love island bullying

Love Island’s Josh and Billy say producers should have stepped in over bullying

‘Imagine you’re in year 11 at school and the teacher’s just left the classroom, it felt like that kind of atmosphere’


Former Love Island contestants Billy Brown and Josh Le Grove said ITV producers should have stepped in during the bullying of Tasha Ghouri.

Near the end of the series Love Island viewers became increasingly concerned over the treatment of Tasha by Luca Bish and Dami Hope, often comparing it to bullying, which resulted in 2,000 Ofcom complaints.

After the Suck and Blow challenge Ofcom received 351 complaints about Luca and Dami’s digs at Tasha, and after the Snog Marry Pie challenge in which Luca and Dami appeared to be targeting Tasha, Ofcom received 1,509 complaints.

via ITV

Speaking on the Secure The Insecure podcast Billy and Josh said they could understand why the public thought there was bullying going on and that the bad treatment of Tasha by some of the boys, in particular Dami and Luca was incessant.

Billy said: “I can see why people are saying about the bullying [sic]. I can see why, I can understand. To me… Some people in the villa, the way they were acting, yeah, they might be fed up or annoyed or something, but especially to the girls – don’t go and keep hurting that girl constantly, such as Tasha.

“Don’t go and just keep going at her, going at her, going at her. To see that, it’s not nice. I don’t like no one feeling out of place or like they can’t go speak to someone alone.

“Luca and Dami, for instance, they just constantly go for Tasha. They might see it as banter, but when I spoke to Tasha, one night she was crying. I saw her over there by herself and went up to her.”

via ITV

Billy went onto say when he spoke to Tasha about how she was feeling she said she was “fed up” and felt like everyone was going at her.

Josh compared the villa environment to that of a school classroom and felt producers should have stepped in.

He said: “Imagine you’re in year 11 at school and the teacher’s just left the classroom, it felt like that kind of atmosphere.

“I feel like, a producer could have easily stepped in and been like, ‘Listen, this is how it’s coming across’ or ‘How would you be on the outside?’”

via ITV

Josh also pointed out the impact the producers not stepping in could have on the Islanders as the boys would be coming out to a high level of hate.

He said: “They’re not understanding that these guys are going to come out to potentially a lot of hate. It could have gotten stopped a while ago, because you don’t know how they’re going to act. You don’t know how it’s going to affect them when they come out and see comments.

“That should be something that they could have stepped in and tried to stop it before it got to the point it’s at.”

The Tab has contacted ITV for comment.

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