Paige Thorne was left "devastated" after being forced to quit her paramedic job for Love Island.
The 24 year old, from Swansea, appeared on the Girls Know Nothingpodcast as she described how torn she was between her beloved job and the "once in a lifetime opportunity" to go on the hit ITV2 show, Love Island.
She 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.
Paige then touched on how her entering the Love Island villa and keeping her paramedic job might result in a backlash on the NHS, and that her bosses felt that they couldn't take the risk.
"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, I think, from a management perspective, they were like, 'Yes, we want to fully support you.'"
"I said to my manager 'It's a massive opportunity, is there any way I can do it?"
"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."
Paige recently surprised her fans when she revealed that she was intending to go back to her day job as a paramedic, following her huge stardom after appearing on Love Island.
Speaking to guest host Ranvir Singh on ITV’s Lorraine, Paige said: "Personally for me, I've got a meeting to go back to paramedic work as well so that'll be exciting.
"I saw an ambulance the other day with a siren and I had serious FOMO. I'm going to go back into that a little bit…"
Her boyfriend Adam Collard – who she met on the show – was sat alongside her on the sofa, and he shared: ”I think people would be surprised at how much she talked about it in the villa as well. I loved that as well.”
Despite many Love Island stars giving up their previous day jobs in the pursuit of huge money deals, Paige said about her paramedic job: "It's one of those things like I genuinely just love my job. So why wouldn't I want to go back to it? I really enjoyed it.”
Paige recently paid a visit to her old paramedic colleagues in their office and she posted a video of the moment, over which she added some green love heart emojis.
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