Love Island review: Tom hasn't so much shot as bazuka’d himself in the foot with Maura

It was a moment that will be played and replayed, mental VT rolling and rolling on the hamster wheel of his soul

It was, in its way, a miracle. Most people, having not so much shot as bazuka’d themselves in the foot, might seek medical attention, or at the very least get slightly squeamish. So we must credit, if not stand and applaud self-identifying male model Tom Walker, 29 – in this moment of complete self-ownership – for having the composure to pause, take three steps toward the kitchen area, and bazuka himself directly in the other one.

What can you even say? Perhaps it was some kind of protest, some higher cause for which he doused himself in his own testosterone and then self-immolated. Perhaps, in the end, only he will ever know. Only he will ever know why, that is, having been only semi-rumbled, only semi-overheard trash-talking Maura (who is not so much emerging as emergent as the star of Love Island 2019) then chose to repeat the crime verbatim, for her benefit.

To think, there he had been, just seconds away from his night in the hideaway, gleefully destroying all future employment prospects for a flash of night vision-enhanced glory on ITV2. But it was not to be. And it was not to be because he decided literally to tell Maura: “Well we’ll see if you’re all mouth won’t we.” That really happened.

It was a moment that will be played and replayed, mental VT rolling and rolling on the hamster wheel of his soul, projected nightly onto the dark blackness on the inside of his eye mask. For the rest of his time in the villa, if not his life, neither in waking nor dreaming will he ever escape from his stunning ineptitude in that moment.

Elsewhere, Danny, Yewande and Arabella have done their best to turn the metaphorical concept of a love triangle into an actual, geometric thing. It is an Isosceles love triangle, to be exact. In the sense that wherever Danny and Arabella are, Yewande can be guaranteed to have positioned herself as far from the pair of them as possible, either up on the terrace, hiding in the bedroom, burrowing at high speed toward the centre of the earth, or otherwise semi-weeping in some way at her life choices. All this, for the avoidance of all doubt, is beneath her.

Why won’t Danny just tell her the truth? The truth being, that he’s keen, but not as keen on Arabella, who is, unfortunately for all concerned, much, much better looking? Well, once again we turn to Maura, The Oracle, and her latest bit of Christine Keeler-esque wisdom. “Boys are f***ing terrible,” she said at one point. “They say all this stuff to you. They never mean any of it.”

Absolutely correct, as always. Whether she’ll have anything more to say to Tom beyond the gloriously precise, “Go f**k yourself,” we shall have to wait and see.

In the meantime, Tom lad, as Tennyson never quite said, ‘tis better to have cracked on and cocked up, than never to have cracked on at all. Keep telling yourself that anyway.