Did you know 2025 marks TEN YEARS of Love Island? That's wild, isn't it? Just to really hammer that home, 2015 was the year Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner split, Zayn Malik left One Direction and the phrase 'Netflix and chill' first entered the zeitgeist. What a time.
As such, we've got to know a plethora of Islanders over the last decade and while some have come and gone, others have refused to leave the chat and become staples of pop culture; we're talking, of course, about legends like Ekin-Su Cülcüloğlu, Molly Mae-Hague and Dani Dyer.
Okay, it helped that Dani's dad was EastEnders icon Danny Dyer, but to be fair, it was the Love Island 2018 star's sparkling personality that helped her snatch the crown alongside then boyfriend, Jack Fincham.
The Love Island winners eventually split in April 2019, and to be honest, while we've followed both of their careers through a magnifying glass over the last six years, we haven't thought about Dani and Jack 'the couple' for a long time – until now, because six years on from their split, Dani's dad, Danny has decided to share his thoughts on his daughter's controversial ex from Love Island's glory days and hold back he does not.
Speaking on Jessie and Lennie Ware's Table Manners podcast, Danny revealed that despite his daughter winning the show with Jack and dating him for several months after, he never really met the 'real' Love Island star (which is a bit of fib, because look at this picture we found of them picking up a takeaway together in 2018).
The Rivals star told hosts Jessie and Lennie, 'I didn't really meet [Jack]. To be honest with you, it turned out he wasn't what he was on the telly. If you think about you in a villa, it's a structured show. There's no phones, there's no distractions. How real can you be?
'It's only when you get out. And so look, they made a go of it. It didn't work out.'
He went on to share his views on the popular ITV dating show, confessing that he didn't ever want Dani to go on Love Island.
He revealed, 'I didn't want her to go on Love Island. I had my preconceptions about it. I'd never really seen it. I think back in the day it was worse. You know, they encouraged them to go into a room and have a roll about and stuff. She's entitled to have sex and have amazing times, but I don’t want to watch that on the telly. So I had a bit of that going on, and then she didn't tell me.
'I was the last one to be told. And then she got in a car and just left. And then you just become a viewer. You don't get no contact from no producers or anything like that. So you just sit there like that when it starts, and go, how's it going to be?'
Danny continued, 'And I've got to say, she was incredible on it. I cried every single night because I was watching her. I couldn't have wrote a better script for her. She was so just herself and normal and sort of, you know, quite vulnerable.
'And because she came in as my daughter, I realised that that might have been one of the reasons why they put her in there. So I was slightly guilty about, oh, what if people hate me, they're going to hate her. But she just played it out perfectly, and it was just a wonderful thing to watch, actually, and it did change her life.'
While Dani is now engaged to West Ham footballer, Jarrod Bowen, Jack has moved on with former TOWIE star, Chloe Brockett.
