Love Island 2023: Maya Jama becomes third host - who were the previous hosts Caroline Flack & Laura Whitmore?

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Maya Jama was confirmed as the new and third host in eight years of ITV reality show Love Island last year

Fans of popular ITV2 reality show Love Island are gearing up for another season of the show. We are now less than one week away from the second series of the winter series, which is the first one since 2020.

Just months after Davide and Ekin-Su were crowned winners of season eight of Love Island, the show is soon to be back on our screens. Get ready for scandals, recouplings, hideaway ventures and more.

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A new series also sees a new host take charge in what is a season full of changes for the show. It was recently announced that ITV bosses will be disabling social media accounts of contestants during the show.

Maya Jama took over from former host Laura Whitmore who announced she was stepping down after three years in the role. Speculation spread over who would get the job, with the likes of former Islander Maura Higgins reportedly considered.

The new Love Island host recently confirmed via an Instagram post that she has touched down in South Africa ahead of the new season. She is the third host of the show that debuted in 2015.

Who were the previous Love Island hosts?

Caroline Flack: Flack’s career began back in 2002, when she played Michael Jackson’s pet chimpanzee Bubbles on the sketch show Bo’ Selecta. After that, she then presented International Pepsi Chart Show, and Fash FC which followed footballer John Fashanu managing an amateur team.

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After various TV and presenting roles, Flack was announced as the host of Love Island in 2015. The show was aired ten years prior, but had not been successful. But, as host, Flack and co managed to garner four million viewers by 2018.

For her work on the show, She was nominated as best television presenter at the National Television Awards four times from 2017 to 2020, but stood down from her role as presenter in 2019. Tragically, Flack took her own life in February 2020.

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Laura Whitmore: After Flack stepped down as host, Laura Whitmore took charge and hosted the very first winter series. Between 2008 and 2015, she hosted news bulletins for MTV in Ireland, the UK and pan-European MTV channels. She was regularly seen on MTV News hosting special events in Ireland and elsewhere in Europe.

In 2016, she took part in BBC One show Strictly Come Dancing, and was paired with Italian pro dancer Giovanni Pernice. They became the sixth couple to be voted off, losing the dance-off to eventual winners Ore Oduba and Joanne Clifton.

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Whitmore is married to Love Island narrator Iain Stirling, and the pair have a child together. In December 2019, it was announced that she would become the show’s second presenter. In 2022, Whitmore announced she would be stepping down as host because new projects  were conflicting with her commitment to Love Island.

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