As the most popular winner of the most popular reality dating show, Ekin-Su Cülcüloğlu seems well placed to make good on her mission: breaking the mould of what people expect from the former Love Island lot. But can the 28-year-old actress – and gym-loving self-improvement evangelist – actually pull it off?
For anyone keen to evidence that this ‘United Kingdom’ we call home is a big fat oxymoron, examples abound right now. While some have dropped down the zeitgeist barometer (Brexit got done, after all), others catapulted to the top faster than you can say ‘frozen todger’. Then there are the Great British divides that form part of our cultural furniture. Like whether you’re prepared to willingly sacrifice 96 of your unsalaried hours following the exploits of squint-andyou’ll- miss-the difference-between-them twentysomethings in a luridly decorated Spanish villa. Or whether you’d rather endure literally anything else.
At the time of writing, the ninth series of Love Island – this time in South Africa – is well and truly underway. But my mind is on the reigning champ: Ekin-Su Cülcüloğlu, the 28-year-old who was born in north London to Turkish parents, raised in Essex and whose one-liners and slightly offbeat charm proved irresistible to viewers last summer. It was hard not to fall for the woman who spoke with her chest, laughed with her belly and seemed genuinely at home in her body. An ease infused by daily visits to the (historically male-dominated) Love Island weights area to swing, squat and lunge. Her power proved international. New York Magazine dubbed her ‘the best reality TV star the world has ever seen AND a total sweetie pie’; Twitter rechristened her ‘Icon-Su’; and she and her on-screen love interest (now live-in boyfriend) Davide Saclimenti, 28, received the largest number of votes in a Love Island final, ever.
Within weeks of leaving the villa, she’d signed a deal with the fast-fashion brand Oh Polly and landed a travel show with Davide. And by the time I sat down with our cover star in her Dancing On Ice dressing room in January, it felt more like she’d been on the celebrity circuit for six years than six months. But in the weeks since she posed up a storm in a house that could be straight out of a Martin Parr exhibition, Ekin-Su’s name has hardly left the headlines. First came the tearful exit from Dancing On Ice – not before she earned hundreds of Ofcom complaints for her ‘too-racy-pre-watershed’ debut routine. The same week, the most devastating earthquake in a century struck the area
