‘We won Love Island and are still together now – this is what the new contestants should know’

Paige and Finn won the first winter series of Love Island (Picture: ITV/REX)

Love Island winners Paige Turley and Finley Tapp have shared their pieces of advice for the new contestants heading into the villa.

In a matter of hours, a brand new batch of sexy singletons will be beginning their hunt for love on the ITV2 reality dating series, with Maya Jama taking over as host from Laura Whitmore.

This year’s contestants, who will be starring in the second ever winter series, include TikTok farmer Will Young, and the programme’s first partially sighted contestant Ron Hall.

The first and only winter series of Love Island aired back in 2020, and saw Paige and Finn walk away with the cash prize, having found love.

And now three years later, the couple – who live together in Manchester – are still going strong, making them one of the few winning couples still together.

In an exclusive chat with Metro.co.uk, Paige and Finn shared not only their secret to winning, but to remaining together after leaving the villa.

Three years later, their relationship has gone from strength to strength (Picture: Dave J Hogan/Getty Images)

The winners have shared their advice for the new contestants entering the villa (Picture: ITV/REX)

When asked what their one piece of advice to the new contestants would be, Paige began: ‘Appreciate it while you’re in there, you’re never going to have an opportunity like this where you don’t have a phone for six weeks, you don’t know the time.

‘Like you’re building genuine connections and for the first couple of days you become weird with trying to find the time and then after that you just feel free of responsibility. And it’s like, hey, it’s just isn’t that very nice?’

Finn continued: ‘Especially when there’s not much to do in the villa other than chat to people. So I think you sit there and try and find little things to pass your time and one of them is literally like, I wonder what time it actually is. So you try to hunt the villa for a clock that they might have left on, so it is good just to have that sort of time when you literally are in a bubble.’

‘And you don’t really appreciate it until you’re out, and you’re like, oh there’s a full world outside,’ Paige added.

Paige and Finn told us what it was like rebuilding their relationship after leaving the Love Island ‘bubble’ (Picture: Rex)

Paige elsewhere told us that, after building their relationship in ‘a bubble’ during their time on the series, it took a year to really get to know each other.

‘It kind of took us like a good year to work out who each other was, because obviously, in the villa you’re in a bubble, you don’t have any responsibility, you don’t see where they’re from, you don’t see their friends or family,’ she said.

‘So it took us probably like a year to really work each other out and gain an absolute understanding of who each other was.’

Paige and Finn shared their secret to winning the show and staying together afterwards (Picture: ITV/REX)

Whilst getting to know each other outside of the villa, Paige shared that their secret to staying together despite being in the public eye was ‘taking it back to basics’, with Finn adding that they slowed their relationship down ‘to a pace that is normal’.

Sharing their secret to winning the show, which saw Luke Trotman and Siânnise Fudge come runners-up, she shared: ‘I think just being genuine, having a genuine emotions, let people see even if it’s up and downs.

‘Allow people to connect with you no matter what emotions you’re going through. Just be genuine.’

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Finn added: ‘Don’t try and paint that you’re the happiest couple in there who never argue. If you’re unhappy in your couple, people want to see that because that’s real.

‘People want to see you have a little tiff on the daybeds or wherever it is. Like I think that’s what people connect with.’

Love Island returns on Monday, January 16 at 9pm on ITV2.

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Paige and Finn won the programme’s first ever winter series.