I watched Love Island for the first time - this vacuous slop is even worse than I feared

I completely accept that I am not the target audience for this show, and I’ve never had the privilege of witnessing it before. But this vacuous, arrogant, preening slop is even worse than I feared.

I mean, I get it. It’s a dating show, so inevitably contestants will be talking about themselves. And it’s a programme for people wearing swimwear so of course looks are to the fore, but for the life of me I can’t imagine anyone wanting to spend eight weeks of the summer watching this nonsense.

It reminds me of the first few series of Big Brother. The first season saw a right rag-bag of people wanting to take part in a social experiment. The second year saw people who wanted to be on Big Brother. And the third series and onwards just saw people who wanted to be famous, and saw a pathway to the public eye.

And, while I’ve got no idea about previous series of Love Island, even my inexperienced eye can tell that this group could not care less about finding “the one”, whatever they may say. They just want to be on Love Island, and get on the bus to Instagram followers and endorsement deals.

There’s no personality in evidence - just screeching from the girls and rictus smiles while talking about how they always fall for red flags (there’s a lot of talk about red flags). Every third sentence is “Oh my god”. And the boys? They are here to swagger and run their hands through their hair. Nobody says anything interesting: “I’m a massive personality person” “She seemed a very mature girl, head screwed on, maybe a bit much for me”. It’s all just ridiculous.

A late twist, seeing an American parachuted in, puts Shakira at risk. Cynically, ITV have realised that they need to provide drama as the cast will not provide it themselves, but from the shocked looks around the group, you’d think they had forgotten they were here to be exploited for a TV audience.

And then it hits you - the fundamental problem with this programme, which is ostensibly about people finding their perfect match, is that everyone involved is so self-obsessed that there can only be one partner for them - and that’s the one staring back at them from the mirror. This really is telly for the social media age.