We’ve all succumbed to the detergent-scented lure of the motorway service station. Sure, we come for the bladder relief, but we stay for the collapsible camping seats priced at just 300% of their normal retail value, mesmerised by architectural virtuosity placing us never more than 12 steps from a Costa.

That said, have we ever been so entranced by the off-road sirens’ call of an RAC membership stand that we have wandered through those automatic doors having left our sex tapes in the car? No, we do not do that with our sex tapes. But then, we’re not a publicist representing an unnamed couple off Love Island, are we?

Over to the Mirror, then, where we discover that SD cards containing a “tasteful” home movie were stolen from the passenger footwell of a car belonging to publicist Rob Cooper while he popped into a service station on the fringes of the Midlands.

As the Mirror reports: “The unnamed couple, who had sex in the villa during their time on the show, are thought to be devastated by the theft.” Perhaps the Mirror could have confirmed the degree of that devastation with Rob Cooper, considering he is on the phone two paragraphs later explaining how his 10-minute stop-off went wonky. But the main point here is that these SD cards contained deeply personal data and celebrities should be afforded the same sympathy we would all expect in the same situation. It’s theft, and should the footage leak, it’s the most extraordinary violation of a young couple’s privacy.

Except. Oh, except. EXCEPT … Well, first let’s rewind, because there’s a lot to unpack here, most prominently: what was this sex tape doing in this publicist’s car? Is it common practice in the celeb world to document The Act Of Love, then promptly hand over all footage to your publicist? Over to the Mirror for confirmation: “The reality-star couple … had agreed to release the sex tape on the ‘condition it was worth more than £100k,’ according to Rob. The pair allegedly hoped to negotiate a deal with Vivid Entertainment in West Hollywood, the company responsible for marketing Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton’s lucrative sex tapes.”

The thought-to-be-devastated couple are not, then, thought-to-be-devastated for reasons with which we mortals can empathise. In short, they shot a porn film and they are worried they can’t sell it, all because their publicist needed a wee and a packet of Wine Gums on his way out of Peterborough. Admittedly, at this point it’s hard to continue typing knowing that, from the reader’s perspective, words are now becoming increasingly meaningless as they slowly seem to rise from the page and morph before your eyes into a pulsating holographic representation of the emoji best known as “strokes chin”, but continue we must.

Now, to be clear, Lost in Showbiz is in no way suggesting that this story has been entirely fabricated by Mr Cooper, whose website contains a number of plaudits including one credited to the Sun in which he is described as “quite possibly one of the most creative minds I’ve come across”. After all, this is a matter that apparently is – and there’s no reason at all to doubt the Mirror’s report – being investigated by the police, and making a false report falls under wasting police time and could result in six months in prison. And, anyway, why would you even make it up?

Well, for the sake of argument, putting oneself in the position of a publicist less scrupulous than Mr Cooper, in an identical situation perhaps you would make it up in order to create awareness of the tape and establish huge tabloid and public interest in its contents, therefore increasing the value of the legitimate sale you are currently negotiating. And having made it up, you wouldn’t have to worry about the publicity increasing the tape’s value on the black market, or the likelihood of it leaking, because of course the tape wouldn’t even be on the black market. Also, having made it up, you’d keep the Love Island couple’s identities anonymous in order to increase speculative social chatter, boosting all Love Island contestants’ profiles in the process and allowing the public to assume this is about the most popular Love Island couple even if your own clients are a different couple. In doing so, you would also set in motion a story arc that allows for the subsequent reveal of the distraught couple, creating a double-bubble headline bonanza. But – and this really cannot be overemphasised – that is not what has happened here.

Anyway, back to the story: Rob got back in his car, noticed the passenger door had been jarred open but was reassured when he checked and saw that the Louis Vuitton backpack on the car’s back seat was still there. So, he says, “I assumed I was just being paranoid”, and he drove home. One does rather wonder what was in the Louis Vuitton backpack if Rob’s first reaction was to check for that, rather than the SD cards containing £100K worth of celebrity porn, but never mind.

For the time being, Rob says the unnamed couple have been placed in the awkward position of breaking news of the tape to their nearest and dearest. “The couple have had to make their families aware of the situation and prepare them in advance in case the intimate footage is leaked,” he tells the Mirror. And that’s fair enough, because no parent wants this to happen to their kids, do they? Most, quite rightly, hope that after having sex in the course of a national TV programme their children will grow up to receive the £100K their sex tapes truly deserve.

Finally, if any Peterborough-dwelling Lost in Showbiz readers have, for whatever reason, come into possession of these SD cards, please don’t break the security seal on these incredibly-valuable-but-leave-them-in-your-car-anyway items, because there is a big reward! Return the cards with the seal intact, Rob says, and you’ll get £25K; if tampering has taken place, you’ll get £10K now, then three subsequent annual instalments of £5K providing the footage doesn’t leak. This seems to suggest the value of this Love Island couple’s noble endeavours will be £15K next year, drops to £5K by 2020 and stands at precisely zero pounds in 2021. That’s showbiz!