LOVE Island star, Georgia Townend has opened up about her short but “incredible” experience on the show - and revealed her love for the town she grew up in, Maldon.

Georgia, 28, told how her mum, an Australian, and dad from Yorkshire, settled down in the historic town which the family adore.

She went to St Francis Catholic Primary School before going to secondary school in Sandon, on the outskirts of Chelmsford.

Georgia said: “I love the town, it’s so beautiful, I spent many an idyllic day at the prom, and swimming, and I loved the Victorian evenings.

“I think it’s an amazing town which is obviously why my mum and dad stuck around.”

The marketing executive now lives in Mundon, a village and civil parish on the Dengie peninsula, with her cat Betty, where she isolated for five days after the show.

The blonde bombshell was chosen for the ITV show through the application process.

She had applied for last year’s show which was cancelled, but the team got in touch with Georgia at the start of the year to pick up where they left off.

From February, she was doing something towards it every single week.

“I’m quite superstitious so I almost didn’t want to jinx it.

“It wasn’t until it was confirmed when I told my family and friends, I didn’t want to gee them up and then be disappointed.”

She entered the Love Island villa in Majorca on July 21.

Upon entering the villa, she said it was bizarre to meet people she’d been watching on TV.

“It didn’t hit me until I was on the deck hugging Kaz, and I was thinking ‘God, I was watching you yesterday and now I’m here’, it’s just so bizarre really.”

She settled in with the cast almost instantly.

“That becomes the new norm, and it’s the most normal I’ve felt in such a long time because what we were doing in there is normal life but because of all the Covid restrictions we’d not been able to do that.

“So it’s almost more weird being in real life than it was being in there.”

Sadly she was dumped after 48 hours, when she didn’t connect with PE teacher Hugo Hammond.

Read more:

“I felt like Hugo matched quite a lot of what I was looking for and vice versa but for us it was just a chemistry thing.”

Yet there’s nothing she would’ve done differently.

"I went in there and I was myself.

“If I had gone in there and been really salacious and flirty I would’ve met someone that wasn’t right for me.”

She looks forward to seeing the cast when they leave.

“I can hand-on-heart say that everyone in the villa is lovely on an individual level, so they all deserve to find someone.”

Georgia wants to continue with volunteer work and other projects she was doing before the show.

“It was a whole, massive new experience for me that I would have never experienced in my own life, so I just wanted to enjoy it, get to know new people, it was quite exciting.”