Love Island is ‘messing up young people’ by showing ‘impossible glamour’, says Russell Howard

'All that matters: are you beach body ready?'

Russell Howard has criticised ITV2’s popular dating programme Love Island, accusing the show of promoting superficial values and encouraging young people to obsess over their appearance.

Speaking during a recording of his eponymous TV series, The Russell Howard Hour, the British comedian said Love Island is teaching children that “all that matters is the way you look”.

“It must be so hard being young, because you’re constantly looking for love, desperate to be noticed – and everyone on TV now is absolutely ­beautiful,” he added, citing the TV programme Naked Attraction, where singletons choose a date based on their naked bodies, as another example.

Speaking about Love Island specifically, which is due to start filming for its fifth season in the coming months, Howard said, “It’s basically ‘I got boobies. I got muscles. Is Brexit a cabbage?’

“On these shows it doesn’t matter what you say or do or think or feel. All that matters: are you beach body ready? I hate that phrase.”

He added that the programme shows a world of “impossible glamour”.

It’s not the first time Love Island has been criticised for promoting unrealistic body ideals.

In August last year, one of the show’s former contestants lambasted its casting directors for not including a greater variety of body sizes in its lineup.

Alexandra Cane, who was on series four, told The Sun Online that she was shocked that she was considered one of the “curvier” women on the programme when she is a UK size eight.

“Bigger sizes clearly weren’t accepted, for me to go into the villa and be the biggest girl... that is quite shocking to me. I’m still glad I could do it for the ladies,” she said.

ITV declined to comment on Howard’s remarks when approached by The Independent.