Megan: I Feel Stronger After Love Island'

With 3.6 million viewers and thousands of column inches, Love Island was the most talked about event of the summer. Four months on, Grazia catches up with its star…

- Harriet Kean

WHEN MEGAN Barton Hanson applied to go on this summer’s Love Island, she thought she was signing up to a free holiday. She didn’t expect to leave hand in-hand with her current boyfriend, Wes Nelson, after declaring her love for him in front of an enraptured nation. And she certainly didn’t think they would be one of the few couples who are still together. But now, with an impending TV show of their own and a new pet hamster (named after Jon Snow – the Game Of Thrones character played by Kit Harington), this Love Island couple can be, as the former glamour model tells Grazia, ‘the smug ones’.

Life, she says, has changed immeasurably since the show, which saw 4.1 million viewers tune in for the final. ‘I went from living in Southend-on-Sea, going down the high street with literally no make-up on and in tracksuit bottoms to now, where everywhere I go, people know who I am,’ she says from the North London apartment she now shares with Wes.