The moment we’ve all been waiting finally came earlier this week when Love Island legend Maura Higgins returned to reality TV on I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!
Five years after she rose to fame on Love Island 2019, Maura entered the jungle as a late entrant alongside fellow camp mate Reverend Richard Coles.
But as well as her blossoming friendship with Richard, Maura already has a connection one of this year’s camp mates and it’s kinda awkward. In the infamous words of RuPaul, we can’t wait to see how this turns out.
It turns out that Maura used to date Barry McGuigan’s son Shane after they met when she worked as a ring girl a year before she went on Love Island.
The former Islander was booked as a ring girl for a boxing match between David Haye and Tony Bellew, which Shane – who also works as a boxing coach – was commentating on for a radio station.
It’s not known exactly how long they dated, but their relationship has previously been described as ‘short-lived’, so it’s fair to say it didn’t last long.
According to reports, Maura and Shane split due to long distance as she was still living in Ireland at the time and he was living and working in south west London.
‘Maura has brains and beauty and she quickly caught Shane's eye. They got chatting and had instant chemistry so of course he asked her out,’ a source told The Sun.
‘At the time Maura lived in Ireland, and Shane was running his boxing gym in London, and she was travelling a lot for work so it wasn't easy to pull off.
‘There were no hard feelings when it ended. It turned out to be short lived and the spark fizzled out.’
The source also said that Maura and Shane remained friends after their split, so maybe her reunion with Barry will be a happy one after all.
Maura has most recently been romantically linked to Pete Wicks after relationships with Curtis Pritchard, Chris Taylor, Giovanni Pernice and Bobby Holland Hanton, while Shane is engaged to singer/songwriter Taylor West, the mother of his sons Finley and Calean.
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Nathan Katnoria is heat and Closer online’s senior digital writer. He became obsessed with Love Island when Malin Andersson came back to confront Terry Walsh in series two and hasn’t looked back since. When he’s not interviewing former Islanders, Nathan is scrolling through their Instagram feeds for relationship updates and piping hot tea.