Love Island 2019: Dancing is one of Amy Hart’s great passions

By the same token, and judging by some of the scathing comments on the Herald’s Facebook page, if you don’t like Love Island, look away.

| READ MORE – Love Island: Amy Hart from Worthing’s first episode in pictures

Clearly a lot of people do – 3.7 million, an ITV2 ratings record, tuned in for the first episode on Monday night.

I was among that number, albeit for the first time, on account of the obvious reason. Any parent who has previously experienced watching one of their children on national television will testify it is a somewhat surreal experience.

But I sat through all 90 mins on Monday, did I enjoy it? Some bits, yes, and some no.

| READ MORE – Love Island: Amy Hart from Worthing makes her TV debut

One of the first in the villa, Amy was first out of the traps – must all those heady nights at Hove greyhounds – picking Scottish gym owner Anton, a young man who apparently looks at himself in the mirror more than a budgie.

Unfortunately, by part two, his self-confessed roving eye was already at work, and the near 30-strong Team Amz, shoehorned into my lounge, collectively cried: “Bin him, girl!”

Twenty-four hours is a long time in TV land, and by Tuesday night, Curtis, a professional ballroom dancer, had ‘waltzed’ into the villa. (See what I did there?)

He is the kind of lad she’d probably have been matched with in the online dating world. By the end of the episode they’d coupled up, and the Scottish heart-throb was consigned to the past. I’m not saying he’s not a nice lad, we’ve all been young once, and I hope he gets matched up again at the end of the week.

Dancing is one of Amy’s lifetime passions, and one particular performance of hers links her to one of the greatest ever goals scored in Brighton & Hove Albion’s history.

It was December, 2000, and Bobby Zamora’s first-half strike at the Withdean is his by his own admission his greatest goal in his career.

But I wasn’t there, I was at the Worthing Pavilion watching then seven-year-old Amy in a dance show.

Back then my phone beeped when Brighton scored, so not only did I know that the Albion were one nil up, the rest of the audience did to.

Cue an announcement over the public-address system: “Would the member of the audience with the mobile phone please turn it off?”

“Oh, Dad...”

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