Sandra Harris Writes

  LOVE ON THE BOX. BY SANDRA HARRIS. Oh. My. God. I'm down a right rabbit hole now and no mistake. And, this time, it's not an Internet rabbit hole but a Netflix one. Let me explain. I watched Love Island UK as usual this summer, as I have done for the last few years. This summer in particular, it helped take my mind off the unbearable heat that seemed to go on forever. I was genuinely scared at one point that it was never going to rain again; here in Ireland, two months without rain is unthinkable and has literally never happened before. If it happens again, and keeps happening, I don't see how we all can survive it. I'm not even a climate alarmist, by the way, truly I'm not. It's just you've no idea how much Ireland and rain go together, like bacon and eggs, like Cagney & Lacey, like spice-bag and a few cans of Guinness. To have two months without rain as an Irish person was like living through the end of days. Anyway, where was I? O...

LIFE LESSONS FROM LOVE ISLAND, or, THE JOEY ESSEX EFFECT. BY SANDRA HARRIS. © Oh God, I love LOVE ISLAND. I love watching it, discussing it with my kids afterwards, thinking about it when I go to bed and then going on Twitter when I wake up to see what the millions of fans thought about the previous night’s episode. It’s not even my guilty pleasure any more; I’m quite open about that the fact that I practically live for it during the months of June and July.  We’ve reached the halfway mark in the show and it’s making me reflect on the morals and ethics (and carnal forebearance?) of some of the contestants. Well, one of the contestants in particular, a tanned, muscular thirty-three-year-old bloke called Joey Essex. Sound familiar? That’s because he is familiar. He’s been a reality television star since 2011, when he appeared on popular television show, THE ONLY WAY IS ESSEX. Since then, he’s been on pretty much every reality television show except THE X FACTOR . He has his o...