Former Love Island star Amy Hart has called out BBC Radio 1 for “trivialising her pain”, after they planned a phone prank that parodied her split from Curtis Pritchard.
Amy and Curtis hit it off near the beginning of this year’s Love Island, even entering what they described as a “half-relationship”, but he eventually broke it off after spending time with other girls in the show’s Casa Amor twist.
What followed was a particularly difficult time in the villa for Amy, during which she was often seen in tears, and later revealed she’d spoken to the show’s psychologist on several occasions.
Eventually, Amy decided to leave the villa, which she said was a decision she made to protect her own mental health, and allow Curtis to grow closer to Maura Higgins without having to feel conscious of her being there.
With the series now over, Radio 1 presenter Chris Stark asked his listeners to email in if they wanted to be “fake dumped” by Curtis over the phone as part of a segment on Scott Mills’ afternoon show, which prompted an angry response from Amy on her Instagram Story.
As reported by The Sun, she wrote: “One of the replies was ‘it’s going to be funny, get him to email in’. I thought we were being conscious of mental health these days?”
Amy added: “I’m all for a laugh but I just feel that trivialising something that so many people resonated with and turning it into a laughing matter isn’t entertainment.”
The posts in question now appear to have been taken down from Amy’s Instagram Story.
A Radio 1 spokesperson told HuffPost UK: “We will have Curtis as a guest on the show and with any live radio, ideas and plans change and this feature isn’t something we’ll be doing.”
Now out of the villa, it’s been revealed that Curtis will serve as a dance mentor on the upcoming British version of RuPaul’s Drag Race, alongside his famous brother AJ Pritchard, in an appearance that was filmed before Love Island.
Amy, meanwhile, has made several appearances on Loose Women, once as a panellist and later helping give a Love Island make-over to presenter Coleen Nolan.