Ahead of Iain Stirling’s appearance at Komedia in April, URB’s Tom Day and Josh McGeary had the chance to sit down with the comic and Love Island narrator to talk about his time at university, modern technology, fatherhood, and not knowing quite how famous The Sidemen really are.
Ahead of Iain Stirling’s appearance at Komedia in April, URB’s Tom Day and Josh McGeary had the chance to sit down with the comic and Love Island narrator to talk about his time at university, modern technology, fatherhood, and not knowing quite how famous The Sidemen really are.
JM: Thank you so much for taking the time to join us, Iain; we really appreciate it. Obviously, we are a uni radio station and we would love to know what your uni life was like. Did you do more comedy than studying?
IS: Bit of context here… I did a lot of drinking. As a millennial, that was encouraged back then. There was no TikTok account about what alcohol does to your sleep and all that. So there was a lot of drinking, and gigging because I did comedy at uni, and then I did some studying – the bare minimum really, to pass my degree. Although it was a law degree so, when I say bare minimum, it was still more than I would’ve liked. But also, I went to Scottish uni in the early noughties so it was also free.
TD: Making me jealous! Do you have any memories of freshers’ week in the noughties?
IS: I do actually! Well, I’m from Edinburgh so I did a thing where I had, like, a pre-freshers week where everyone from Edinburgh that was staying at home got together. No one from my family went to uni so I thought you could just rock up on day one of freshers’ week and make friends, but I didn’t realise all the people from the different halls and stuff all go in big groups. Once you’re at the event, it’s quite hard to make friends so I made friends with all these local Edinburgh lads that are still my best mates to this day. I don’t know if you guys had this, this was sort of pointless; we had a back-to-school party where we all dressed up in school uniform but we were all 17/18 so we just looked like school kids. It’s not like when you’re in your mid-20s and back-to-school has this sort of irony about it. I was just in the school uniform I’d been wearing, like, a month earlier.
TD: We had a toga night at ours didn’t we?
JM: Of course, it was essentially just wrap a bedsheet around yourself.
IS: Oh, but then no one has any money at uni so it’s perfect. It’s Halloween – wear a bedsheet and cut some holes in it and you’re a ghost. Everything’s a duvet if you stretch it far enough. We had The Body Rockers. They’ve got that song, “I Like the Way You Move”. They played that song about 5 times and then got booed every time they played something that wasn’t that song.
JM: We are interested in the student comedy that you did. Do you think you’d have found your way to the same place you are now, even the same career, without those opportunities at uni? How important do you think those things are?
IS: Absolutely not – they’re vital, absolutely vital. It’s why the arts are so vital because it’s amazing for social mobility as well. The school I went to had no theatre; as in, there were no classes and there was no theatre. We had a gym hall that was also our lunch hall. There was a bit of music and that was it. So when I went to uni, I met middle-class people and they all talked about “extracurricular activities” and that sort of thing and I’d go in my old football tops to improv comedy nights and I just fell in love with it. I couldn’t believe there was a world of theatre that felt like it was for me. I always grew up thinking theatre was this really posh and inaccessible thing and then I discovered improv comedy and stand-up and scratch theatre and stuff like that and I was, like, “Oh yeah, there’s loads of cool shit you can do and it’s not just for posh people”. Radio as well! My friend Steve, who’s my tour support, did student radio. He was on uni radio with a little-known man called Greg James, who’s now gone on to do amazing things. We wouldn’t have known about any of that if it weren’t for the people we met along the way. You need to go to stuff like that and meet the people you get along best with, and then just stay attached to them and push each other and be creative.
JM: So what were your first experiences of that? Did you start with stand-up or improv?
IS: I started with improv because the thought of doing stand-up on my own was so scary. Again, in freshers week, they had this midnight improv thing so we all got hammered and went to that and thought it was great. Then I went to uni in Norway for a year and, because I was by myself, I just wrote stand-up. I couldn’t go to improv because my Norwegian wasn’t good enough. I went to some Norwegian improv, and it was fun, but I couldn’t do it. Then, when I came back, I did Chortle Student Comedian Of The Year and I came second, and from there I got an agent, and yada yada yada…
TD: Sticking with that comedy theme then, you’ve got your show in Bath coming up in April and I’m sure you’re busy writing all the jokes for that. Josh and I, we love a good joke but our ratio is probably about 40:60 for land to don’t-land.
IS: That’s where I’m at!
TD: How does the writing process work for you? Is it that something funny happens in the supermarket and you’re getting your notebook out, or is it just you sitting down at a desk and working on it?
IS: Now it’s more the notes app on my iPhone; just another excuse to stare at a supercomputer while it hacks your brain and buys your attention. I used to write all the time – like I’d go to a café and write long-form – but in the last 5 or 6 years I’ve not written a single thing down. I’m in a position now where I’m quite fortunate; I’ll put out on my mailing list that I’m doing a work-in-progress thing, and I charge everyone like a couple of quid to get in, and I’ll just chat for an hour and record it. Then I listen to it back and see what works and what doesn’t. Being on stage and looking at people, your brain goes into this extra gear and it’s like there’s a rhythm to it. Even when I write, I write with someone else just because it feels like I’m doing the stand-up at them so that, again, I can get into that flow. The thought of sitting on my own with a laptop now is mad.
TD: Is there a constant flow of ideas?
IS: No, it always changes, man. It gets better and it gets worse, and maybe you find a rich vein of form, and stuff that isn’t, but it never goes away. You’ve got to have external things to talk about. You run out of stuff that’s like, “Oh, I’m from Scotland” or, “I saw this thing on a bus” and you have to look in, and that’s where it gets harder. It becomes like therapy; you talk about your thoughts, desires and opinions and they never run out, really.
JM: What can we expect from the show that’s coming up in Bath?
IS: What do I talk about? I mean, I’ve been touring it for about a year so it’s getting pretty tight now. I really like it. I talk about Gen Z a lot in the show. I find it really fascinating – every other generation up to you guys, there’s never really been a political split between the genders but it’s starting to happen a little bit. It’s an interesting thing. Generally speaking, girls are more liberal, and then there’s this kind of subset of boys that have maybe watched a few too many Jordan Peterson videos. I like the idea that there are Gen Z guys that have got those weird off-opinions but they’ve still got the curly fringe haircuts. I like that someone can be right-wing and perm their hair. They’ve literally become like your grandparents – it’s mad.
JM: And what’s touring like? How is it being away? Are you away for long periods?
IS: Yeah, I try not to go away for too long now. It is an old man response but I like my house and stuff now. I’m lucky that I’m on tour with my friend Joe, who did the tech for my first-ever Edinburgh show, like, 12 years ago. Me and Steve have been friends all through stand-up, so I’ve got two of my best friends with me. We have the occasional night out – we’ll still do it every now and again. I like it because I’m with my friends and so we’ll go to a hotel and I get to chill with my mates because, obviously, with work and family and all that, I don’t get to hang out with my mates as much as I used to. It’s that mad fact that by the age of 25, you’ve spent 90% of all the time you’re going to spend with your friends. So when you’re spending time with your friends when you’re younger, you should maximize that because it becomes a once-every-three-month thing.
JM: We’re getting advice too!
IS: Listen, I’m full of wisdom. That’s what this show is – it’s not even stand-up; it’s just a really fucking boring Ted talk.
TD: When Josh and I were talking about what to ask you, he was saying he watched a lot of CBBC growing up. I kind of grew up in a household where it was Pointless on every evening before the Chase, and then a bit of house hunting in Mallorca.
IS: What were your parents doing to you?!
TD: I ask that question a lot! In terms of the children’s TV, do you think you had a good time with it, and do you get people our age coming up to you in the street and going, “Oh you’re that guy who was mates with Hacker the dog”?
IS: Yeah, I think in the last two tours I talk about Love Island and people are sort of like, “Oh yeah we get it, you do that,” but then I talk about children’s TV and people get mad excited. It is folk in their early- to mid-20s as well, which makes me feel mad old, but it is like 12 years since I stopped doing it. But then I’ll be at a music festival and some kid who’s … you know …
JM: Indulged?
IS: They’ve indulged! And they’ll be like, “Oh my God man, you’ve changed so much.” And I’ll be like, “Yeah but, also, you were a kid and now you’re rolling about on the floor in the middle of a field dressed as a leopard, so we’ve all changed a little bit haven’t we?” But it was really nice and I loved doing that kids’ TV stuff. I find it weird because it was live TV and it was never recorded, so it doesn’t exist anywhere, but people still remember it.
JM: Yeah, and people talk about Hacker The Dog but I loved The Dog Ate My Homework. I’d watch that every night it was on and even sit with my parents and watch it!
TD: He’s reminiscing!
IS: Yeah, that’s genuinely the one show … obviously you get busy, and I just had to stop doing that because I had other stuff on, but I really wish I’d kept doing that because it was so much fun. Now that I’m older and I’ve got kids, I’d have loved that still to be going on because it’s like Have I Got News for You but for kids, so I’m gutted I stopped doing that. I’d love to bring it back maybe at some point.
JM: I’d love that!
IS: Let’s start a petition on change.org!
TD: Looking at what else you’ve done, you seem to get everywhere: Taskmaster, Celebrity Gogglebox … what’s been your favourite?
IS: It’s funny you mention those two because they’re the most fun ones. Celebrity Gogglebox is fun because you literally just get given beer and pizza and told to watch TV, and then they leave at the end of the day and pay you. It’s amazing! But genuinely, the only show on TV which is as fun to make as it is to watch is Taskmaster. Obviously telly – what an honour to do it but it’s usually quite laborious and hard to make. The team at Taskmaster is so nice, and I think they deliberately set it up to make it as user-friendly as possible for the contestants so they have a good time. The only shit thing about Taskmaster is you know when it’s finished you can’t do it again because it’s a one-series deal. The main reason I wanted to win my series of Taskmaster was so I got to go back and do more.
JM: And if there was something else you could do now if you had free reign of you getting booked on any TV show, what would you want?
IS: You know what? Genuinely, I know we’ve just talked about it, but I’d love to bring The Dog Ate My Homework back – I’d love to do that again. And the one that got away was Mock The Week – that and Live At The Apollo was what I watched as a kid to find my comedians – but I never did Mock The Week. Not once. I’m gutted about that because it’s gone now.
TD: With all these different shows – obviously you talked about how you can get recognised from your kids’ TV experience – but what’s the one where people come up to you and go “Oh, I know you from such-and-such”?
IS: My voice is more recognisable than my head. Do you know what? I did that Roast Of The Sidemen – I did a Sidemen video. I know those lads through lockdown – we played Among Us and stuff – but I didn’t know how massive they were. Then, about two days before I did that roast, I clicked on the previous roast to see what the vibe was and it had got like 40 million views and I thought, “Oh shit!” So I got a few mates together and wrote some jokes. The week after that, I couldn’t believe how many people came up to me and were like, “Oh my God, what does KSI smell like?” or whatever it was they asked.
JM: So that’s online and I know, when CBBC moved online, you said you were devastated. What do you think the future of all this stuff is? Can you see telly continuing to dominate our media consumption?
IS: Well I don’t think it does anymore. I think the internet has massively overtaken TV in terms of attention. Again, I’m going to sound like such an old man. Let people know I’m wearing a cool jumper at this point!
[Iain was dressed in a black hoodie with multicoloured slashes down the right arm and sporting a beanie]
IS: I think for children, it’s mad that there is so much kids’ content on YouTube and stuff and it’s not policed properly. Even if it’s an appropriate level, they’re still using an algorithm to get people addicted. Endless feeds and alerts and all this; all that should be taken out of kids’ media. I think your generation understands the dangers of this a bit more so you might be more inclined, if you have kids, to say “Actually, we’re going to watch telly”. You’ll have them watching bloody University Challenge after what your parents were doing!
TD: I’m on it next week.
IS: Are you actually?
TD: No, I’m joking.
IS: I’d love to see a renaissance in kids’ TV. When CBBC went online, I totally got it because that’s where all the kids were but now, I know the risks, I think kids’ TV needs to be back on television. I think parents would navigate to it because it would be safer. When I worked at the BBC we had these pillars of “you’ve got to educate, you’ve got to inform” so I’d like to see more of that. I mean the internet’s taken everything, hasn’t it? It’s taken our attention, it’s taken all the best creators. It still blows my mind: people who make amazing TikToks – you’re making this stuff for a billion-dollar company and you’re making it for free! It’s mad. But yes, I’d love to see kids’ telly back on TV.
JM: If it’s alright, just to finish off, we’ve got some quickfire questions.
IS: Yes! Let’s do it.
TD: Is Laura Whitmore funnier than you?
IS: Yes.
JM: Does the sound of your voice on the telly get on your nerves?
IS: Yes
TD: Which is harder: narrating Love Island or fatherhood?
IS: [pause] Yes!
JM: If every time you made a joke that fell flat, Liverpool lost a player from their first team, would you continue as a stand-up?
IS: Yes, and I wouldn’t tell a bad joke ever, and Mo Salah would sign a new contract, and we’d win the league!
TD: Were you robbed by Joe Lycett in the Chortle Student Comedian of the Year?
IS: Yes!
JM: If you had to swap lives with any other stand-up or TV personality, who would it be?
IS: Oh great question! Shane Gillis.
TD: At what age did you have your first Irn Bru?
IS: In the womb!
JM: Would you rather go back to being a student or a children’s TV presenter?
IS: Oh 100% student. I had 9 am work calls when I was on kid’s TV!
TD: Could you take more babies in a fight than Josh and me?
IS: Oh, absolutely! I could take more babies, and you and Josh!
JM: Trapped in a lift with one other person, who would you want it to be?
IS: Oh, it’s another good question. Andy Robertson.
TD: And finally, who was your top Spotify-wrapped artist of the year?
IS: Oh my God, this is … it was StreamBeats because I stream on Twitch so I need copyright-free music! And then I think the second was Frozen because I’ve got a little girl. And then Michael Aldag. He’s a new artist from Liverpool and he’s very good.
TD: Iain, thank you so much for your time; you’ve been amazing. You’ve been very funny as well.
IS: Cheers lads!