Samantha Kenny refused to speak to Joey Essex when she was dumped (Image: ITV/REX/Shutterstock)

Love Island’s Samantha Kenny accepts she should have steered clear of Joey Essex and names the guy she wishes she had tried to get with instead

After two weeks coupled up with Joey Essex, Love Islander Samantha Kenny refused to speak to the TOWIE star when she was unceremoniously dumped from the villa in tears.

The makeup artist says she is “devastated” to be leaving, and wishes she had “done things differently” with Joey – and now wishes she had cracked on with Ronnie Vint. But the 26-year-old insists: “I was true to myself and didn’t feel like it was a waste of my time because I followed what I felt was right for me.

“When it comes to Joey, I think if I knew what I know now, I perhaps would have done things differently.” She even regrets putting all her eggs in one basket, saying she would have liked to couple up with Ronnie “definitely”.

“Ronnie’s more my type than Joey was, but I feel like Ronnie didn’t pursue anything with me because he didn’t want to go up against Joey,” she says. Samantha was dumped from the villa after Joey’s model ex-girlfriend Grace Jackson, 25, entered as a surprise bombshell last week, and chose to couple up with him last night, leaving Samantha single.

Samantha refused to speak to either of them as she wept, though they tried to clear the air before she departed. It followed a heartbreaking few days for Samantha, after Joey left her in bed alone to spend a night in the Hideaway with Grace, after they already spent a night elsewhere together.

As Joey told Sam of his plans to spend the night with Grace, Sam told him she was unimpressed that he had snogged her in front of her, two hours after she had been in floods of tears, snapping: “Bit out of order, don’t you think?” She also told him she felt like she had been his “place-holder”, and said his behaviour had been “hurtful”.

Mostly, though, she repeatedly told him she felt “embarrassed”, and cried to her female friends in the villa that she had been made to “look a fool”. Speaking after she left, Samantha also said: “I’m not stupid. I literally didn’t give anyone else a chance other than Joey but at the end of the day it is what it is.

“I think what’s next for me is I’m gonna get myself to London, definitely want to move down there, so I can find my little cockney fella because the one that was in there wasn’t for me. Obviously I am devastated to leave all of the girls behind but I am very excited now to see what my future holds and look forward to seeing what is next.”