Make no mistake, the UK is in mourning. Fleets of black Fiat 500 cars are driving slowly, funereally, down every street. Thong bikini bottoms hang at half-mast on washing lines. The PrettyLittleThing website has turned greyscale, as a mark of respect, and All Bar Ones nationwide will observe a minute’s silence this weekend.
Why? Well, why else? On Wednesday (14 August), after a five-year relationship, Love Island stars Molly-Mae Hague and Tommy Fury announced their separation, via Instagram Stories. The country weeps. Love is dead.
Where were you when you heard the news? I was at my desk, taking a break from work and idly scrolling social media, when Hague’s post flashed up and life as we knew it changed. “Never in a million years did I think I’d ever have to write this,” Hague had stated, her words typed plainly against a black background. “After five years of being together I never imagined our story would end, especially not this way.” Within minutes, no fewer than four of my WhatsApp group chats had lit up with the news, Hague’s Instagram announcement a veritable Bat Signal for people who know the ingredients of Cheeky Vimto.
In every one of these conversations, the reaction was the same:
“Oh my god”
“Absolutely gutted”
“Love is a lie”
Quickly, however, I realised that even among those who don’t still insist on watching Love Island (I am one of about 10 viewers in the UK who continues to partake in the year 2024), this was a huge story. X was immediately flooded with posts about the break-up, and a Google search threw up Breaking News articles documenting it, too. “Celebrity splits happen all the time,” I thought, “so why does this one feel quite so seismic?”
The first and most obvious reason is that thousands of British millennials and Zoomers have parasocially followed Hague and Fury’s relationship – intertwined as it was with their careers and public profiles – since it began on the 2019 season of Love Island. Their appearances on the show came at the programme’s peak, when it was truly a cornerstone of the national conversation, regularly averaging well over five million weekly viewers (by comparison, the launch episode of this summer’s season attracted less than half of that number, at 2.2 million).