Love Island hopeful 'quits show' out of 'respect for her Miss GB title'
Beauty queen Kobi-Jean Cole was hotly tipped to be heading into the villa for Love Island’s fifth season
We’ve still got just over a week before we get sucked into the various villa dramas of Love Island series 5, but it seems we may have lost a contestant already.
Kobi-Jean Cole was rumoured to be heading to Majorca ahead of the show’s launch date of June 3rd, with her personal trainer, Matt Fiddes fuelling the flames by hinting that his 23-year-old client will appear on the ITV2 reality series. In a post following a workout with Kobi-Jean, he teased, "What is she getting in shape for?" to which she replied: "Ahhh so exciting!! Not long now."
However, Fiddes has now clarified his comments in another Instagram post, saying the current Miss GB has ruled herself out of the process out of ‘respect for her Miss GB title’.
“We can confirm that Miss Great Britain is NOT in fact heading into the Love Island villa this year,” he wrote.
“There were some discussions regarding inclusion in this series between Kobi and the producers of Love Island during their casting process, but it was decided that out of respect for her title and the Miss Great Britain brand she would not be taking part.”
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Instead, Kobi-Jean will be flying out for the international final of Miss Tourism World in Croatia.
However, an insider from Love Island dismissed the claims, telling the Metro, "She has at no point been part of the line-up."
The news follows the controversial moment in the 2016 series of Love Island where then-Miss Great Britain Zara Holland was stripped of her title after having sex on screen with fellow islander Alex Bowen.
In a statement issued on Twitter at the time, the Miss Great Britain organisers wrote, “We pride ourselves on promoting the positivity of pageants in modern society and this includes the promotion of a strong, positive female role model in our winners,” they said.
“The feedback we have received from pageant insiders and members of the general public is such that we cannot promote Zara as a positive role model moving forward.
“We wholly understand that everyone makes mistakes, but Zara, as an ambassador for Miss Great Britain, simply did not uphold the responsibility expected of the title.”
They then added they had “no problem with sex” but “couldn’t condone what happened on national TV.”
Several names have been linked for the new series, including an air hostess, an ex-girlfriend of a Premiere League footballer and a boxer – check out the latest rumours list here.
Love Island launches on Monday, 3rd June on ITV 2
