HARD to believe now, but three general elections ago, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg was fighting to be seen with “voice of a generation” Joey Essex.

And now?

Former Towie man Joey Essex has become the ‘brains’ of the Love Island villaCredit: Rex

Harriett and Ronnie have a chat in the villaCredit: Rex
He’s just another gormless prong on Love Island.

Joey Essex, that is, not Nick Clegg.

Although, truth be told, at the ripe old age of 33, Joey looks slightly more like the local parliamentary candidate than one of the contestants.

Which is a good thing, in one sense, because the way his career was progressing, I was slightly worried Joey would end up hosting Question Time by the year 2024.

All he needed to do, I thought, was grow up a bit and drop the idiot act.

It turns out, though, he couldn’t and it’s not an act, so the Celebs Go Dating veteran has now been called upon to try to save Love Island XI, which has been giving off a massive whiff of desperation ever since the network made the idiotic decision to flood the market with two series every year back in 2020.

A rum do

Nothing, however, flags up this show’s true place in the grand scheme of things, and the general decline of Britain, more damningly than the sight of ITV introducing us to 15 new Islanders in the same week as the country is marking the 80th anniversary of D-Day.

But they didn’t and so, on the blokes’ side, I’m duty bound to tell you we have, at the time of writing: Joey, Ciaran, Ayo, Omar, Sean the invisible man and London lad Ronnie, who announced his arrival by declaring: “My type used to be blonde girls with massive boobs . . . ”

Spoilt little madam Harriett, from Brighton, whose dad even gets up each morning and turns her car round for her every dayCredit: ITV
And now what?

You’re looking for someone more like Dame Joan Bakewell, with a CBE and a Humanist of the Year award?

Well, you’re in for a big disappointment with: Samantha, Jess, Uma, Nicole, Mimii, the mental health nurse with “A history of being a crazy girlfriend”, and a spoilt little madam called Harriett, from Brighton, who claimed “Every morning my dad goes downstairs, puts some milk in my coffee and turns my car round the right way”, so it’s facing the cliff edge.
Watch the shock moment Harriett LIES to Love Island rival as horrified fans demand she’s ‘axed from the villa’
But she never takes the hint and she’s now become the centre for nearly everything that passes for drama on Love Island as part of two love triangles involving Ciaran and Nicole and Jess and Ronnie.

Harriett is the show’s Most Valuable Player, in fact, which has probably come as a bit of a shock to ITV, who would’ve clearly preferred Joey to be front and centre of everything, but have instead watched him become a marginalised and rather needy figure who’s been robbed of his Unique Selling Point.

For, with every other show he’s ever appeared on, Joey has been by far the most stupid person in the room, even on Educating Joey Essex, when he met Nick Clegg.

On Love Island, though, the phrase “intellectual colossus” is probably pushing it a bit but Joey’s quite often the voice of reason and even had to intervene in a debate, at the weekend, when it became apparent Mimii, Nicole and Sean all sincerely believed that “The earth is flat”.

It’s a rum old do, for sure, when Joey Essex is sounding like the Professor Brian Cox of the piece, and whatever benefits his presence may or may not have for the show, I can’t see it helping his own career, which came into sharp focus when Munveer said: “I met you years ago outside the burger van in Surbiton.”

“And what was I doing?”

Staring at the cold, hard future, Joey.

TV quiz. What was the last element of Michaela Strachan’s question on Spring- watch: “Would you prefer to see Chris and his flies, Iolo and his badgers or . . . ”

A) Megan and her beavers?

B) Gillian and her cockchafers?

C) Katrina and the waves?