While it might feel like forever, Love Island has only been back on our screens for little over a week.
Thankfully, for those of you who find your daily dose of island life not enough, the internet has curled out a golden nugget of extra entertainment.
It’s been a fraught few days for the Love Island hopefuls, as age concerns, Brexit and Niall’s own exit (N-exit?) have shaken up the camp considerably.
One cheeky chappy has kept his spirits relentlessly up, however. The ineffable Eyal.
During his time on the show so far, the ex-boyband member and self-professed ‘really deep guy’ has certainly made an impression. Whether the impression will last, however, remains to be seen.
What also remains to be seen, but not for much longer, is Eyal’s YouTube channel. There’s only one video on there so you won’t fall into too much of a YouTube hole, but it’s well worth two and half minutes of your time.
Suitably titled ‘Just Monkeying Around’, the video starts with a smouldering Eyal clicking and pointing at the camera, saying ‘Are you ready?’
Oh yes I am, Eyal, take me now:
What follows is an admittedly quite good impression of a monkey. However, much like what monkeys tend to throw around, the rest of the video is… interesting.
He says:
‘It all started when I was 16…’
What started? Life? Puberty? Come on man, be more specific!
He goes on:
I joined a pop group. I got signed into a pop band and I kind of got sold the dream that they were going to turn me into a European superstar.
The video was published less than a year ago, and he’s only 21, so there’s still plenty of time for the superstar thing to take off. He explains a little more about the band (called EverYoung, who you can find here) and how it ended, at which point he says one of my favourite quotes.
He says:
Midway through my 19s it kind of just started to fizzle out…
19s? Are your ’19s’ a significant period of a person’s life like 20s, 30s, 40s etc? If so, I think I may have missed out.
Anyway, after explaining the band’s dissolution, Eyal says ‘apparently I’m a model’. Well ‘apparently’ you started modelling when you were 11, Eyal, so after 10 years doing it you should be more certain by now. In fact, the next video on YouTube after ‘Just Monkeying Around’ is called ‘How To Model ft. Eyal Booker’, so it’s pretty apparent to me what you are.
Eyal then gives the viewer some ‘facts that I thought were interesting about myself’, which include such classics as ‘I’m 21’, ‘My favourite colour is green’ and ‘I have a dog’. To be fair, the dog, Benji, looks like a cool guy. It’s even better when Eyal says ‘I trained him myself’ just at the moment Benji is barking madly and disobeying all orders.
Finally, Eyal says he’s going to post a new video every Wednesday at 5pm, promising to be ‘on it’ and ‘organised’. That was July 5, 2017.
Well, at least we know where he is now.
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Charlie Cocksedge is a journalist and sub-editor at UNILAD. He graduated from the University of Manchester with an MA in Creative Writing, where he learnt how to write in the third person, before getting his NCTJ. His work has also appeared in such places as The Guardian, PN Review and the bin.