Yeah. Can we go back?

• 17:53Speaker 0

  Is there any chance

• 17:53Speaker 1

  of

• 17:54Speaker 0

  going back? Wow, love.

• 17:55Speaker 2

  Can

• 17:55Speaker 3

  I have can have a shopper road again?

• 17:57Speaker 2

  Before the Love Island was fantastic, but yeah. Then they put me in this villa with loads of people. And I had to say things and speak, and it was just a love interest. To see you.

• 18:07Speaker 1

  They they instructed me and then have an army of cameramen outside the door.

• 18:11Speaker 2

  I'd pay to see you in the end. I would love to see you in the camera. Can you not speak to the right people to get actually no doubt because it'll be You'd

• 18:17Speaker 1

  have to keep any like rope or paracetamol away from me because you wouldn't do that? I've already had beyond the the limits of Paris tomorrow today. Um why do we think

• 18:29Speaker 0

  why do you think you wouldn't do very well if you were on a reality TV show?

• 18:33Speaker 1

  It's so that my I think it would be a personality clash to to be the most diplomatic way of saying it, like the having seen the first episode, none of the people finished the first episode. No. See, I couldn't even finish the episode, so I feel like having to spend six weeks with those people more than five minutes. Yeah, just like seven no seven minutes.

• 19:00Speaker 2

  Having seen the first episode. What you mean is the first episode one minute is a lot of flavour of it.

• 19:06Speaker 1

  Yeah, not having completed the first episode. Oh yeah.

• 19:10Speaker 0

  So couldn't do it. We'll get on to that in a second. Um so other stuff that's kind of cool, I guess. There's if you're in Big Brother, you'll have seen this, I guess, or it's quite heavily alluded to that they never know that there's other people around and that the cameramen like don't interact with them and they go and change shit in the house overnight. They do make amends like if there's um a date or whatever going on the next morning, they'll lay the table overnight. That sort of stuff will happen. But you're very you're very um aware without being conscious. Uh sorry, no, you're very conscious without being aware of the production process going on. So you know that there's 70 cameras. So if we're chatting right now, there'll be little camera under the table there, looking at me, there'd be little one over there underneath the lamp, there'd be a You can you can see them all.

• 20:00Speaker 0

  Yeah, little little sort of bulb CC TV ones, but they're very, very well placed, so they're just innocuous, just slotted around the same way that you would have like a home security system. Right.

• 20:11Speaker 1

  What do you mean conscious but not aware?

• 20:14Speaker 0

  So the second part of that is that there's guys with fucking bazookers like the real like looking at Jody Marsh from three miles away once, like at the beach, one of them like sun photographer ones. There's those, and they're in key positions that have got like the biggest field of vision around the garden. And those ones, there's a guy, there's a man under a hood, like looking through that and moving around. And as you're walking past, you can see like panning. Yeah, following it. And you can alright, mate. The like told to not speak to me. Yeah, they're told they're told not to talk to you, and if you do, they come over the tanoy and they tell you off. Socialise. Exactly. Um there's a there's a tanoy system where they tell you off for doing shit, so they don't need to send someone in every time.

• 21:06Speaker 1

  So disciplinarian.

• 21:07Speaker 0

  Well, I mean, one of the one of the things that I don't think anyone who watches the show would believe is that it's really, really fucking boring. And that's not me being facetious or in any way, it's anyone that's on it would agree.

• 21:23Speaker 2

  You

• 21:23Speaker 0

  get to see 45 minutes, 40 minutes out of a day. From multiple times, that's the best bit. Yeah, from from multiple people's lives, so times that by 14. Yeah.

• 21:32Speaker 2

  So you're

• 21:32Speaker 0

  talking

• 21:33Speaker 2

  like

• 21:33Speaker 0

  what

• 21:33Speaker 2

  350 hours of life. So you've probably got like a good bid every 24 hours. Well, it's

• 21:39Speaker 0

  more about your highlight. It's more about your experience, not about the not about the end result that goes on TV, it's more about what you experience. Well,

• 21:45Speaker 2

  yeah. Yeah, yeah. So okay, you will experience a good bit. You've had like, oh, that was a cracking moment now, cracking 30 seconds. Right now, let's get back to the remaining

• 21:52Speaker 0

  like 23 hours, 59 minutes and 30 seconds of one

• 21:56Speaker 2

  day. No entertainment. But no, because

• 21:58Speaker 0

  you've got no phone. Can't bring a book in. Couldn't bring your book in, no, of course not. Um, they were allowed the um girl who was the born again Christian on my series was allowed to bring a Bible in. And I thought, well, I've got the selfish gene. Richard Dawkins. Um I could

• 22:18Speaker 3

  bring this militant atheism. No, no,

• 22:20Speaker 0

  not allowed. Um so yeah, there's all the cameras around, and you are very conscious, like I say, of uh of what's going on, but very quickly also adapt to the situation. A lot of the stuff's done behind one way mirrors, so there's a mirror above the kitchen, there's a mirror in the girls changing rooms, there's mirrors around, and behind that there's a lot of stuff that's going on as well with cameras and stuff. Obviously, that's completely oblivious. And the little ones can just swivel around and you kind of don't know. You're always mic'd up. Um there'll be a sound guy that'll come in twice a day, morning and night, and change your batteries out. So you're going to sit with

• 22:57Speaker 2

  a microphone

• 22:58Speaker 0

  on. Uh you have to have it next to your bed, but the second you get up, even if you want to go with the battery straight on, put it on, and they'll come over the tanoi.

• 23:05Speaker 3

  Chris, you haven't got your microphone on.

• 23:07Speaker 0

  Oh wow. Fuck, okay, go back to it. Is it like a it's like an elastic band, elastic band thing that's then got that you clip the thing onto? And then that comes down there. Yeah, bump sure. Bomb bag. Bumb bag. Bumb bag that you've got like

• 23:20Speaker 2

  pretty much at all times, which isn't waterproof.

• 23:22Speaker 0

  So you want to get it. And is worth is worth like each one's worth like 250 quid.

• 23:27Speaker 2

  So you've got to be waterproof bum

• 23:28Speaker 0

  bags,

• 23:29Speaker 2

  gap in the

• 23:30Speaker 0

  market. Yeah. 14, 14 sales per year. So um, yeah, the the fact that you've got to get 45 minutes of content out of a full day, inevitably means that they need to push and hurry the storylines along along.

• 23:45Speaker 1

  Gotta sort of poke you with a stick a little bit. Yes to expedite,

• 23:48Speaker 0

  they need to expedite what's happening. Like they can't have uh 14 day wooing period where someone finally plucks up the courage to ask to hold someone else's hand.

• 23:58Speaker 1

  Like it needs to happen now. So how do they encourage that? Wait, you said when they when they take you aside, for example, is that ill eliciting your opinion, or is it like, oh, do you want to go and go on it? You can shoot like

• 24:11Speaker 0

  to a go on.

• 24:13Speaker 1

  You're running out, like, alright

• 24:14Speaker 0

  then there's a fluffer, the fluffer comes in. Oh god. No, no, it's not it's more about it's I think everyone's conscious. Another thing to consider is everybody is conscious that they're there, a lot of the people are there to get time on TV. You haven't gone on TV to not be on TV. So what they term producing content is doing something which will make the edit, or doing something which will contribute to the edit, the final production of that particular episode.

• 24:43Speaker 3

  Are you

• 24:44Speaker 2

  laughing? What are you all? J imagining how often Yusuf would be on the edit. I mean, I feel like it would be constantly

• 24:56Speaker 1

  so I'd imagine like let's say people are having a chat, and then someone goes like and then they they'll have to be like, okay, chop that uh Yusuf surprised, save it as a file, and then like slip it into other conversations. So you because what they do in like X Factor, for example, where they they splice audience reactions with things that didn't that they're not reacting to. Can we do that on

• 25:16Speaker 2

  this? But just chop in some I just want like whenever we say something to two weeks ago. So we need

• 25:23Speaker 0

  a bank of like seven emotions, and we can just throw them in whenever. Chris, furious, uh Johnny indignant. So that's a good that's a really good point about them noting stuff down, actually, sort of alluded to them transcribing things. You will have someone listening to your channel on the mic almost 24 hours a day. And I came out, it's really, really weird. So while I was in there, the majority of the conversations that you have have to be about what's going on, and if you begin to talk about stuff from the outside world, common friends that you've got that aren't in the villa, they'll come over the tano and they'll tell you, Irelanders, can you please stop talking about the outside world? Thank you. Really? So you actually have more freedom in most prisons than

• 26:04Speaker 1

  like you you thought that's thought police. Like that's that is so Orwellian, like any

• 26:12Speaker 0

  it's you're right, it's when you say it like that, it sounds really terrible. But yeah, you

• 26:16Speaker 2

  can't there's no entertainment, you have to just be with yourself with the other people, and you can't talk about anything apart from the inane activity of the what everyone else is doing without any entertainment without any outside. This is what I mean when I say boring. Like it it

• 26:31Speaker 0

  sounds stupid to say that you're in this 10 million pound villa with half-naked girls, but it's really boring. Like you there's only so many times that you can talk about Omar and that chat that he had last night and how he proper Marov Brav. Like, how many times can you say that? Because nothing else has happened because there's a reflection period. Do you understand? There's these peaks of activity that are then followed by an echo chamber of it happening, and once that's been completed, you need to wait for the next thing to happen, but during that time you can only talk about stuff that's going on in the villa. Do people drink alcohol? So you I I thought when I went on, I was expecting it to be like X on the Beach or Jody Shore.

• 27:16Speaker 0

  I had a lot of experience of being around the guys from Jody Shore running club nights in Newcastle, and I thought, brilliant. Days in the sun, nights getting pissed. This is gonna be sweet. Got there, and you are limited to two drinks. Really? One beer, one wine, or any combination thereof.

• 27:34Speaker 1

  It's weird because it's like they're trying to create this incubation chamber, but they're not putting any accelerants in there either. It's like

• 27:41Speaker 0

  I think well, to be honest, the alcohol thing, although I wanted to stab someone at the time for the restrictions. Looking back, I can see why they do it, because if you look at the um the groove that Love Island's carved out for itself in programming, it isn't Jody Shore, it's not X on the beach, it's not as state classy, it's not as fluffy as something like made in Chelsea or Taui. But it's not actually all that far off when you look at it, high production value, everyone in there, yeah, there's arguments and stuff like that, but it's not because someone's out of control. Because

• 28:16Speaker 1

  of all the rules in the tanoy, like no no alcohol, no red foods, no cheese, no mismatching socks, like you have to do. You'd have

• 28:24Speaker 2

  brown food touching

• 28:24Speaker 0

  beige food, you'd be fucked. I'd be yeah ruined ruined. So, yeah, the the one of the one of the problems that you come across is that you're just bored, like you've got nothing to talk about, and then like you say, you've restricted on how many times you can talk about the same situation. But one of the things that does happen, like when they've when they've got their content for the day, there's less the little bit less pressure. And because the live show on the year that we did it was on a Thursday night, I think. It was either a Thursday or a Friday night, no, it was a Thursday night. What it meant was that there's no show on a Friday and a recap show on a Saturday, so you had Thursdays off completely, and that was complete that was liberation. You could do whatever you wanted, and the

• 29:12Speaker 1

  still filming on Thursdays.

• 29:14Speaker 0

  They're still filming, but what they say is look, guys, just don't do anything, don't do anything exciting, the cameras are rolling, but we don't want to put it in, so just as long as you guys are happy to talk about back home and stuff like that, but you know, six days a week of not being able to do that is is actually quite quite trying.

• 29:32Speaker 1

  How I wonder how much footage they'd actually take from that off day. Because I'd imagine most of the crushes are original.

• 29:37Speaker 0

  Well, because one of the problems is there's no show on a Friday, and then there's a recap show on a Saturday. I think the schedule's slightly different, but they've still got time off. When you don't have a day of broadcasting, and each episode is one day, how would you fit stuff from an extra day into that one day?

• 29:56Speaker 4

  Do

• 29:56Speaker 0

  you understand? You can't you can't pad that in.

• 29:59Speaker 1

  But they could just use it Later, wasn't that basically? They weren't that contrived.

• 30:03Speaker 0

  This is one of my fears, right? Before I went on. Remember that Jade Goody incident where with Shil Pachetti where she was like, She should go home, and they were burning effigies of pigs that look like um Jade Goody in the streets, it was on Big Brother and Shochetti with this like big Bollywood star. And my I had in the back of my head, just don't do something that's that newsworthy. And obviously, you're like, I've never said anything like that in my life, but fuck knows what could happen. And then with the editing as well, and because you never get to see what the final edit looks like, and when we were the first season like going on now, you understand, you know how it's going to be cut, what the sort of flow is going to be, what kind of end result they're looking for.

• 30:51Speaker 0

  It's quite fluffy, right? It's quite nice. They're not trying to make anyone look like a tit. Whereas before you go in, you don't know if it's some character assassination waiting in the wings. And I was pretty

• 31:04Speaker 1

  pretty terrified. And as he says, like selective editing, such a so the what I'm interested in now is you said um I was looking forward to there being a bit more alcohol and a bit more freedom to so clearly from that perspective, you weren't afraid to let loose a little bit with your inhibitions and say whatever. Whereas on the the other side, like not that you are at risk of like saying something racist or whatever, but um do you do you think it's because you're self-employed that you don't didn't have a sense of um oh I better not say something that might have a repercussion or recourse later on. Yeah, that was that

• 31:40Speaker 0

  was definitely a big deal. Um of the guys on my season, I think if you discount me as company director from being self-employed, i.e. not on temporary work, site work, I think there was only two other people who didn't either work for their family or were self-employed as model labourer, something similar, and some people didn't work who were employed, yes, outside of that paradigm. It doesn't matter then, it doesn't matter if you have a job. Well,

• 32:09Speaker 1

  I mean it doesn't matter to them if if they're yeah.

• 32:11Speaker 0

  But the point the point is you can go back on site tomorrow, you can pretty much say anything. Everyone's

• 32:14Speaker 1

  like,

• 32:15Speaker 0

  Oh mate, I

• 32:16Speaker 1

  can't believe that you got your dico. Like, do you know what I mean? It does totally fine, yeah. Whereas if you return to KPMG, you're like Oh, I see. I thought what you're saying the other way

• 32:23Speaker 2

  around. I thought you were saying, right, better to be self-employed.

• 32:27Speaker 1

  Well, from this perspective, yeah. It's just more

• 32:29Speaker 0

  protective for the brand. And yeah, that was you you're right. But the guys that were on there, I honestly think that a lot of them would have been would have acted exactly the same anyway. So it's it's human character that shows through regardless of what position they're going to go back to at the end. Um, but yeah, I was I was I was conscious of that. And I think that you can't get around the fact that you know for all that they try and make it really, really um naturalistic. Like you're on fucking TV.

• 33:00Speaker 1

  You're on TV, but you're not on like Fox Network, you're on something which at least yeah, as you say. It

• 33:05Speaker 0

  mimics it mimics a natural environment, right? But that's the goal.

• 33:07Speaker 2

  But and everyone else is going through the same experience at the same time, which is takes the pressure off a little bit. So one of the things

• 33:14Speaker 0

  one of the things that you want to do is bond over the the alien nature of the experience, and you can't break the fourth wall like that either because you're not allowed to talk about it. So one of the first things we wanted to do, I remember on the first and the second day, all that all of us wanted to do was talk about the last week we'd done in lockdown. Because we were like, where were you living? Oh, I was living here, I was on the port, or I went to the gym at this time, or did you go and get frozen yogurt from this place? Yeah, yeah. Because that's you I've never met this person before, but you've got some weird common uh experience that both of you have gone through incredibly recently, and you're like, this is And you're not blind over it. This is this is exactly what I want to talk about. Personally, for me, that was exactly what I wanted to talk about. It's like I wanted to discuss my experience, how I felt, how my you know, the I I wanted to understand that why are you laughing?

• 34:00Speaker 0

  Why are you laughing at it? Because

• 34:02Speaker 1

  I'm thinking instead, you're like, right, here I am with this person, there's these weird boundaries around what we can and can't talk about. You're like, do you like lemons? Like, um, what's a safe top like Yeah,

• 34:13Speaker 0

  it was it was a little bit difficult. What do you think of the sun today?

• 34:16Speaker 1

  The sun is bright and yellow, I like it. I think so too. Let's be friends now,

• 34:21Speaker 0

  yeah. It was it it made it difficult to it made it difficult for me to be authentic with that because I wasn't tremendously interested in what was going on in the villa, and I think that made me a bad islander to a degree, it made me a bad castmate. But I think a lot of people are like that, and then there's just varying degrees of playing the game or forgetting it. Um you mentioned the sun. Another really interesting thing is that we do not have any idea of the time. So when you live in the villa, they do not give you

• 34:58Speaker 2

  the time.

• 34:59Speaker 0

  So

• 34:59Speaker 2

  do you what did you wake up? So yeah, even retrospectively, like there's no there's uh at no point do you know what time it is? No, never. So

• 35:07Speaker 0

  you have the phones that they give you, the mobile phones that they have on the show, all got the wrong and different times on the clocks on the wall, all have the wrong time on. You get into the car, the driver's car, to go on a date or to go out on your day off, drivers changed his watch, clock on their has changed.

• 35:27Speaker 2

  Why do they why? I'm

• 35:28Speaker 0

  not too sure. I'd quite I'd be quite interested to know that I the reason that I think is that by breaking up the routine, it allowed them to determine the schedule of the day, and it meant that they can choose right. This is when you're getting up, this is when you own it. It's so

• 35:44Speaker 1

  intense. Like, I I feel like I had so I spent 10 days in a monastery in December, and it was way more freedom than any of this. Like a little

• 35:51Speaker 0

  bit, and you weren't allowed to speak. I wasn't,

• 35:53Speaker 1

  yeah.

• 35:53Speaker 0

  And I was or look at people, at least more freedom. At least you weren't allowed to speak the things you wanted to.

• 36:01Speaker 2

  Yeah, which is worse. Good point, actually.

• 36:05Speaker 0

  So yeah, you did

• 36:06Speaker 2

  have really asinine pointless conversations, but you can't, but you can still talk. That's all you can say.

• 36:13Speaker 1

  Weird, and then I'm but I'm hearing this, and I'm like, Howdy hell, like being some like Norwegian high security prison, and do

• 36:21Speaker 2

  you get a TV? How much of so like I've watched a bit more than seven minutes, yeah. And I I think the thing that I find most interesting is the version of you that you see on there to me, seems like a like it maybe a small part of you that you've had to like write, I need to bring out everything I've got of this side of my personality, yeah. For three weeks. But do you know what do you know what it's like? It's

• 36:48Speaker 0

  like you as quite uh nice mannered intellectual guy who's charted accountant and all the rest of it, but under the right circumstances, can fill himself with adrenaline and pick 310 kilos off the ground. That's a very, very minor part that's actually probably not that similar to the rest of you, but you do actually seem to have a bit of a speciality in it, and you've been able to see so the

• 37:14Speaker 1

  psychologist saying that you don't have a single personality because you are never a consistent being throughout the day. You're probably 14 or 15 sub-personalities that you draw on depending on the context. So you have like a going into the corner shop personality or like uh speaking to the waiter, but or like speaking with your friends or being at work, and all these things are just different masks that you put on and take off depending on the circumstance. So maybe you had that available because of the environment you work in, you're like, oh, I've got to put that one on because I'm with these kind of people today, so or for the next one. I think

• 37:45Speaker 0

  I think that's a really good analogy, and you know, I I wanted to try and make we are making this podcast about the process and about the show itself. If someone doesn't understand who know me, you know my background, it might not make as much sense. But I do think that there's definitely people that I've seen in other seasons, Sophie Graden, who was in season two, I know is cut from a similar cloth as myself, a little bit mindful, a little bit introverted, um keen sort of intellectual interests and bit academic and stuff like that. And I know that she struggled similarly as well, right? And it's she is also she's been there, done it, played the game with modeling and done like sort of little bits of not glamour, but you know, sort of like bikini shoots and stuff like that, and being in that world, nightlife world, and club promote for 10 years.

• 38:31Speaker 0

  So my trade is putting these the the these people, I'm putting people similar to those who I was in the villa with into nightclubs,

• 38:39Speaker 2

  yeah.

• 38:40Speaker 0

  But I only have to deal with that atmosphere for 20 seconds at a time, because they want to go inside and get drunk, and I get to like do a max single single ret max, one ret max and then max effort out and then

• 39:03Speaker 1

  it's a bit like a like if you do a job interview, you anyone can convince somebody for 20 minutes that they're not a psychopath, and then the problem is the

• 39:12Speaker 0

  what do you do for the next couple of years? Yeah, but this was this was one of the problems that I'd had when I went in there, and I sold my story to the producers as one that looking back now was me playing their game, remembering that I managed to get myself on Take Me Out of Love Island within the space of two and a half years, I know I I understood what they wanted to hear. So if anyone wants us wants me to do a little segment on one of the next life hacks on how to get yourself on reality TV,

• 39:47Speaker 1

  yeah, I can do it. I think there'll be demand for that. 100%. So

• 39:51Speaker 0

  do you know do you know what we did? James James, who's one of our city managers? The only reason that he wasn't on X on the Beach was because of a uh uh operation. Like a logistical issue, but he was not even in the UK, and on I think about 15 minutes of briefing from me, and like, right, you're gonna say this and you're gonna say this, get some stories that are similar to this, and da da da da, and that was it. They only needed to see him on Skype twice. And he was so interested. And he was booked. Well, well, if if um there is a method, after all. There's defin there's definitely a method. But you know, listeners can think about what what do you think producers want to hit? You know, what

• 40:32Speaker 2

  what is it that they're looking for out of people? But so they don't they don't want people discussing space time and mindfulness, which is what I know you really want to talk about. Well, that's what

• 40:43Speaker 0

  I actually did talk about. Is it while you're in there? So I got on one of the off days, I sat down with Jordan, Hulk, like the big dude. So did you

• 40:52Speaker 2

  previously know

• 40:53Speaker 0

  him? No. I I knew some of the people that were going in. I'm not gonna say how because it'll get someone in trouble. But um, I worked out how some of the other people in fact, no, I'm fuck it, I am gonna say. So you were gonna say all along that was the cleverest thing to do. It wasn't. Right. But I've just decided I've just decided, so fuck it. Um Marlin, who was on season two. Did you watch season two of Love Island? No, of course you

• 41:20Speaker 2

  didn't. Uh so I've watched I've watched I watched bits of season two. Yeah. So I watched very little of season one. Okay, so there was a there was

• 41:28Speaker 0

  exams. There was a um mixed race girl. I want to say, I'm not too sure where she's from, and I may be butchering this, but it's sort of around Indian heritage. Um called Marlin, and she's a makeup artist from London. Long and short of it, the very very first intro, which I know both of you will have seen where I'm on the plane, there's a girl, there's a girl, there's a girl that walks past, and I give it. Hey. Um that was Marlin. That was Marlin, and I was on take me out with her two years before. Right. Then she messaged me as soon as I got off and said,

• 41:58Speaker 3

  Oh yeah,

• 42:00Speaker 0

  I'm gonna go and film another one of these later on. Joey, you tell you who it is. I was like, fucking right to I thank you very much. She went and then filmed so anyone who's watching season one on Netflix, rewind. There's a girl that walks in to the first scene where Lewis is in bed, and he's in bed with a girl, but there's a girl's like bum, and she's in like sort of like sexy pajamas, and she walks away really tanned. That's her as well. And then she went to go and do a third one, and it was with the um Italian twins that get in this like fancy Lamborghini. So 12 hours later, I was able to work out two of the people, or two of the sets of people that were on the show. I see. Although she was, you know, she gave me some cheat codes, so

• 42:43Speaker 3

  cheers.

• 42:46Speaker 0

  Triangle triangles. Well, it was unlimited lives, um, omnipotence and car drives and water. Yeah, yeah, well that's one. Yeah. Oh, what about that? Great. Um, so where are we? I'm trying to think about what else there was that I've missed. Oh, yeah, so we were talking about um about the space-time thing. So I'd recently watched Interstellar. I'd read the book, Kip Thorne, who was the consultant uh astronomer on a consultant physicist on the show, and he did a partnership a partner book to it, The Science Behind Interstellar. I got half an hour with Jordan, who was one of the older lads on the show, and we were laid in the bedroom just chatting away, and I was telling him about what I'd learned in the book about um time dilation from being close to a black hole.

• 43:36Speaker 0

  When I came out, and then went back the next day to film my it's Chris, see you later on, thanks for the this, this, and this. I was sat in the canteen of Basra of all of the corrugated iron things, and there was a man who put his rifle down next to me

• 43:52Speaker 3

  and

• 43:53Speaker 0

  told you war stories. Yeah, and two guys came and sat over, and they said,

• 43:57Speaker 3

  Hey mate,

• 43:58Speaker 0

  Chris, I'm so I'm

• 43:59Speaker 2

  so and

• 43:59Speaker 0

  so alright, okay. Where uh we're two of the sound engineers. We've been we were one of the people that was listening to your mic. Um so we we listened to like pretty much everything you've said for the last three and a half weeks while you've been. So it's a real um, you know that that thing about gravity, gravity time dilation, could could you could you tell us a little bit more? I was like, fucking hell. That's the most innocuous little discussion that I had, but there is someone listening to the islanders at all times. There is nothing that goes under the radar, and there's a lot of stuff that was said in there, like an awful lot of talk like about partying and drugs and you know uh stuff that would be libelous, like if if it was if they decided to put together an absolute character assassination anyone

• 44:49Speaker 2

  done in a

• 44:50Speaker 0

  heartbeat, because you have people that are very outgoing and charismatic and kind of extroverted, the the tiny little slip-ups I was concerned about, they're like fucking ten a penny, they're just like scatter gunning them all over the room. So they could ruin

• 45:06Speaker 1

  you if they wanted to,

• 45:07Speaker 0

  they could do, but I guess those guys were so ballsy that they were able to push that were able to discount or any fear of that coming up, which led to them actually being a their content was so much more energetic and so much more engaging.

• 45:25Speaker 1

  Do you think it was consciously discounting it, or they were just didn't care? Fuck it.

• 45:28Speaker 0

  Yeah, I think I genuinely just think that most of the guys that were doing that just didn't give a shit. I don't think

• 45:33Speaker 1

  it's like a a consideration, I think it's just that's them, but

• 45:36Speaker 0

  that's again that's why they're good cast members. Yeah, definitely they're good cast members because they don't have that filter. Whereas for me, I was very mindful of the oddness of the experience a lot of the time.

• 45:47Speaker 1

  So we we have this experience quite quite a bit, and I imagine you will be now increasingly with the podcasts where you'll have said something in an article that you wrote in 2011 and forgotten about it, and then you'll get a message from someone about like a line in it that was something that you did, and you're like, oh my god, I've got to be careful about what I put in the public domain because it might be a recommendation. Yeah, and it's I mean it's never something cringy, but it's it's like something a recommendation that you made that you maybe no longer agree with, yeah. That someone's like, oh hey, at uh three minutes 42 on your video, and you're like, fuck, yeah, yeah. Yeah, well, I mean, I've never I've never had that before,

• 46:25Speaker 0

  and the podcast has been incredibly liberating for me to actually finally speak the truth forward about stuff that I'm interested in after so long of kind of doing this, and you know, I it it must sound or it might sound like I'm I didn't enjoy the the um process of going on Love Island, I really did, but I didn't enjoy it for the reasons of like being lad, being in there, the little bit of adoration and social equity that you get coming out. I enjoyed the experience for the experience, I was transfixed by the production process. I wanted to know how all of the rushes worked and why there were all of these different cameras and stuff like that, and that to me was really really interesting. That made me a sh

• 47:08Speaker 4

  that was like

• 47:09Speaker 0

  didn't make me the best islander because I was I was far too detached from the actual narrative and of what was going on inside of it. Um so yeah, it was

• 47:20Speaker 2

  you've experienced something that maybe 50 people ever probably in total for for the length

• 47:25Speaker 0

  of time

• 47:25Speaker 2

  that I was looking for. Which is hard to do. There's not that many experiences like that that you could that that anyone will ever experience.

• 47:31Speaker 1

  No. But you're right, like if you're living there in a kind of square peg thing where you're you're enjoying a slightly different aspect of the whole thing. It's like coming in here recording the podcast, but just being like transfiguring the colours in the room there's like, well, great, but it's you know you might still hit a couple of commonalities,

• 47:52Speaker 0

  yeah. You do, you end up you end up striking out a little bit more, unfortunately. Um I think you know, if you are listening or watching now.

• 48:01Speaker 2

  You're on that one. I'm on that one.

• 48:03Speaker 0

  Yeah. Well, you you're on the one that's facing you. You're on the camera facing you.

• 48:07Speaker 1

  That one looks like it's facing me. Does it look like

• 48:09Speaker 2

  well in that case is two facing you? Maybe they're all

• 48:12Speaker 0

  facing you. Have you thought that because you're Egyptian, this is just surveillance, this is all just a contrivance. Finally getting you the got you, Egyptian government. This has just been facial ID constant. So they've got a three year three yeah, yeah, exactly. Like on the films where they have the spinning of the head, they can replicate you now. Terrible. Um so a couple of other stuff that was uh things that were really really interested. You get days out of the villa, so the Thursday, or the day off the day before the day there's no airing. We actually got taken out of the villa. And we were the one of the villa producers took us out there, and we had a member of security, but they were like, right, we're gonna go to the most um non-British beach that we can find. It'll be like it was Spanish and German beach.

• 48:58Speaker 0

  So no one recognises. Exactly, exactly. Because this the show was being aired at the time, right? I don't even know if they'll be allowed to do this now because the show's so much bigger, and I don't even know if you'd be able to get away from that. But

• 49:14Speaker 1

  just so weird, just being just sat on a beach, a bunch of German people,

• 49:17Speaker 0

  German and Spanish. So what happened? The producer had taken us out there and had said, right, lads, I'm telling you now, if you do anything to cause a scene, you're all fucked. We're like, okay, no worries. For me, I was like, I'm out of the villa, I can talk about what I want. They took me to a corner shop and they bought me sweets, like I'm fucking sad. I don't want to say me being.

• 49:42Speaker 1

  This is it, like you know, you you tie an elephant to a stake for so long, and then you're like, well, I'm gonna extend the rope by centimeter today, and it's like, yes, yeah, massive, you know, that's so

• 49:51Speaker 0

  but so that was again that was me, and that was my level of probably neuroticism to a degree about the experience. Right, we've bought you a football, but just have a kick around amongst yourselves. In the time that she said, have a kick around amongst yourselves. John, who's now on Taui, John Clark, had found five German guys. And it said,

• 50:12Speaker 3

  Alright, lads, fancy uh why don't you kick around? Yeah.

• 50:18Speaker 2

  Yeah. Alright, boys, boys, we've got a we've got a game over it.

• 50:22Speaker 0

  John.

• 50:23Speaker 2

  John.

• 50:24Speaker 0

  And his producer calls him over. John, look. Like, I do not want any hard tackles or anything. I can't believe that I'm letting you do this. If someone breaks their leg and I have to explain that on the show. How the fuck am I going to do it? No,

• 50:38Speaker 3

  no, no, don't worry. Don't worry, lad. It'd be it'd be sweet, yeah? It'd be fine. It'd be fine.

• 50:42Speaker 0

  So John. No antagonising them. No nothing else.

• 50:47Speaker 3

  Honestly,

• 50:48Speaker 1

  honestly that chanting about Hitler has done that. Don't fucking don't

• 50:51Speaker 3

  fuck don't fucking worry. Alright? It'll be sweet. It'll be sweet. Boys, boys, get over it. Two world wars and one world cup. John. John, what did I tell you? No. What did I do?

• 51:06Speaker 0

  And then he literally, in the time that you take it.

• 51:10Speaker 3

  Where did you learn the thing? Where did you learn

• 51:12Speaker 1

  that? It was uh there's an advert for when Germany were hosting the World Cup. What's the advert for? I'm not sure, but like a bunch of a bunch of Germans get in the lift. Again, the the guy had been singing it and the Germs come in and he shuts up, and then like in his son's there, and then he starts singing and he just puts his mark up.

• 51:31Speaker 0

  So what actually happened was she went to the bathroom and came back to find us stood on the beach with our hands on our chests singing God Save the Queen.

• 51:41Speaker 3

  So not far off. Boys, boys, LOOOOOOS Stop it! So

• 51:50Speaker 0

  I mean, and it just went from there. We won three, two. Nice. FYI. No injuries. No injuries. No, but did what surface? Beach. Beach on beach. So he was saying,

• 52:01Speaker 1

  I can't explain a broken leg. Is it like if someone if the next day on Love Island someone sat on the room? Someone's got a broken leg and

• 52:08Speaker 0

  we didn't have any fucking footage of it. I see.

• 52:11Speaker 1

  How did that happen? Or one over in bed and like. But even that,

• 52:15Speaker 0

  that would have been recorded. They turned over in bed. It's recorded 24 hours in the street. So some of the places that there aren't cameras, apart from the colours.

• 52:23Speaker 1

  The next three weeks. Just walking around just like

• 52:27Speaker 0

  just loaded up on Tramadon. You'd be fucking lucid then, wouldn't you? Could you imagine? Yeah,

• 52:32Speaker 1

  true. Just I think just print out a version of their face and stick it on, just smiling so that they can grimace. They can map me. Yeah. What's that called? Deep something. Deep fake. Is it? It's the new thing that they so with, I think it was like you need 18 minutes of footage of someone's face just talking in a normal. Oh yeah. You can

• 52:53Speaker 2

  transpose it over.

• 52:54Speaker 1

  So they got one of Obama and just so. Oh

• 52:57Speaker 0

  god. Um so yeah, another one of the another one of the times when um where there isn't cameras is in the toilet, which is really nice. Not

• 53:07Speaker 1

  in the toilet. So

• 53:08Speaker 0

  there's no there's no cameras in the toilet.

• 53:10Speaker 1

  Oh, the changing rooms.

• 53:11Speaker 0

  Oh, in the there's no changing rooms. There's a bedroom. You

• 53:14Speaker 1

  said changing rooms. Listen back to the podcast. You said there is a one-way mirror in the female changing rooms.

• 53:22Speaker 0

  Oh, sorry, I was referring to like the walking wardrobe that they have. Oh, I see. Oh like a changing room as opposed to like a a place where like a locker room, I suppose you can call it where

• 53:36Speaker 1

  they're like flossing the towel and that's what that's all I did.

• 53:39Speaker 0

  But the the shower, the shower and the bath are both open, there's no doors. And there's cameras pointing directly at the showers.

• 53:46Speaker 1

  Really? So do you just shower in trunks or are you just Well the girls like

• 53:50Speaker 0

  the girls chose to, the lads didn't really mind so much, but the girls showered in bikinis. Um and like if you walked in at the wrong time, like you could be having a break. It might spot it might spoil some of the uh some of the upcoming

• 54:06Speaker 2

  novelty, I guess. So it people can still they can still hear you in the toilet, so you can hear like that. But no, there's a door on the toilet. But you're still wearing the mic.

• 54:15Speaker 0

  Uh yeah, that's a good point. Actually, yeah. So you would have full If I just you're now thinking, oh

• 54:21Speaker 1

  my god. Well, there's two guys just been sat there listening to Chris Pooh. Yeah. Wow.

• 54:26Speaker 0

  I mean, I've gone from both ends of the spectrum, haven't I? From gravity time dilation to shit grunts. Big poos. Yeah, shit grunts.

• 54:33Speaker 2

  Was there ever a were you ever worried about I'd be talking to them? I was about to go for

• 54:37Speaker 0

  a poo, sorry.

• 54:38Speaker 2

  You're in a villa, it's w it's hot. Relaxed, lots of women not wearing very much. You're just wearing trunks. Yeah. Ever a risk, big erection. Ever worry about that? No, not really. No. No. Is it is it just never crossed your mind? No,

• 54:53Speaker 0

  it didn't. I did sneak Viagra in there. So just in case. Just in case. I mean, you do not. I mean, John, John Clark went soft on camera. And they made a joke about it. And I was like, well, mate, if you'd mentioned me. Could have sorted you out. So basically, before you go in, the security guy will go and you check through all your bag, and this is at the end of the lockdown week, so you're getting ready to go in. And they'll go through your luggage and they'll take out everything that you've got. Too much branding on this t-shirt. Sorry, mate, not gonna be able to do that. Uh, this pair of scissors um will give you a replacement pair that's in there, like sharp pairs of scissors and stuff like that. Remembering that everyone's undergone a very strict uh psychometric. I was gonna

• 55:37Speaker 1

  ask one for you very,

• 55:39Speaker 0

  very strict one. Any history of depression, any history of anxiety, da-da-da-da-da-da. How does this make you feel? How will it make you feel if you can't speak to your friends and family? How's this gonna and then the most rigorous sexual health check that you've ever heard of in your life? Um by

• 55:55Speaker 2

  fingers up bum. Fingers anywhere, no fingers. No

• 55:58Speaker 0

  umbrella.

• 55:59Speaker 2

  No balls, no fingers on balls, fingers

• 56:01Speaker 0

  on balls. Umbrella. Why are you so obsessed? I was just wondering. You said it was the most rigorous you could have imagined. So like I'm in terms of in terms of that sexual health history and stuff like that. Oh, I see. They're

• 56:11Speaker 2

  not doing loads of like weird acts. Didn't have me

• 56:13Speaker 0

  hanging hanging upside down by my folds. Say R, Chris. Yeah.

• 56:18Speaker 2

  None of that. Do they just like look over your history and go, what have you been having your hand? Fine. Fine, fine, fine. Did happen to fine now. Yeah, exactly. Right. Um,

• 56:28Speaker 0

  what's that? Is it Harley Street in London? Where there's like all of the big dick big pot players. So I was like, you go in there and it's outside, it's like Ferrari, Ferrari, Maserati, Lamborghini. Well, and went up to the top floor of this sort of townhouse, this innocuous-looking little townhouse. And um, there's just this woman in a tight dress with massive VPL. And you don't know what a VPL is.

• 56:51Speaker 1

  I just it was like visible pant line. There you go. No, you worked it up. Is that it? Yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah.

• 56:57Speaker 0

  It's weird that you had to deduce it rather than know it. Is it in your mind palace? Just uh third

• 57:05Speaker 1

  left.

• 57:05Speaker 0

  It's the social interaction modules takes a while to learn. For the boot the bootstrap program is it's in behind spending money, isn't it? Well,

• 57:15Speaker 1

  because I got the free trial and then I have to try it. Just it's good light. I'm not

• 57:19Speaker 0

  paying for that. I'll find the cheap version of the colour. There's a two-second

• 57:22Speaker 1

  delay, I'll do it with it. It'll be fine.

• 57:25Speaker 0

  Um, so yeah. You we've we've had that and we've gone in, yeah. You're not allowed these scissors, you're not allowed this, that, and the other. And what I did was I cut holding the lining of my toiletries bag and slipped five Viagra in there. Uh. Just in case. Just you know, for the lads. It's very clever as well to have done that. So Steve, security guy Steve, if you're watching, check the lining of people's toilet.

• 57:48Speaker 2

  How did you cut that cut it cut cut a hole in it and then sealed it up again? No, no, but like he's not. He's not, it's not like going

• 57:54Speaker 0

  through fucking customs. Like, he's just checking to make sure that you don't have anything sharp or stuff that's got too much branding. So it was fairly um it was like rigorous, or it was thorough, should I say, but like not, it wasn't crazy. Um but yeah, like that was that was I guess that was my experience. Um when you leave, you are taken to a like a really nice coupled hotel, um, and deposited there for the night, you go back the next day, they give you like a checking out um protocol about the press may contact you, these are the things you should and shouldn't do. Here is a contact for management, here is a contact for this, that and the other. The experience is sort of pretty well rounded considering the volume that they need to look after people coming and going almost every week and the level of care that you're given.

• 58:40Speaker 1

  Yeah, so it's planning big system, isn't it? It's sort of fun.

• 58:44Speaker 0

  Remembering that this is when we'd done it, it was the first time they'd ever done this was the first and ever of that kind. And yeah, it was I was impressed with how slick it was, and now obviously they'll have refined it in three, like over the course of three years, it will be like a fucking machine

• 58:57Speaker 2

  then so what would you do differently if you were going to ask on this the next one? Is it in is it in a month? Do you say?

• 59:05Speaker 0

  It'll be in a month, yeah. So one of the reasons I think that it's been put on Netflix now, only season one and two. Yeah, get people re uh excited, ready for the next season to come out, which will be at the end of the month. Um I know some of the casts that are going on, and there's some like some pretty cool some cool guys, a couple of guys

• 59:23Speaker 2

  from up north again

• 59:23Speaker 0

  as well. Cool. So what would I do differently? Um, I don't the experience of going on Love Island for me was the beginning of a journey that allowed me to realise who I really am. Now that sounds like a sort of this really sort of pithy state statement about like no, I just went on there and I was just myself, but I wasn't. So I went on there and I played a role. So what it created

• 59:54Speaker 1

  you realised the divide or the

• 59:56Speaker 0

  gap. And what I also got exposed to was a high uh Fatal dose of what that particular network of people are truly like. And when I see party boys and party girls in the front door of a club, I'm able to box them up in a category that doesn't have as much of an effect on me. And they could have played the role with me for 20 seconds as well, right?

• 1:00:22Speaker 2

  But they weren't you don't see them

• 1:00:23Speaker 0

  24

• 1:00:23Speaker 2

  hours, you don't know.

• 1:00:24Speaker 0

  Yeah, but when you live when you live with them for three and a half weeks, like you're like, right, okay, you are really different to me. And it's fucking apparent. And that so if I was to go in again, what I what I would do differently is I'd be I would be myself. I don't regret the way that I acted on there, because it's allowed me to do stuff like this podcast that I love. Um the all of the pursuits I've going on at the moment for mindfulness training and um speaking the truth, which I think is a real big deal because I'd lied through my teeth to get myself on there to play a role of someone that I wasn't particularly, but someone that I knew I could play the role of.

• 1:01:06Speaker 1

  Would being yourself get you kicked out earlier or later, do you think? Later,

• 1:01:10Speaker 0

  100%. Okay. I could go on. I'm pretty certain that I could go on as the person that I am now, even in that season, and providing I didn't get stitched with the edit, I think I would I would have a pretty good chance of staying on until the end. And one of the reasons is, and this is for anyone who's considering to go on reality TV. There's the the lack of authenticity shows through really really starkly because you run out of things that you can think to say, and situations that you can think to create. Whereas that's not how we operate, our personalities aren't consciously manifested on a second by second basis, they appear as a byproduct of you existing and having an ego.

• 1:01:56Speaker 0

  And you have to sit and create like well, what might be interesting to say in the world. What would what would Love Island Chris say now? Like that's not the way it would work. It's still been

• 1:02:09Speaker 1

  tiring

• 1:02:10Speaker 0

  to do that. It was, it was it was it was fatiguing, but again, for that, like I'm incredibly grateful. Like the opportunity was unreal, and as you say, like it's really rare. Like I'd never I'm gonna be very unlikely that something similar is gonna happen again, and I really enjoyed it, but like the experience for me, like when someone says, Oh, what was the best thing about being on Love Island? It's like you

• 1:02:30Speaker 3

  came out with it with followers, you didn't on Twitter, oh shit, and

• 1:02:37Speaker 0

  um and and I'm sat there like, oh well, um, when I came out, like top three things probably that happened from Love Island in no particular order. One of them is that when I came out on the south coast of Majorca, it's a really really good spot for stargazing. I'm not really too sure why. And I came out and it was the night dad left, and it was kind of like emotional and stuff. If anyone's seen the episode where I leave, and I'm like a little bit upset because I'm leaving the guys who I've got this bond with, and no matter how invested or not, I was in the experience, it was an intense experience, and there was a flooding of emotion when I left, and uh there was a lot of bromance like in there, and I'd but I had this connection with Max and stuff, it was the guy who went on to win, and saying goodbye to him was pretty tough, and a few other bits, and I had this sort of a bit of a whirlwind because no one had been prepared when when I left, no, we didn't know it was an eviction that night, so it was kind of just fuck, I've got to go pack my bags and fuck right, okay.

• 1:03:38Speaker 0

  See you later on, guys, and then I was gone, and I finished and went back to the couples hotel that I said that you get her put up in this beautiful five-star, kind of like Sandals Resort thing where they're all like individual little huts, and anyway, I'd finished I've finally been given a big beer as opposed to like a 330 mil one, and I had this big beer, and I was like, sat outside and it's just crickets going on. It's like finally like midnight, completely clear, warm, not mic'd up anymore, not mic'd up on my own, able to be with my thoughts, and you haven't got your phone back yet because they've still got 24 hours until what's just happened airs, so you've got one day of Lou still to go and having this beer, and I looked up, and I could just see the full Milky Way, like from horizon to horizon in this silent cricket couple of cricket, and I could just see this like sprinkling of like stardust of the brightest I've ever ever seen it thousands of stars.

• 1:04:33Speaker 0

  Why is that one of the things that I liked from Love Island? Do you know what I mean? That's not part that wasn't anything to do with the experience, but for me it was very meaningful, and it might sound it might sound like a wet conclusion.

• 1:04:47Speaker 1

  No, it's the sh it's the shift in or the accelerate, the acceleration. So listening to that Peter Atier podcast, who he did a marathon swim back and forth to this island, and he said the most emotional thing is a we is the the change in gear, the shift, and so having swam for however many hours back like in the water, and then finally to be crawling on land is the most elated incredible experience just because of the like oh my god, I'm on land again. Yeah, and I imagine the same thing, like you're looking outside at the sky on your own, no cameras. Well, as I was

• 1:05:20Speaker 0

  fair, you know, you you asked about um how I remember the experience, and there's certain elements of it that I was incredibly mindful for, but I am over time as memories fade. My appreciation of that situation is degrading, and every year it will continue to degrade, which is why if you've tweeted me a question on Twitter, the answers have been probably pretty shoddy and not because I I a lot of the situations I can't really remember, but that the Milky Way above, I I can't see

• 1:05:52Speaker 2

  a time when I'm not gonna remember it. So it wouldn't have held any well, it would have held a lot less meaning if it had just been that situation by itself. It's almost certainly the it's the result of and the ending of experience that makes you as you said it's the contrast because if you'd just been there randomly, yeah, having a beer by yourself, fuck that's you think like oh the stars are nice,

• 1:06:12Speaker 0

  yeah. Instead of it being like a I think there would have been an element of that because it was so spectacular, but yeah, that was like

• 1:06:19Speaker 2

  serious. Um I want to know what it was like looking at your phone for the first time. Um so I

• 1:06:26Speaker 0

  didn't have my phone, I left my phone

• 1:06:28Speaker 2

  with my business partner. Oh right. So processing

• 1:06:31Speaker 0

  he was looking after guessless text and all the rest of I dropped off my car, my iPad, my laptop, my phone, he had power of attorney on a house purchase that was going through at the time. I was like, I'm gonna come back, he's gonna have absolutely character assassinated me, given the vendor that's selling me this house another 10 grand just because he can because I

• 1:06:50Speaker 2

  I'm just imagining

• 1:06:50Speaker 0

  like

• 1:06:50Speaker 2

  you know

• 1:06:51Speaker 1

  what, mate, you seem like a nice car, give me another 10 grand

• 1:06:53Speaker 2

  turning on your phone and it just being like I mean the pure pure admin, well that's what like that day to go through.

• 1:07:00Speaker 0

  Yeah, do

• 1:07:00Speaker 2

  you know

• 1:07:01Speaker 0

  you know that when it's your birthday and you it the days just spent doing admin, it was like that, but it was like a full week. I can't remember how many messages I came out to, but it was like in the hundreds just on Facebook, which was like just friends, um so yeah, the fair bit fair bit of admin from that, and then yeah, like I say, the um for me one of the one of the big takeaways was that I was I was able to begin a journey that had been highlighted by a contrast of who I was pretending to be while I was there and the role that I was playing, and the understanding that even though you can play that role that it's not a good uh pursuit for your spirit, that if you're not living with virtue and you're not speaking the truth forward, I sound like I'm reciting Jordan Peterson, but it is, and that I think that's one of the reasons why when I started listening to Jordan Peterson that it struck such a chord with me, because it told me something that I'd known all along, but it was just articulated in a way that was succinct and made sense, yeah.

• 1:08:07Speaker 0

  And

• 1:08:07Speaker 1

  it's how he ends this book, so I hope what I've said has uh reached the the truths that you already knew but said in a way that you maybe couldn't articulate or something like that.

• 1:08:20Speaker 0

  Well, that was that was what it was, and uh you know it took a long time of obviously there's a there's a recoil effect from that and then processing and so on and so forth, but it was definitely I think the activation energy that I needed to be able to think right, okay, you can you weren't that person that means there's a problem, problem requires solution, let's find a solution. Solution is speak the truth forward, and like you say, if you if I went back on now, the person that I would come across as would be different. So as a good example, it wasn't put into the edit. Danielle on the first night that we were there was asking me a question about something to do with she pointed at something or said something about the tree or the skies or something like that, and I just reeled off this fact that was something to do with why it was like that.

• 1:09:13Speaker 0

  It would have been like the fucking Coriolis effect of the earth or some shit, whatever it was that I knew the answer to, and then she said like something to do with tell me some more facts, you're really clever, and I remember thinking there, fuck, I can't be that person, I can't do the reel off the the clever fact, partly because I felt a level of anxiety, I was a little bit oh,

• 1:09:36Speaker 1

  just kidding football paints lads with fancy fancy

• 1:09:40Speaker 0

  you're fucking neck on, and but again, the thing is that because I knew that I could play that role, I was like, sweet, like you just do it, just just stick to that because I knew that was safe ground that got me on the show, so that would get me through the show,

• 1:09:54Speaker 2

  uh rather than revealing the inner the inner Chris, yeah.

• 1:09:58Speaker 1

  It's a very unusual conclusion. To have come to say like I spent some time on Love Island and it counts to the city. Yeah,

• 1:10:08Speaker 0

  I'm not I'm not sure how manyone else has had that experience. I hope so. Maybe they're

• 1:10:13Speaker 2

  all running podcasts now and

• 1:10:15Speaker 0

  just ready to go. You

• 1:10:16Speaker 2

  reckon. But I I I hope so, man. Like I, you know,

• 1:10:19Speaker 0

  the guys that are on there, the there's the people that are on there that do well are built for that. Like you look at like Chris and Kem and the guys that have come off from this year, you don't know who they are, do you? I do. You don't know who

• 1:10:29Speaker 2

  I am. I do.

• 1:10:30Speaker 0

  So I was

• 1:10:31Speaker 2

  I was pretty much force fed season three. Were you? Oh dear. Just on every Chinese water torches like fucking night,

• 1:10:38Speaker 0

  isn't it? But I guess that's the problem. If you don't like it, the the sheer volume there's

• 1:10:43Speaker 2

  so much of it. Yeah.

• 1:10:46Speaker 0

  How many is it? Is it 70 or so? Too

• 1:10:48Speaker 2

  many. 69, too many for you said. Yeah. And

• 1:10:53Speaker 0

  eight. That's the problem of having it on the floor. Oh, there's the problem with my floor too. Oh, it's fine in the full can. So

• 1:10:59Speaker 2

  I've been waiting for like well over an hour now to open the second one. I mean, you could have done that. Right in front of the mic as well, yeah. Just don't do it in front of the

• 1:11:07Speaker 0

  mic. But yeah, no, I I don't I'm not sure how many people saw it as a mindful experience that catapulted them into living a life closer to speaking truth and virtue. But the guys that go on there that do well are already doing that. It's just their truth. They are being them. That being said. When you come out, it can be a really unhealthy environment, I think, for a lot of these guys. Like I know, for instance, again, because I'm close to Sophie, I know that she's had like a couple of like bad experiences. She didn't like the way that she was portrayed, she didn't like the thing that the media was doing to it. One of the problems is that people are gonna come out, and the more popular that this TV show gets, the deeper and deeper this sort of stuff's gonna get dug, and the more that they want.

• 1:12:00Speaker 0

  It wouldn't surprise me if we start to see like Britney Spears 2007-esque breakdowns from the guys that are coming out soon, because there's gonna be someone who goes on like

• 1:12:12Speaker 1

  through this the psychological thing. Yeah, there's gonna be someone who goes

• 1:12:15Speaker 0

  on who goes on like me and plays a role and then wins or gets to the end and is put on this pedestal and realises fuck, the game is over, but I can't take the costume off. Um and I think it's uh yeah, it's it's a it's an interesting one. It's an interesting one, man. Like uh So

• 1:12:38Speaker 1

  you approached by press afterwards as well, or not so

• 1:12:40Speaker 0

  much. Yeah, you get you get bits and bats. Again, it's my experiences of uh magnitude significant magnitude smaller than the people that are on there now, or that are going to be on this year and so on and so forth. I

• 1:12:53Speaker 1

  wonder if there'll be another wave now that Netflix is running.

• 1:12:57Speaker 0

  Oh I don't know, I don't know in terms of the press because it's not it's not newsworthy because it's not current. The situations are not current.

• 1:13:09Speaker 1

  Unless it's like Chris three years on or something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You do a catch-up, and that's what this is.

• 1:13:15Speaker 2

  Do you

• 1:13:15Speaker 0

  get do you

• 1:13:16Speaker 2

  reference it? Do you get

• 1:13:19Speaker 0

  recognised? Uh yeah, and more so now, again, obviously, because it's been put back on Netflix.

• 1:13:24Speaker 1

  Well, we we were with him when you got recognised and he had to leave the building.

• 1:13:27Speaker 3

  Oh, I saw you on Roll Right. Oh god. Guys, we have to go, we have to leave the building. Was that in the

• 1:13:33Speaker 0

  botanist? Yeah,

• 1:13:34Speaker 2

  that experience was we're waiting for you and the botanist, and suddenly two shots of tequila arrive, bought by someone on the other side of the bar who was on Take Me Out with Chris. Yeah. And then the woman at the right was like, excuse me. But she didn't know. She didn't know where where do I recognise you from? I was like, I know.

• 1:13:55Speaker 3

  Make you drink both of them. Do you watch TV? Yeah. You ever turned on the television box?

• 1:14:03Speaker 2

  Have you ever had any unpleasant? I mean, that I suppose that wasn't pleasant. Because we had to leave. Well, I left, yeah.

• 1:14:12Speaker 0

  And you drank both tequilas. Just because I had to, yeah. Well, but also because they were free.

• 1:14:17Speaker 1

  Yeah. Turned up and they were like, you said these drinking.

• 1:14:21Speaker 2

  Although it was so it was someone's bought you these. Oh yeah, so it's they were they're free and they're a gift. Yeah. Which means couldn't possibly tell you. At that point, you weren't drinking alcohol. So force

• 1:14:32Speaker 0

  fed. Um brilliant. No, so coming out. Thankfully, one of the one of the things I'm really happy about was that because the way that I came across, despite being intrinsically disingenuous, I actually came across as an all-right guy on there. Not this all right guy. But the different all that's an all-right guy. And coming out, I still to this day, although this may be asking for trouble. To this day, I've yet to have someone come up to me in the street and say something that they really really like something negative. Everyone's just had nice shit to say. Oh mate, mate, you were you were too good for that Zoe Bird, you know. You know, are

• 1:15:10Speaker 3

  you do you still do you still see it? Do you still are you still in touch? I'm like,

• 1:15:14Speaker 2

  no. Like three years on, but there's a scene where you're getting massage. That's uh Zoe Girl. Is that and does she say she doesn't like you? She

• 1:15:22Speaker 0

  says something to the effect of um, I wish Lewis was here, it would be fun with him. And I think you you just you look up and go, okay. And then put your face back down again. Yeah. Oh,

• 1:15:34Speaker 2

  okay.

• 1:15:34Speaker 0

  Yeah. I mean, again, with that, like, could you imagine if someone said that to me now? Could you imagine the sort of response that I would give someone who would say that to me now? Like remembering that she was a born-again Christian that got chlamydia of the eye six months before that. Chlamydia of the eye. She got like a really really savage eye infection from Chlamydia in the eye, and then got pasted by Jordan in the toilet downstairs.

• 1:16:05Speaker 2

  But she's a born-again Christian.

• 1:16:07Speaker 0

  Born-again Christian. And I was like, this is a girl who also said the sentence to me, I believe in evolution, but

• 1:16:14Speaker 4

  I didn't come from no monkey.

• 1:16:24Speaker 1

  Very interesting. Very

• 1:16:25Speaker 0

  interesting. Guys, thank you so much for your time. Um it's been a hopefully people have learned some stuff that they they didn't know about Love Island. Should we K Biden?

• 1:16:35Speaker 3

  Goodbye. Goodbye, then. Okay, bye then.

• 1:16:44Speaker 4

  Yeah. Oh yeah.