Love Island for over-40s will be far better than the original – I’d go on it

Top up your Botox, stock up on HRT and polish your dad bod: Love Island for ‘middle-aged singletons’ is coming.

Please excuse the mid-life clichés – but isn’t it about time the over-50s were represented on this sun-drenched haven of TV?

ITV has put out a casting call for The romance Retreat, billing it ‘the ONLY dating show where single parents can search for love, by spending time in a luxury retreat’. But there’s a twist – the contestants will be nominated by their grown-up children.

As a 50-year-old mum-of-two who, like many other people I know, suddenly found herself back in singledom over 40, I say: bring it on.

Love Island has always been late to the age-diversity party. The in-your-face appeal of watching young, shiny, rock-hard bodies is undisputed, but bringing in a generation who’ve been there and done just about everything will give The romance Retreat real heart.

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While Love Islanders talk about who’s ‘my type on paper’, most 40-somethings have lived, loved and ripped up the notebook thanks to divorce, conscious uncouplings and bereavement.

By that age, we’ve also survived the hard-drinking 1990s, acid house and more summers of love than those gorgeous youngsters could ever imagine, so we have far more shocking tales to share.

Mid-lifers are well aware time is ticking, so we’re ready to grab love by the horns, as they say in Love Island world. Something romances-18102971/”>Carol Vorderman admitted to recently, when she revealed she has five ’special friends’ at the age of 62.

When it comes to cracking on, ITV’s censors had better have their blurring buttons at the ready, because many people our age are having the best sex of our lives – and lots of it.

We don’t go to bed at 9pm because we’re tired, despite what we tell our kids.

We know that looks aren’t everything, but we love a good flirt. It might not occur to the young Love Islanders to look at men over 40, but Ryan Reynolds and Bradley Cooper are not Hollywood unicorns – this age group is teeming with sexy silver foxes.

And as for hot women, where do we start? There’s always a shock reaction when a famous woman over 50 emerges looking fabulous (J.Lo, Nicole Kidman, Halle Berry), but it’s no surprise, really.

We’re still young enough to get on a spin bike and will hold our own against the 20-somethings in a HIIT class.

And if that’s not our bag, we have plenty of other things to offer. Like the ability to suss out a wrong ’un and a refusal to be mugged off. 

Plus, women of our age know how to rock the Love Island dress code. LL Cool J/Salt-N-Pepa schooled us in the art of ‘Bikini: small, heels: tall’ long before ‘Shanya’ was born.

But we also know that while a hot face and buffed body are fun to look at, there’s a whole lot more to life.

The current Love Island format is relentlessly heteronormative, but an older generation could be the ones brave enough to disrupt the boy-meets-girl narrative. It’s an age where you’ve come to realise that gender and sexuality are fluid and you don’t owe anyone an explanation for how you live your life.

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Not caring about TikTok or where their next PrettyLittleThing sponsorship is coming from will give the inhabitants of The romance Retreat an edge – and the fact that they’ve been banished there by their kids will give it another – emotional – dimension.  

I have friends whose twenty-something offspring worry about them being lonely when they’re secretly living their best single lives exactly how they want to.

With a rise in fabulous women documenting the highs and lows of their post-divorce lives, this is the time to celebrate that status. HetFlix gives us Scummy Mummy Helen Thorn drinking and DIY-ing, Stacey Duguid renovating her new house without anyone else telling her she can’t paint it red, and the glamorous Rosie Green showing how to heal a broken heart. It’s a stage of life where people are honest, emotional – and totally watchable.

Davina McCall has already joked she’s ‘begging ITV’ to let her present a mid-life version of Love Island – and now her dream could come true.

The idea of being shipped off to a sunny retreat where clothes are optional will appeal to any single parent who’s currently wrapped in scarves and blankets because it takes two wages to pay for the heating these days. 

Hell, I’d be applying if I hadn’t already swiped right on my own mid-life Tinder love (yes, we have a combined age of 101).

Proof, if needed, that doing bits is not the preserve of the young and you don’t suddenly become invisible in mid-life.

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