Greg O'Shea said he shouldn’t have split with Amber Gill so soon after they won Love Island
(Picture: Rex Features)Love Island's Greg O'Shea has said he regrets dumping fellow Islander Amber Gill so soon after they won the ITV show.
The pair were the winning couple of the 2019 series of the dating show and split the £50,000 cash prize between them. But, just five weeks later, the romance ended just days before they were set to appear on The Late Late Show.
Amber accused Greg of breaking up with her over text, which he denied, but it led to him losing more than half a million followers on twitter and angry fans using the UnfollowGreg hashtag.
The rugby player claimed he was also inundated with death threats, and his friends and family were sent abusive messages.
When asked if he had any regrets about his Love Island experience, he told Doireann Garrihy’s The Laughs Of Your Life podcast this week: “I’d love to say ‘no regrets’ but there probably is one. I should have bit my tongue a bit longer and stayed in the relationship with Amber a bit longer.
He continued: “I was just way too honest and way too focused about going to the Olympics at the time, which worked because I did go in hindsight.
“But when she posed the question to me being like, ‘you’re obviously gonna ask me to be your girlfriend, are you?’
“I was like, ‘but sure how is this gonna work? I’m trying to train to go to the Olympics, you’re in the UK, you’re the ‘it’ girl, everyone wants a bit of you.'
"I was like ‘this isn’t going to work.'
“I was just way too honest, too early... stupid Greg just decided to answer honestly over FaceTime and that’s when the whole ‘Greg breaks up with Amber over text’ thing comes out,” he explained.
“Over in the UK I’m just branded as like, ‘Oh you’re Greg the guy that broke up with Amber over text.'”
The 27-year-old Irish reality TV star, who returned to being a professional rugby player once he left the villa, also revealed he secretly struggled with his mental health after Love Island, which became “overwhelming” at one point.
He recalled: “I remember one time I was back in Dublin and I was driving around and it got really, really bad.
“It got overwhelming at one stage, I was behind the wheel of the car and I was like, ‘alright this is going one of two ways’.
"I don’t want to get too dark on the podcast but it was basically a decision of, alright, either this is all over, or bring yourself to the doctor right now.
And thank God I did, I drove myself to the doctor and I said ‘I need to speak to someone right now’.
“They helped me thank God..."
