Year after year we're all keen to know which Love Island couples are – let's say – progressing in the villa bedroom; good chat and vibes are all well and good, but that sexual chemistry's got to be there too – after all, this is Love Island.
Over the years, our Love Island boys and girls have come up with creative ways to discuss their under-the-duvet antics with one another, rather than flat-out naming the, erm, act performed. For example, the Love Island 2022 cohort famously used 'the salon' code on their series; the phrase 'opening the salon' was used time and time again by those horned up Islanders while discussing bedtime antics with fellow Islanders.
'Opening the salon' was surprisingly creative code for opening up for business; with a variety of treatments on offer, including 'manicure', 'French tips', and 'blow dry'. We don't need to explain those, do we?
During Love Island 2021, the girls decided to use NVQ levels (aka National Vocational Qualification levels) as their code for sex in the villa. So Entry Level NVQ means a snog, NVQ1 means a sexual act using hands, NVQ2 is oral sex and NVQ3 is sex. That one was easy to follow – there were too many treatments on offer in that 2022 beauty salon.
This year, for whatever reason, Love Island producers have chosen not to air any innuendoed sexy chat, leading most of us to assume there was no sex code this series – we were wrong, at least according to Mitchel Taylor, anyway. There was a Love Island 2023 sex code and we totally missed it; but no doubt those brutal editors made this ten times harder for us to pick up on it in some bonkers bid to keep Love Island PG.
We get it's not exactly Geordie Shore, but it is Love Island and it's on after 9pm. Where's the sex positivity? Locked in that cupboard in the Hideaway, apparently.
Anyway, during an exclusive chat with Closer for our YouTube series Love Island Secrets Mitch revealed that "we did have a code" but the viewers/press "didn't pick up on it" and "that's not our fault". Ouch, Mitch. Ouch. The Messy King jokingly added that he wasn't going to reveal what said code was, because, yes, of course we asked.
Ella Barnes, who was also partaking in a spot of secret-spilling with Closer, added that the majority of the girls didn't really talk about it, keeping their bedroom antics "close to their chests".
She added, "I feel like not a lot of people did stuff in the bedroom – it was only a select few."
Okay, what about the Hideaway then? Those poor cleaners.