Love Island walker Ollie Williams spoke of his fondness for his ex-girlfriend prior to entering the villa, admitting if she were to have appeared on the show it would have “changed the game”.
On Tuesday, it was announced the 23-year-old Cornish land owner had quit the ITV2 reality series after just three days claiming he “still loved someone else”.
We can now reveal that Ollie hinted he still had feelings for his ex when HuffPost UK interviewed him in South Africa ahead of the series launch.
“I’ve had two long term relationships,” he said. “The first one was a disaster. It was my fault... [he later admitted on the show that he had cheated on her “eight or nine times”]. But I learned from that.”
Ollie then revealed that his most recent girlfriend, who he cited as the reason for leaving the Love Island villa, only ended their relationship because of the distance between them.
He explained: “The second [relationship] was really good.
“It ended basically due to distance and we weren’t the right people for each other at that time. I definitely learned my lesson with that first one.”
Asked how he would feel if she walked into the villa as a bombshell arrival, he suggested a reunion could have happened.
“The second [girlfriend] would probably be OK, but it would depend on what she did. That would change the game.
“But the first one would be terrible. That would be a nightmare.”
After reaching the decision to quit the show, Ollie, who was coupled up with Lewis Capaldi’s ex Paige Turley on the show, said in the Beach Hut: “I have to be honest with myself, and everyone, that I do still love someone else… I have to follow my heart in this scenario and it would be wrong for me to ignore these feelings.
“At the end of the day, this is Love Island and it’s about finding love. If I carried on anything with Paige, or any other girl that might come into the villa, it wouldn’t be fair on them.”
News of his departure came after pictures of Ollie posing with dead animals surfaced in the press.
The photos showed the heir to Lanhydrock estate in Cornwall posing next to a dead warthog, water buffalo and giant eland, with the paper claiming he had been promoting his hunting business Cornish Sporting Agency.
However, there have been conflicting reports about the nature of the pictures, with an unnamed “source” apparently close to the reality star telling The Sun he “was involved in the culling of sick animals”.
TV watchdog Ofcom confirmed they had received 231 complaints about Ollie’s participation on the show in light of the pictures.
An online petition to remove him from the villa had also hit over 36,000 signatures prior to the announcement of his departure.
Love Island continues tonight at 9pm on ITV2.