Why is Love Island introducing celebrity bombshells?

Love Island 2024 has caused a stir with Joey Essex featuring as the first ever celebrity bombshell entering the villa.

It has proved to be a success with Love Island 2024's launch getting the highest ratings in two years, 2.2 million tuning in compared to last year's 1.3 million viewing figures.

Drumming up excitement around the new season, Love Island show boss Spencer had teased Essex's arrival saying the bombshells for this season are "brilliant" and "let's talk after week one".

Days into the show, speculation is rife that former Strictly Come Dancing star AJ Pritchard's ex girlfriend Abbie Quinnen is going into the Love Island villa. In 2021, Quinnen suffered third degree burns after a social media video stunt went wrong. The exes romanced for four years before they split in September 2022.

It begs the question, why are Love Island recruiting celebrities for the show that sees non-famous singletons look for love in Mallorca?

Joey Essex applied to Love Island himself

Essex first burst onto our screens on The Only Way Is Essex, AKA TOWIE. Since leaving, he has a lot of reality TV stints under his belt including I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here. In addition, the former TOWIE star looked for love on Celebs Go Dating twice so it's no surprise Love Island caught his eye this time round.

Of course, he has known the show's boss Mike Spencer since he first started out on The Only Way Is Essex. In fact, going on Love Island was Essex's idea.

Ahead of his appearance, he told The Sun: "It felt like the right time to give the Villa a shot, so I called Mike to ask him if I could apply and he said go for it! Mike’s a creative genius and has thought of a way to bring me into the mix and personally I think it’s the greatest stunt that Love Island has ever pulled."

Best friend James 'Diags' Bennewith revealed the Essex's fears for the future. The 33-year-old has amassed a £8m fortune and now he is ready to find someone to share his life with.

Diags told the Mirror. "Our mates are getting married and having kids. He is in that headspace now. He's like: 'I've got all this stuff, I've got my house, but I've got no-one to share it with. I wake up in this house on my own.' He wants a family – he wants kids. Going on Love Island is him putting that out into the universe - it's manifesting."

Celebrity Love Island

Love Island fans will remember the show first started out as Celebrity Love Island which documented 12 single stars on their quest to find love during a five-week stay on an island in Fiji. The winning celebrity couple won £100,000 prize money.

Jayne Middlemiss and Fran Cosgrave won the first season of Celebrity Love Island. Bianca Gascoigne and Calum Best were crowned the winners of the second season.

It only ran for two seasons. Patrick Kielty and Kelly Brook presented the original celebrity show and Fearne Cotton took over from the model for the second season. Love Island was given a makeover when it returned to our screens in 2015 with non-famous names.

Claims to fame

Love Island bosses continue to shake-up the format, including bringing back former bombshell Adam Collard four years after his first appearance on the show. Plus, Love Island launched its All Stars season which saw a line-up of some of fan favourite contestants from previous seasons.

The Love Island contestants having claims to fame though is nothing new. While many non-famous names are lined-up up for the original show, some of them have had claims to fame before. Some notable names include Michael Owen's daughter Gemma Owen, who came runner up in season eight, and Tyson Fury's younger half-brother Tommy Fury. Also, Rochelle Humes' sister Sophie Piper made an appearance on the show.

In recent years, Peter Andre has already warned his daughter Princess that she cannot appear on Love Island. He wrote in his OK! column in 2022: "I have to say I feel every inch of pain Michael Owen must be going through seeing his daughter Gemma Owen on Love Island."

He continued: "Don't get me wrong, it's a great show but it's not exactly ideal as a dad, is it?"

Love Island airs on weeknights on ITV2 and streams on ITVX.