LOVE Island’s Finley Tapp has revealed his fury at show bosses, who insisted that his “weird” first date with Paige Turley was filmed in silence.
The 20-year-old hunk has moved into a Manchester flat with 22-year-old Paige after they won the winter series of the ITV2 dating show earlier this year, with their romance going from strength to strength.
But now he has opened up about behind-the-scenes events that happened while filming the programme – admitting to having “tiffs” with producers at the time.
Speaking to Raj & Pilar on BBC Radio 1’s The Reality Tea Podcast, Finn told all on his and Paige’s awkward first date, with he arriving in the villa as a bombshell and choosing the blonde beauty to get to know more.
He explained: “I didn’t really think about the cameras and everything until I got on that date. And then that’s when you’re like, whoa, like that was weird.
“Cause there were two dates going on, so I think obviously that Connagh, he was doing a date at the same time.
“So with the way the cameras and the recording is, they would shoot sort of like one date whilst you had to sort of sit in silence because obviously they could only capture one date.”
The star continued: “So my first meeting with Paige, we just sort of sat in silence. Staring at each other.
“We were just sat there and I was like trying to graft Paige, but I couldn’t. I was sat there, just like… in silence.
“I was like: ‘What do I say to her? What do I compliment? Compliment this and I’ll do that’, then obviously they sort of say: ‘Right Finn and Paige, now it’s your date’ and then you go.”
Finn also revealed that he kicked off at showrunners after the Headline Challenge claimed that his head had been turned in Casa Amor – even though he’d remained completely faithful.
Viewers were outraged by the incident at the time, even complaining to Ofcom over the scenes, and they weren’t the only ones confused by the claims.
Finn told the podcast: “I thought I’d done really well in there, then when the headline come out that apparently my head had turned, I was like, what? Like, what’s been shown?
“Like, if they actually copied and pasted some bits like, I was like, how have they got this?
“If I’m honest, I had a few little tiffs with the producers just because I was angry.”
“They didn’t really say too much. I was just like: ‘You know what I was like in there. Like how did you…’ And they were just like: ‘Oh, well, obviously it’s just like the headlines and da, da, da.’
“It was a shame because that could have affected me and Paige. But it didn’t luckily and luckily Paige soon sort of found out.”
Last month, Finn and Paige revealed they’d moved to Manchester together after spending three months in lockdown with Paige’s parents in Scotland.
Finn admitted that he is likely to propose “soon”, and that they want to have children before getting married.
