Paige Thorne has revealed she was forced to quit her job as a paramedic before going on Love Island.
The 24-year-old, who narrowly missed out on the final with her now-boyfriend Adam Collard in the 2022 series earlier this month, recently confirmed she would be returning to her day job.
In a candid new interview, the Welsh native admitted she was left “devastated” when she was forced to resign, after trying “every” other avenue to keep her role.
Speaking on the Girls Know Nothing podcast, Paige said: “When I did tell work I needed the time off to go in [to the villa], my manager was so supportive and she 100 per cent backed me every step of the way.”
“But the only thing was, I tried all ways to keep my job and do Love Island at the same time. Obviously, it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity, apart from for Adam Collard, but he’s not doing it a third time.”
“I said to my manager: ‘It’s a massive opportunity, is there any way I can do it?’ I tried taking annual leave, unpaid leave, a career break, I tried every single avenue possible to keep my job as well as do Love Island.”
“But, unfortunately, because paramedics and the ambulance service and the NHS in general get such bad backlash about waiting times and being understaffed and all of this…”
She continued: “I think, from a management perspective, they were like, ‘Yes, we want to fully support you.’ I think they couldn’t risk me going in not knowing me as a person, obviously higher up they don’t know me as an individual employee.
“I think they were worried that I went in and then it’s like, ‘Oh, the NHS is struggling this much and paramedics are struggling this much and you’ve let one have time off to go into Love Island,’ it might’ve created more bad press and bad backlash that they just didn’t need.”
“Which I totally understand. So the only option I had was to resign, which I was devastated about.”
“I’m glad I did it, because it was in the terms that when I come out as long as everything has gone OK that I can go back to it and have a conversation about getting my job back as a Bank Paramedic, which works great for me anyway.”
Paige explained: “Basically, being on a Bank contract means I can pick and choose when I work my shifts and what would work for me. So having a Bank contract means I can have the best of both worlds.”
It comes after the reality star told Lorraine: “I actually saw an ambulance the other day with sirens on. I had like serious FOMO, I was like, ‘Get me my ambulance back!’”
“So I’m going to go back into that a little bit and just see what opportunities come from that.”
“It’s one of those things – I genuinely just love my job. So why wouldn’t I want to go back to it? I really enjoyed it. But I’ll do other things alongside it.”
