Love Island gets a lot of Flack. . . but this year it sure beats Big Brother for entertainment

HOW about Koko: The Gorilla Who Talks To People, on Wednesday night, then?

A fascinating BBC1 documentary providing compelling evidence, if not clear scientific proof, that primates can communicate with human beings and develop a 1,000-word vocabulary.

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Or it was, until my Sky Planner butted in and automatically switched to ITV2, where they’ve been attempting to prove reverse evolution is also possible in just six weeks.

Love Island, “A beautiful villa for beautiful people”, as far as occasional host Caroline Flack is concerned.

Big Brother with a malignant melanoma, as far as most viewers can see.

Three weeks the little cherubs have been at it in Majorca, and while they haven’t quite reached the “flinging s**t at each other” stage, you’d probably want a vet to open fire if you fell into their enclosure.

The only dilemma, in fact, would be — who to tranquillize first?

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The six blokes, I suppose, who’ve been charming the girls’ socks off by boasting about their sexual conquests (Tom — 350), then taking gigantic huffs if their partners so much as glance at another male.

Don’t shed too many tears, however, for the girls, whose life skills can probably best be summed up by the words Malin scrawled on a blackboard to describe herself, day one.

“CAN BE PHSYCO.”

If you’re wondering what exactly a “phsyco” is, it’s a dyslexic bunny boiler.

It hasn’t stopped her or the others pairing off, mind you, not with ITV dangling a £50,000 first prize for the viewers’ favourite couple.

At time of writing, Malin is with Terry, Kady’s on and off with Scott, Olivia’s mating with just about everyone and Tom’s had sex in a wardrobe with Sophie.

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All academic really, as the one compatible couple, Cara and Nathan, already look to have the money in the bag, which means it tends to be the spare parts who’ve been Love Island’s most interesting creatures.

None of them has been more spare than poor Zara with the little Dorito-shaped face, who was crowned Miss Great Britain in 2015 and wore her mounting desperation like a tiara and sash.

Bad things were clearly going to happen, then, when she disappeared into the villa’s hideaway with scaffolder Alex, who’d declared his intention to “crack on with as many birds as possible”.

And they did, to the accompaniment of CGI fireworks and the news Zara and Alex had engaged in: “Grown-up cuddles.”

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The real madness began afterwards, when it was announced she’d been stripped of her title by Miss Great Britain bosses, who clearly thought she’d been appearing on Young Musician of the Year rather than taking Love Island to its logical conclusion.

Critics have a point, I suppose.

By any standards, Love Island is demeaning and exploitative.

I’ll have to leave the sermonising to others, though, on this occasion because, slightly to my own surprise, I’m also finding it weirdly entertaining.

This is partly down to the fact it’s so much better than the direct competition, Big Brother, but you also can’t overlook the way Love Island sends itself up with its gloriously inappropriate soundtrack (Wagner, Beethoven, The Smiths) and a genuinely funny script, which punctures all egos and even the most awkward dating silences.

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“Things are moving fast between Dan and Zara and he’s decided the time has come to pop the question.”

“So, what’s your surname?”

“Holland.” (More silence).

The contestants, of course, have no idea they’re actually appearing on the summer’s darkest and funniest comedy and nor, apparently, does Caroline Flack.

She takes them incredibly seriously and they worship the sand she walks on, to the point Sophie has announced, “I want to be a TV presenter like Caroline Flack”, and has even taken the first tentative steps in that direction by having sex with a reality show contestant.

Reach for the stars, girl.

• EASTENDERS queries: Why haven’t Ian and Jane been charged with perverting the course of justice? When will the Walford Gazette notice Kathy’s risen from the dead? Whatever happened to Jay’s 150 hours of community service?  And why did Ian think “paralysed” Jane moving her finger was “a miracle”, but not even blink when she called him on her mobile phone a week earlier?

Severe morning stiffness

IT’S easy to find yourself getting worn down by This Morning’s constant diet of makeovers and mollycoddling.

The moment you switch off, though, is the moment Holly Willoughby drops this bombshell.

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“We meet one of the world’s first recipients of a penis transplant at 11:15 and we’ll be giving Boris Johnson the This Morning treatment at 11:30.”

A cruelly misleading trailer, as it transpired.

The two events were unconnected, unless you read something into Boris’s claim that “the EU will not give us a sausage”, which I don’t.

It didn’t lessen the initial impact, though, of meeting the fully-restored Thomas Manning, a lively old customer from Boston, Massachusetts, who opened up by announcing that having his penis surgically amputated “was a bit like that song . . . One Is The Loneliest Number” and not, as you might have assumed, Eric Clapton’s Let It Grow or Can’t Touch This by MC Hammer.

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What the interview probably needed, of course, was Phillip Schofield to get a proper handle on the ups and downs of Thomas’s new arrangement, instead of Rylan Clark and Holly, who seemed a bit pre-occupied with the fact potential penis donors had to be “properly deceased”, rather than just “married”.

The real bombshell, though, was his response to Holly asking him: “Why did you want to get it back?”

“Unless they amputate your penis, you will never understand what it’s all about.”

’Cos I’d never even suspected Holly Willoughby had a penis.

Ruth Langsford maybe. But not Holly.

• TV Gold: Superb ITV football pundit Slaven Bilic grabbing Euro 2016 by the scruff of the neck. Whip-smart Vicky Pattison ad-libbing bigger laughs than all the professional comedians on BBC3’s brilliant Murder In Successville.
  Big Brother brat Marco Pierre White Jr having to confront his unpopularity at the very first eviction. Joey Essex doing Face Swap with Jeremy Corbyn on ITV2’s What Are EU Sayin’?
  And dialogue from the Springwatch gods, on the Farne Islands, with Iolo Williams and Liz Morgan: “She was foraging further than I’ve ever had a shag before and diving to 50 metres.” “Wow! Is that the deepest shag you’ve ever had?” “Yes, the previous one was 41 metres.” Liz Morgan, ladies and gentlemen. Hidden depths.
• UNFORTUNATE deaf subtitle of the year? The Daily Politics host Jo Coburn to newly elected House of Lords speaker Norman Fowler: “It’s probably bigger than you ever got as an MP, how d’you pull it off?” A harmless enough enquiry, which reappeared as: “It’s probably bigger than you ever got as an MP, have a Jew pull it off?”

No need to Phil in for Joey

EDUCATING Joey Essex: What Are EU Sayin’?

Well, seeing as EU ask, I’m sayin’ someone at ITV2 really should shove the blunt end of a tennis racket in Phillip Schofield’s gob the next time they make one of these documentaries.

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It might just stop him trampling over every spontaneous moment with his size 12s and allow the jokes to breathe a little.

What it won’t do, however, is save this latest documentary, which was a minor tragedy, because if you could blank out Schofield’s interruptions – “Oh, Joey” – it was blessed with several moments of unscripted television gold: Joey, above, treading dog muck all round Kay Burley’s Sky studio.

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Joey fist-bumping Boris Johnson. Joey asking Jeremy Corbyn: “Are you a politician?” And Joey telling Ed Miliband and his Remain supporters: “My family do actually originate from the fish market.”
(He’s part halibut on his father’s side.)

The definitive comment, though, was prompted by the gushing rear end of a dairy cow, which had Joey asking a Welsh farmer: “Have you ever been showered in poo before?” “Yes.” “What’s it like?”

• GREAT Euro 2016 Insights. Rio Ferdinand: “From the first minute to the last it’s open your legs and get what you can.”
  Thierry Henry: “Any-where in the net and it’s a goal.”
  Dean Saunders: “Wales scored 11 goals in qualifying. Bale scored seven and made the other two.”
  John Hartson: “Dzsudzsak likes to come in on his left, his favoured of both his feet.”
  And Mark Lawrenson: “The pattern of the game is there is no pattern.”