Hangovers, sleeping pills and flossing: What would Love Island be like if it was for 35-45 year olds?
Has it taken over your life? That hideous villa full of blow-up dolls, but dolls with hearts? Mostly. That’s the compulsion. We hardly watch it for the glittering repartee now, do we?
No, it’s the aching vulnerability of people looking for love, for approval, for affirmation. And for tans. And for fame. And so, we couldn’t help but wonder, how would it be if that house were full of men and women aged, say, between 35 and 45? What might that look like?
We know it’s AstroTurf but someone would be trying to mow it.
On the first night they would stay up all night, get totally trashed and jump in the pool fully clothed, tell everyone their secrets and snog each other (this is how we used to date). Then no one would drink again because a grown-up hangover lasts for eight weeks.
People would mostly be reading. Who has time to read? So just imagine having an eight-week reading runway – the whole thing would transform into a book club in no time. We are, after all, always wondering if it would be weird to ‘just finish this chapter’ during sex. Would it?
Everyone would be eating all the time, mostly snacks, nuts, seeds. Crudités and crudity…
You wouldn’t be able to move for shade. A huge tarpaulin would be strung across the entire villa, if necessary. #irreversiblesundamage
There would be a lot of suncream applied to the backs of hands – for the sunspots. The French call them ‘flowers on the path to the grave’, which is very French of them.
Ergo: endless flossing. And one person would spend the eight weeks cleaning all the surfaces all the time. ‘Don’t mind me, this is how I relax.’
Picture the intricacy of the back- supporting, knee-supporting towel arrangements on the sunloungers. The poolside positions would be something to behold: the thighs lifted up so the fat hangs down, the ‘side-slink’ to elongate waists, the totally knackered roadkill flat-flop… practically a ballet, just a little (a lot) less graceful.
There would be frantic slathering of hair masks to preserve colour and stop it going that awful brassy orange. Colourist: ‘Oooh, it’s lifted, hasn’t it?’
No one would sleep – who sleeps? As the weeks progressed, the Midult contestants would become more and more deranged with exhaustion. And more and more dependent on coffee.
Contestants would constantly be humming strange snippets of songs like Radio Ga Ga and R Kelly’s Ignition. Until they all went insane. Only two men would have their tops off in the villa – the one who works out and the other who thinks he doesn’t need to.
On Love Island as we know it, every second word is ‘like’. For Midult Love Island, it would be ‘literally’. Literally. Forget ‘cracking on’ and ‘grafting’, the nation would be gripped by expressions like, ‘I’m literally obsessed,’ and ‘I’ve had worse.’
Most days, half the cast would try (and fail) to meditate.
If the producers really wanted to mess with the women’s heads they would remove all the tweezers.
The place would be rattling with supplements – magnesium for sleep, omega-3 for brains, fatty acids for skin elasticity, glucosamine for joints, zinc for immune systems, Xanax for fun.
Midults would be very wary of the beanbags, because of the trying-to-be elegant getting-out situation.
The doctor would be the most popular person – ‘I’m sure it’s nothing serious, but would you mind taking a look?’
In fact, forget the doctor, if there was a chiropractor, he would clean up. ‘Honestly, all I did was get out of the beanbag and I heard a click.’
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