‘I am madly in love’: The Bachelor’s Locky Gilbert kisses and tells about reality TV dating ahead of new season premiere

When the global pandemic temporarily stopped this year’s season, The Bachelor star Locky Gilbert thought his search for love was prematurely over. But he was wrong. With his path to love interrupted by the deadly coronavirus, the 30-year-old adventure entrepreneur wants viewers to know he locks a lot of lips and falls madly in love by series’ end. For a hot minute there, when the reality TV production was shutdown by the global COVID crisis in March, fans of the popular dating show were worried the spark and sex appeal of the series would be missing – kept at a safe social distance and under passion-proof PPE. But, the former Survivor favourite found his way around the limitations of lockdown and even admits keeping things at arm’s length helped form a deeper bond with his newly beloved. “It gave me the chance to get to know the girls on a real level,” the besotted bachelor tells The BINGE Guide. “You take the candles and the roses away and we’d just talk over FaceTime, over text, like you would in a normal relationship. It was really special.” It wasn’t meant to be this way, of course, with Channel 10 and the show’s producers forced to shut down production midway through filming and send the remaining girls and Gilbert home. The Perth-born heart throb admits he was heartbroken by the hiatus, wondering if his search for love would end in isolation. But working to government health guidelines, the production created a Bachie ‘bubble’ – flying the contestants back in, testing them all for the virus and after 14-days quarantine began filming again. KISS AND TELL While the dates won’t be as adventurous as this outdoorsy, thrillseeker would have liked, just getting the show back on the road was good enough for Gilbert. “Anyone who wasn’t in the bubble had the mask on, the gloves, the face shield … it was like we were in a science film,” he explains, “but that allowed us to still get intimate and physically touch each other.” And as reports earlier this year confirmed, Gilbert made up for the lost time by smooching his way through as many of his suitors as he could. “Oh there definitely will [be kissing] and I think there was even an article about me getting into trouble for it. There was a little bit of truth to that … there was no truth to a producer telling me off, but I certainly got around and got to know the girls,” he says, adding with a devilish grin, “I was a little rascal, you could say.” Of course, spreading the love – and not in the viral sense – was strategic, Gilbert argues, a noble act to keep his harem happy. “At that [halfway] point, I was still trying to give everyone a chance and keep everybody happy because it would have been so easy to just talk to someone more than the others. But I didn’t want to do that to anyone, so I gave everyone the same amount of time and attention.” If there was one woman left a little “blindsided” by his Bachelor play dates, it was his “island girlfriend” Brooke Jowett who hooked up with him during last year’s season of Survivor: All Stars. When his rose-giving gig was announced, she went public with her disappointment. In a statement, the gym instructor said while she was “hurt” by his decision to chase new love “I wish the best for Locky, I always will. I guess we had different things planned in our heads for what was to come over the next few months but you can’t be mad at someone for doing what they feel is best for them, even if it does sting a little … I hope he finds what he’s looking for.” Gilbert felt the heat over the headlines, but insists he and Jowett had broken up six months before their romance played out on our TV screens. He confesses he has previously kept his distance when it came to committing to a relationship, but took on the TV challenge to help break him of that habit and find the one. “For me, opening up and letting the feelings out was very new. I kind of hold everything in. In my real life, I don’t leave enough time for romance and if there is romance, I tend to shy away from it. Going into The Bachelor you’re thrown into it and nothing else really matters but making that romantic connection. That’s the main reason why I wanted to do it … it would allow me to forget about everything and just concentrate on building a future with someone.” And when he says he’s now ready to settle down, he means it – revealing he is likely to move for his fair maiden, and work on his Bali-based adventure business, Four Elements, long distance. His adventurous spirit had many fearing this season might end in a ditch, as it did when former rugby union player, Nick ‘Honey Badger’ Cummins dashed the hopes of all his hopefuls and chose to go it alone. Gilbert is sympathetic and says: “that was a pretty rough road for the ol’ Honey Badger, but I can definitely assure you I am madly in love. It’s an amazing feeling and to be able to say it out aloud now, it’s a really good feeling. With all that this year has thrown at him, Gilbert adds: “It’s definitely a love story that everyone will remember. It’s a crazy ride, I’ll tell ya that.” * The Bachelor, 7.30pm Wednesday and Thursday, 10.