Iain Stirling looks back: ‘I was worried about doing the Love Island voiceover, but it opened doors I thought would close’

Born in Edinburgh in 1988, Iain Stirling is a comedian, actor and writer. He studied law at the University of Edinburgh while starting his standup career. He won a children’s Bafta for his work on CBBC alongside sidekick puppet Hacker T Dog and has narrated UK Love Island since 2015 and Love Island USA since 2022. He co-wrote and starred in the sitcom Buffering, and currently hosts true crime podcast Murder They Wrote with his wife Laura Whitmore with whom he has two children. Series two of Iain Stirling’s Roast the Internet will return to Comedy Central on 7 September.

This must have been taken at the weekend as I’m wearing a Blink-182 T-shirt and baggy jeans. I wouldn’t have been allowed to look like that during the week. I lived this double life in my teens: I wore an outfit like this at school once and was told I was a “sweatie” – an emo – and that I’d let the school down. I was on the football team and things were tribal back then. But on a Saturday, when I was back from violin practice, I could dress how I wanted. Under the bed is an empty bottle of Irn-Bru, and there’s a remote control for the TV that I’d watch Pokémon on, all of which sums me up at this age.

The first part of my life was spent on an estate in Liberton, a suburb of Edinburgh, before we moved to a bungalow in a little cul-de-sac just outside the city. My family was small – just me, my parents and my sister, and very few relatives. My memories of living here were that it was quaint, safe, quiet and insular.

I was never the funniest person in my friendship circle, but I was obsessed with comedy. I started going to the fringe when I was 12. By the time I was 14, I formed a sketch group with a friend called Just So Ever Slightly. Influenced by Monty Python and Little Britain, there was often a three-minute blackout between sketches while we got into different outfits. Our jokes were fairly adolescent – I’d wear a wig and a dress and pretend to be a female weather reporter with inflatable boobs. It relied on a lot of innuendo – “Long, hard, cold fronts,” etc

I’d watched so much live comedy that as soon as I began doing standup I felt I had a natural swing for it. I never told anyone at school what I was doing in my spare time, but they found out in the end. In my 20s, a few people from school came to see me and ruined it, probably on purpose. One of them found a drill in the venue and started threatening people in the audience with it. It was pretty mad, but it was how we were brought up – we were told to stay in our lane. People from where I was from weren’t meant to perform shows at the fringe – we were the ones serving pints behind the bar.

It wasn’t until law school that I felt I had permission to approach comedy with ambition. Susan Calman was a massive influence; she and her wife were lawyers. They took me under their wing – Susan would tell me which gigs to do, and her wife would tell me what law books to read. My degree was prestigious and it was the first time teachers filled me with confidence. At my school, if a kid said they wanted to be a footballer, the teacher would reply: “What about postman?” Containing us was the goal. University was a different environment. I wouldn’t have thrown myself into standup if it wasn’t for that experience.

I was doing a gig at the Comedy Store when someone from CBBC asked if I’d be interested in auditioning. My standup was not kid-friendly, and I’d never heard of standups doing children’s TV, let alone presenting it, so I thought it was a wind-up. I didn’t show up, went back to my hostel in Leicester Square and thought nothing of it. They got in touch again, and this time I paid attention. I remember being in the audition room and hearing that someone called “Chris Ramsey” [now co-host of podcast Shagged. Married. Annoyed] was meant to be up for the job, too, but hadn’t shown up. So I got it. It was all very serendipitous.

I was working on a show about kids training dogs to do tricks when my voice got spotted for Love Island. The dogs gig was given to me by a producer friend who sold it to me as: “A day’s work, maximum, but I’ll say it’s four so we can go on the piss for a couple of days in London afterwards.” I said yes, not realising it would get sent to someone at ITV, who happened to be looking for a voiceover for a new reality series. Apparently, they wanted someone who wasn’t from the south. Back then, diversity was: “We can still hire a white guy, just not a posh one.”

I was initially reluctant to accept the job. Although I was skint, I was also worried that if I did Love Island, I wouldn’t get a Radio 4 series or interviewed by broadsheets. In fact, the opposite happened. Love Island became a cultural cornerstone and opened doors I thought would close. The culture was changing in comedy too – whereas traditionally you’d have to earn your stripes on the circuit and then get to go on a panel show, comedians were starting to get more visible through non-traditional routes.

The narration I did with my writing partner Mark [Busk-Cowley], who is also Scottish, met with some resistance at first. Jokes such as “This date is awful, so if you want, Ice Road Truckers is on Channel 5 at the minute” didn’t get a great response from the people up top. Eventually, they came round to our sense of humour, and now they let us do what we like. I still get my voice recognised more than my face. If I don’t speak, generally I can still go under the radar.

I was aware of Laura for years before I met her. In 2012, Rob Beckett got a presenting gig on I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! NOW! and I thought: “What a lucky bastard. Not only has he got this cool job, but he’s presenting with this really hot girl.” We then met a few times, through being part of the ITV family, and I was struck by her incredible personality and energy. She is amazing at standing by what she believes in. By comparison, I am such a people pleaser. As a comedian, and as someone who did not fit in as a kid, I’ll often do whatever it takes to be liked. Meanwhile, Laura has this ability to be liked but also never compromise who she is. Has she inspired me? I definitely am more willing to speak my mind on political or socio-economic matters, subjects I might have shied away from in the past. But I still spend too much time worrying about how I might inconvenience someone in some way.

While 13-year-old me was preoccupied with the stresses of belonging, he had a huge creative imagination. I’ve been doing this job for such a long time, and I’ve learned most of the tricks of the trade, so comedic uniqueness is harder to come by now. I wish I could go back to that blank slate and borrow some of his weirdness. But he’d be over the moon if he knew what was about to happen to him. And fucking delighted with the car I drive.