Jack mate. Let me buy you a pint. Let me tell you why we love you
Look. I’ll admit it. I’ll hold my hands up. I didn’t expect much from Jack Fincham when he entered the Love Island villa. In fact, I didn’t expect much at all from Love Island itself, but that’s a different story.
Now he might be my favourite person in the entire world.
They say you should never judge a book by its cover but like all the Love Island viagra adverts come to life, his cover was all I had to go on, initially at least.
And his cover was this: Zoo magazine. Remember Zoo magazine? Or Nuts? His cover was just a suspiciously sticky Nuts magazine growing stale on a van dashboard beneath the old McDonald’s wrappers.
After all, he waltzed up and into our lifes with one too many shirt buttons undone, pointing the ‘alright love’ double gun-fingers at us, the sunbed man with glow in the dark teeth. From Kent.
Kent. He looked just like the rest of them.
And then it was revealed he also sells stationery. He actually fucking deals pens. A professional pen dealer.
Yeah? You see what I mean? Yeah…
You can see it in the azure existential dread in his eyes, he was never happy posing like this. It never felt rightBut then there was also the good stuff. His hair looked incredibly soft, like the bedding in a guinea pig hutch. Even better still, he has what they call in the industry ‘an extremely average rig’.
In a sea of sculpted bodies and people who wake up, only to tense in front of the mirror for a bit before going back to bed to lie on top of the covers, topless, there’s Jack.
A man who was a talented boxer in his youth and got bored of it all, got bored of waking up at 6am to go to the gym before work, who got bored of not smashing pints back with the lads, who got sick of it all, lifting metal repeatedly for no other reason than because that’s a thing that some other people do to look like that’s what they do sometimes. To look like they lift heavy things.
He knew he had far too much personality for that soul-destroying endeavour. He knew he was better than it. Jack knew all along. He knew he was far too fucking sound for all that. And that he just couldn’t be arsed.
Jack, mate. You do impressions. You get easily confused by things. You have a heart of actual, solid gold. You are one of us, you always were, and we love you for it.
https://twitter.com/LoveIslandReact/status/1014968456964395008
What exactly is soundness? Well it’s hard to define. For some, it simply means vibrations through the air that mean we can hear. For others, the more nuanced individuals amongst us, it means someone who doesn’t push in at the bar, gets their round in without being asked and let’s someone have that spare chair sat idle at your table in ‘the boozer’. ‘The Boozer’ is what a sound person calls every single pub, by the way. There isn’t just a mad amount of pubs around called ‘The Boozer’. That would be stupid. That would just be really stupid. Anyway. Picture the scene.
INTERIOR: THE BOOZER. DAYTIME. SOMEHOW ONLY MIDDAY.
“‘Scuse me mate, mind if I nick that chair off ya please?”
“All yours pal. ‘Ave it. ‘Ere let me help. There ya go”
“Sound fella. Nice one. Here have a pint on me”
“Oh mate. Love to, but I can’t. I’m double parked as it is.”
“Haha, no worries bruv. You have a good night, yeah?”
“Typical, ain’t it? Haha. Yeah, you too mate. Sound.”
Both of the men in that exchange are Jack.
Do you see?
Do you see just how fucking sound he is?
It is staggering. It is actually staggering how fucking sound this guy is.
Jack probably sending 8 pints of Kronenbourg to his mate’s table using the Wetherspoon’s app just because he canOf all the Love Island contestants, and there are many, Jack is really the only one that will survive in the real world afterwards, the only one who won’t need to resort to attending Student Union club nights as a ‘suprise guest’ and then just getting booed and pelted offstage by a kaleidoscopic sea of VK bottles, or resort to selling protein shakers on Instagram, or simply resort to appearing in anything, anything at all, with Keith Lemon and having Keith Lemon do that face he does and talk in that voice and completely banter them off with his unique brand of humour, of just saying things, anything at all, literally any words, in that voice and with that face.
Jack wouldn’t stand for that. Any of it. He doesn’t need it. He’s going to come back from the villa the exact same man, albeit now with Dani Dyer and consequently, Danny Dyer, in his direct orbit.
But that won’t change him. It will change his life, probably dramatically, but it won’t change the man we know and love. Not by a long shot.
Jack blow-drying his armpitHe’ll go back to Kent, he’ll probably sell a few pens, maybe a personalised Parker fountain here, a matching leather-covered hologrammed notepad there, before thinking ‘fuck it’ and sacking that off for a life of just being Danny Dyer’s best mate whilst also being Dani Dyer’s boyfriend.
And do you know what? He deserves it. He deserves it more than anyone. He deserves just to spend the rest of his days in Danny Dyer’s manor with his thick, reassuring, leg of lamb arm around little Dani Dyer, just watching the rest of the world go by, safe in the knowledge that he is absolutely sound as fuck and there will never be a Love Island contestant like him.
Fair play to you, Jack Fincham. Fair play mate. I’ve watched you for the last few weeks and all I want in the entire world is to be your mate, to sit opposite you with a pint in my hand, and listen to you just say really fucking sound things and do some impressions and talk about how much you love Dani, all the time, forever.
Let me buy you a drink, mate. Let me bask in your soundness. Let us turn, simultaneously, to the bloke who wants to nick the spare chair at our table and tell him to go right ahead.
It’s all yours, pal. The world and everything in it.
