Love Island winner Paige jokes she considered keeping cash prize to herself
Paige Turley won the first ever winter edition of the show with boyfriend Finley Tapp.
Love Island winner Paige Turley revealed she considered joking about keeping the £50,000 cash prize from boyfriend Finley Tapp.
The couple were victorious in the first ever winter edition of the ITV2 reality show, beating fellow finalists Siannise Fudge and Luke Trotman, Luke Mabbott and Demi Jones, and Jess Gale and Ched Uzor.
Upon winning Love Island, Paige and Finn were each given an envelope and asked by host Laura Whitmore whether the experience had been about “love or money”.
They opened them to reveal Paige’s had the £50,000 prize, and Finn’s had £0. While Paige chose to share the cash, the 22-year-old has now revealed she nearly jokingly pretended to keep it.
She said: “I should have said ‘I’ll take the £50,000’ and share £5,000 with you! I would have made a joke (about keeping it), but I thought, ‘What if he seriously thinks that’s my answer?’ I just thought, I’m not going to even put my foot in it!”
Following their win, Paige, who is from Scotland, and Finn, a 20-year-old semi-professional footballer from Milton Keynes, plan on moving to Manchester.
Explaining the move, Paige said: “I totally love Scotland. I’ve never had a reason to move away from it. I think Glasgow might be a bit rough for Finn. They’d eat him alive! Ha ha! I’m joking. I think it would be a bit unfair of me to take him away from his comforts.”
Finn added it was a “middle ground” and that his fellow Love Island contestant Callum Jones had “sold us the dream” of the north west.
Asked what their Love Island experience had taught him, Finn said: “Patience and happy wife, happy life.”
While Paige, who once dated the singer-songwriter Lewis Capaldi, said of her time in the villa: “It’s taught me a lot about myself to let the walls come down – that it’s not always a big scary thing. And to not shout as much… or swear as much!”
The first ever winter series of Love Island was overshadowed by the death of former Love Island host Caroline Flack, who took her own life earlier this month at the age of 40.
Whitmore paid tribute to Flack during the live final, held in Cape Town, South Africa, telling viewers that it has been “extremely difficult coming to terms with the loss of our friend and colleague Caroline”.
