This is not the Love Island update we wanted to be writing hours ahead of an important dumping - especially one where arguable frontrunners Paige Thorne and Adam Collard are vulnerable. BUT, we have tea on Love Island 2022 star Paige and it's our journalistic responsibility to spill it EVERYWHERE. We do hope no one's wearing any of Paige's or Gemma Owens' recent white summer numbers, because this amount of tea will permanently stain such gorgeous garments.
If you've been following this year's Islanders closely on social media, you'll have already clocked that the dumped Islanders are rather partial to an Instagram Q&A once they get their phones back. These Q&As have been giving us LIFE over the last few weeks here at heat, and as we do nothing but stalk their profiles, we're frequently the first to spread their goss 💅
Lacey Edwards reveals what Paige Thorne is really like in Instagram Q&A
Dumped bombshell Lacey Edwards (the one who was dumped with our favourite human on earth now and forever, Deji Adeniyi) recently took to her Instagram for a tell-all Q&A on her brief Love Island experience.
Now, here's where Paige gets involved.
During the Q&A, Lacey was asked one question more than any other – "Is Paige a nice girl?". It's no secret that Paige has been one of the frontrunners to win the show since she first stepped foot in the villa on day one, but since she coupled up with Love Island bad-boy Adam Collard, some fans on and off social media have slowly turned against the show's golden girl.
“I’ve got this question so much"
Luckily, Lacey decided to answer the question upfront because she's in the very early stages of her media training (we love to see it). She told her 15,200 followers, “I’ve got this question so much. This is actually one of the most common questions in my Q&A."
Gulp.
She continued, "Paige is lovely."
BUT, if you read between the lines, it seems Lacey, at least in part, understands the recent backlash against the OG Islander.
"Maybe she wasn’t as happy to see us as the rest"
"I feel like maybe because you saw the clip of us all walking in and it was just a bit like… I think it’s a bit like, she really likes Adam, so maybe she wasn’t as happy to see us as the rest. Me and Paige got on so well; she’s such a beautiful girl, she’s so so nice."
"She’s so funny and she’s always singing"
Lacey continued, "I had so much fun with her, I can’t wait to – not that I want her to come out – but I can’t wait for her to come out, because, like, in the dressing room – I’ve started to watch some of it now – yeah, it wasn’t shown, but she’s so funny and she’s always singing and I love a sing-song, so we’d always be singing random songs. She loves a TikTok dance, I love a TikTok dance...
“She’s such a lovely girl, but, yeah, this was one of the most common questions, which I was really surprised about.”
WATCH: The moment bombshell Lacey Edwards entered the villa and met Paige Thorne
Is singing banned in the Love Island villa?
So why haven't we got to see any of this endless Grease-style singing? Well, actually, there may just be a production reason behind that. A few years ago, Love Island 2019 star Amy Hart confessed that she would often get in trouble for singing songs with Amber Gill in the villa. During an exclusive chat with Closer Online, the former air hostess revealed that singing commercial song (pop songs, to you or me) is against the rules in the villa. Apparently they worked a way around it by singing songs from Disney films and musical theatre, instead.
Well, at least that explains why Luca Bish sang Breaking Free from High School Musical for the talent show. It doesn't explain why none of his fellow Islanders stopped him from ruining our childhoods by singing Breaking Free from High School Musical, but there you go.
Antigoni Buxton explains why ‘unreasonable’ Paige moment annoyed her
This isn't the first time fans have questioned whether Paige was indeed all smiles and rainbows. Cast your minds back to that tense re-coupling which saw Danica Taylor recoupling with Jay Younger even though Antigoni Buxton had expressed an interest in him.
After sensing that she was a little upset, Paige Thorne sat down with Antigoni, Tasha Ghouri, and Gemma to discuss the situation and how she felt. However, when Danica and Indiyah Pollack tried to join in on the chat, Paige turned and said, "Girlies, do you mind if we have just a little catch up and then we can have a catch up together afterwards - just us."
*Drag Race shade rattle*
The moment led to many labelling Paige "condescending" and "fake nice".
With all that being said, Antigoni has since said that it was "annoying" that a lovely moment was misconstrued and even edited completely differently. Antigoni told heat, "Social media made it seem like there was a cliqueyness when Danica came over.
She told us, "Social media made it seem like there was a cliqueyness when Danica came over.
[Saying 'can you just give us a minute'] was just not that unreasonable like just for a second. Also, I say it how it is to somebody so I went and spoke to Danica afterwards. It was chill, it was no big deal it was just like 'oh no hold on can we just have a second'.
"They made it look like when I ‘shooed’ them away I said ‘I love you girls’ and can I just say it did not happen in chronological order. That happened about ten minutes later after the conversation."
She added, "It didn’t happen like that. It annoys me because I’m not like that, I wouldn’t do that."
The question on all of our lips, however, is... Would Paige?