Thanks to a successful podcast, Iain Stirling’s tech-filled spare room looks more like Mission Control.
Yet on a video call from his London home, the Scottish funny man known as “the voice of Love Island” maintains respect for more traditional venues.
As he prepares for his first stand-up tour in two years, Relevant, the Edinburgh-raised comic reveals he is looking forward to a more numerous Dundee crowd alongside a return to a much loved theatre in Dunfermline.
“I could talk about the Alhambra all night,” Iain says with a fond chuckle, remembering the pleasant surprise on by his first visit during a week-long Scottish run of previous tour Failing Upwards.
“Everyone’s got their preconceptions about Dunfermline,” he admits. “I’ve got a couple of lads I used to play football with back in the day and they’re, like, ‘Oh, it’s a bit of a dump’ – their words not mine.
“And then you walk into this venue and it’s like a burlesque night kicking off in the middle of the city, it’s brilliant. And it’s massive as well.
“The whole family had come up, so the grandparents get to see the little one, etcetera, etcetera. I phoned my wife, told her this venue is beautiful, proper old school, and she got an Uber from Edinburgh and came to the gig.”
Dundee audiences ‘comedy savvy’ says Iain Stirling
Meanwhile, after selling out Dundee Rep in 2021, its larger Whitehall Theatre comes as uncharted waters, though Iain hopes again for a switched-on audience.
“I found them really comedy savvy,” he says, thinking back to how he closed his show with a callback, a joke connected to one earlier in the set. This example was about a cab leaving with his missus, broadcaster Laura Whitmore, before he got in.
“You could always tell [how smart an audience were]: at what point the applause started, whether it got all the way to the reveal at the end.
“Five or six venues would be, like, ‘I know what’s happening here’ and Dundee was one of the sharper ones. There’s a kind of dry wit which I quite like as well, because that’s my sense of humour.”
Short attention span in social media world
Both crowds should prepare for another night containing more of Iain’s trademark self-deprecating, observational comedy.
His tour’s title alone suggests a guy unsure of his place in the modern world, despite huge long-running success (11 seasons of the hit ITV series and counting).
Iain plumped for Relevant after discussions about the need to market the tour with clips under a minute long to meet supposedly short attention spans.
He says: “The world was just making me feel a bit old, like with social media and technology. Who’s not got a minute-long attention? What is going on?
“Now the show is more about me struggling post-lockdown, getting out and about. I just find being in large groups of people quite stressful now.
In Relevant, Iain also plans to touch on his new role as a family man, adding: “I find it interesting dads get a much easier run of it than mums do. For some weird reason, they’re held on this ridiculously high pedestal, whereas with fathers it’s, ‘Oh, you’ll make mistakes, you’ll drop them a couple of times, don’t worry’.”
Feeling the love for island reality show
Following his tour, reality TV fans will be relieved Love Island and its US counterpart – both of which Iain narrates – are set to return. And he can’t see either series stopping anytime soon, with the recent All Stars format proving another hit.
“People seem to like the idea of having previous contestants come back, which is really nice for me because I’ve done the show for over 10 years now,” he explains.
“It was a lovely trip down memory lane, looking at them all again. Time passes so fast.
“I think its longevity is because it talks about relationships and nothing else, and that is the ultimate gossip people want. The day after the office party, you ask who got off with who, not about the canapés. And the hilarious voiceover, of course.”
Iain is joking here, though he begs the question, what keeps him engaged with the show?
“Just different personalities and different people, though it has changed for me because the first year I did Love Island I was quite literally young enough to be on it,” he laughs.
“Now I look at them and think, ‘Oh, put a cardigan on, you’re going to freeze’.”
Getting to work with wife on podcast is ‘wild’
Perhaps understandably, given the tabloid exposure that Love Island contestants attract, Iain is more reticent about his own relationships, though there is clear chemistry between him and Laura.
You feel this on their shared true-crime podcast Murder They Wrote, available via BBC Sounds – who he thanks for all the professional-looking gear that surrounds him.
Iain is even more grateful for the chance to work with his wife, he admits, with true-crime series a way for them both to wind-down at home.
“It’s really lovely, because we wanted to do a podcast or something together,” he says. “But then you want to keep an element of, for us personally, yourselves to yourselves.
“I wasn’t expecting the sort of response we’ve had. It’s wild, really. And half the time it’s me and Laura getting to spend a few hours together when we should be working. So it’s a win-win.”
Iain Stirling’s Relevant is at Whitehall Theatre, Dundee, on April 4, and the Alhambra, Dunfermline, on April 5. Tickets from Ticketmaster UK.
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