Maura Higgins joins us on Girls With Goals this week.

Labelled the 'Queen of Ireland', since leaving the Love Island villa we've watched Maura Higgins career go from strength to strength. In terms of longevity, it's fair to say that 'islanders' have to strike when the career iron is hot. In most cases (of instant fame anyway) the club appearances and sponsorship deals dry up fairly quickly, so when we see someone come through a reality TV show with a strong personality and what the Cowell's of this world would call 'star quality' it definitely excites us. Throw in the fact that she's Irish and we're hooked. Appearing on this week's episode of Girls With Goals, Maura opened up about her career prior to the villa; growing up in Longford, becoming a local celebrity and how the producers pursued her for years before she agreed to go on the show. Click play below to watch the full interview:   We're all heard rumours about how they find contestants on Love Island, long gone are the days when you could apply via a grainy VHS à la Big Brother, now it's all about the gram. Maura told us this year wasn't the first time she was approached:

"I remember last year when they called me up, I was with my ex at the time and I was like 'No, I'm in a relationship I'm with a guy' and they were like 'How long are you with that guy?' and I said '6 months' and they said 'Well, you don't really know if that is going to last!'. That's what they said to me and then they said 'If  anything happens closer to the time let us know and we'll get you in there!'"  

  Love Island wasn't the first foray into fame for the Longford native. Growing up in a small town and amassing a following of over 40,000 you couldn't necessarily hide that, and it was all too apparent when she would travel back for night's out:

"It was actually quite strange if I did come home  and I'd go up to say Mullingar or Athlone, that's where I'd always go on a night out, people were stopping me for pictures and my friends used to say like "What the hell is going on?' I suppose where I lived 40,ooo is a lot of followers and a lot of people do standard 9 to 5 jobs so me travelling around, it's very different to what everyone else was doing"

One of the reasons Maura was so distinctive in the villa was definitely due to her take on sex, whether it was edited to look like the other women never discussed these things or not we'll never know but Maura was by far the most outspoken on all elements of female desire. Praised by most and vilified by some she never saw it as a big deal:

"A lot of the islanders were shocked with what was coming out of my mouth but I'm used to that anyway my whole life anyway I'm used to everyone saying 'Oh My God', but I don't see it as a problem I was brought up in an environment where I can speak about sex and I can speak about anything I wanted to so I've never had to filter anything so I still do get surprised when people are in shock by what I say. It's 2019 I think every woman should be able to talk about whatever they want, why can men talk about it and nobody looks at them different!"

So what's next for Maura? Having recently announced her collaboration with boohoo a 'Maura' edit is coming down the line shortly, she's also dipping her toes into the podcasting world and fronting her own show 'Get The Scoop', you can check out the first couple of episodes here.