‘My diet’s been branded a red flag and it’s really frustrating’

‘Shall we get some brie?’ On paper, it’s a simple question, but for Billy Jervis and Ashleigh Berry, it was the beginning of the end of their relationship.

Billy and Ashleigh took an unconventional route to find their soulmate—via Love Is Blind UK, the Netflix series where singles date behind a wall, choosing to commit to a lifetime together without ever laying eyes on each other.

It might sound strange, even impossible, but the proof is in the pudding (make it flourless for Billy): Love Is Blind is arguably the most successful dating format going. Bobby and Jasmine Johnson from season one are already expecting their first baby and join many other couples from the show to start their brood.

Billy and Ashleigh even said ‘I do’ in front of their friends and family. They had a wedding, vowed to love each other through thick and thin, but have since broken up.

On the show, Billy struggled to see a future with an air stewardess after being burned by one before. Ashleigh is an air stewardess.

Still, they were infatuated and chose to see past their incompatible careers because love is worth it.

But a trip to the supermarket perhaps exposed the biggest cracks in their relationship. Their compatibility is thrown into question at the cheese aisle.

Billy is an Army physical training instructor. His job is to make sure his soldiers are as fit as they can possibly be, and subsequently, he tells Ashleigh: ‘I need to practise what I preach.’

From the cheese aisle, they moved to onions. When Ashleigh picks one up, he tells her: ‘We don’t need onions though. What for? On a weekly shop, I just keep it simple and healthy with just some sort of lean meat like mince or something, broccoli and then rice as well. But I would have the same thing every day.’

All hell breaks loose when they get to the cakes. When Ashleigh’s face lights up at stacks of gateaux, Billy looks visibly distressed and warns: ‘One of those slices is around 600 calories.’

Alarmed viewers branded Billy’s diet a ‘giant red flag’ and urged Ashleigh to walk away. She stayed, but it’s now been confirmed they have parted ways, which is perhaps for the best.

But Billy has hit back at critics of his ‘red flag’ diet and insisted he’s not a dictator when it comes to food, even if Netflix wants you to think he is.

‘That’s the biggest thing that’s frustrated me,’ he tells Metro.

‘I understand what I got into, it’s edited for drama so everyone thinks I hate onions – I love onions. I was saying no to a recipe because we were shopping for a certain recipe, and then the cake that came up, and there was no sweet cupboard. But that conversation carried on, and we said, “No, I’m only joking, but I’ll learn that bit of self-control because I can stop eating when I get the sweets.”’

Billy says food wasn’t actually an issue when they lived together. They cooked plenty of meals together and had some of the other couples over for dinner.

‘There’s little things you don’t see,’ he says. ‘We’d drink wine, red wine sometimes. It’s everything in moderation, but obviously with my job, I have to balance it out. It was never a big thing, but it’s just dramatised, and now the world knows I hate cake. I don’t [hate cake].’

Ashleigh, however, explains she felt triggered by the shopping trip after struggling to put weight on as a teenager, stressing it was the ‘first difference Billy and me really came up against’.

‘Watching about that supermarket scene was difficult,’ she says. ‘I wasn’t expecting myself to get emotional over food.

‘Back when I was at school, I was bullied for being slim. I struggled to put weight on. My mum took me to the doctors. I was very underdeveloping compared to my friends, and I used food as a source for good; I used it as a strength both mentally and physically.

‘I started going to the Army Cadets and eating more, but there were no restrictions on food for me and my family, because it was to make me feel better and make me a strong woman.

’As soon as someone started putting a little bit of control on food, it took me back to those days when I was 13,14, 15, and it was really triggering.’

Ultimately, their differences proved too much and shortly after their wedding day, they called it quits.

Billy claims the decision to end their marriage was his decision. ‘All my biggest fears turned into reality,’ he says.

‘I was up north of England, she was down south. Anytime she would land, I would drive down, but what I didn’t account for was jet lag, so she needs to rest, because she had just come off a long-haul flight.

‘Naturally, it just takes its toll and trying to bring what we had in the pods into reality, we were struggling. We both were apart. We stopped saying, “I love you”, and it just got to a point for me where I was just drained, and it just didn’t feel like we should carry on.

‘I could have kept it going but for me, when you know, you know, and it wouldn’t have been fair on Ashleigh.’

Billy and Ashleigh weren’t the only couple to split, though. Months after their respective wedding days, only one couple is still going strong: Megan Jupp and Kieran Holmes-Darby.

Every other couple decided to bite the dust and is still on the hunt for love. Hopefully, with their eyes wide open.

Love Is Blind UK is available to stream on Netflix.

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