This is the premise of former BBC Breakfast presenter Louise Minchin’s debut novel, Isolation Island, which sees 10 celebrities arrive on a windswept remote Scottish island in the depths of winter, their eerie, chilling home a derelict monastery for the duration of their stay, with a production team that seems incapable of keeping them safe, a gathering storm and a web of hidden cameras. And there’s murder afoot. “I’ve read Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, I just love that idea of the locked room drama where no-one can escape and they’re all in danger of their lives,” says the presenter-turned-author, who herself has appeared in various reality shows, from being in the jungle on I’m A Celebrity, to experiencing life in a different time period on Channel 4’s Time Crashers.
Advertisement Advertisement Did you know with a Digital Subscription to Belfast News Letter, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. The inspiration for the thriller comes from her real-life experience of the horrendous Storm Arwen, which led to the evacuation of contestants of I’m A Celebrity from an eerie Welsh castle in 2021. She’d had the idea for a novel for a while and had expected the main character, investigative journalist Lauren, would be in a newsroom environment, but changed her mind because of her reality TV experience.
“We were all evacuated from the castle .