Iain Stirling brings his unique look on life and growing up to city theatre

The Bafta-winning comedian and voice of Love Island has been on the nation's TV screens as a contestant on Taskmaster, as well as co-creating and starring in two series of his ITV sitcom Buffering, his hosting of ITV2's comedy entertainment show, CelebAbility and presenting his first stand-up special in 2022.

The 35-year-old Iain, who is married to TV presenter Laura Whitmore, is now getting ready to tour his brand new stand-up show "Relevant" across the country in 2024, including a date at the Alexandra Theatre in Birmingham on March 24.

He said he was looking at social media and its effects on life and also whether he should be looking to grow up and start acting his age.

He said: "It's about the changing landscape and the upswing in social media and my function within that as I feel like everybody lives in this world where we're on social media every single day and while there are nice parts about it, I do think I've reached a point where I think to myself 'what am I doing?'

"I also wonder if this is for me as I do my dances on TikTok with my wife and I really enjoy doing them, but there's the little voice in the back of my head which says 'you're 35!'

"There's that, but I also think that all my shows are just funny storytelling for the last two years of my life, which saw me become a dad and all the ups and downs which came with that.

"I suppose you could look at it as a coming of age piece, but I do worry because that doesn't sound funny and I want people to come and see the show!"

Iain said he'd hit a point in life where he felt everything was going well, but also felt like there was something he could do to mess things up and spoke about a feeling of man trying and failing to come of age.

He said the show reflected on a lot of areas, including parenting and the different bars for being a mum or a dad.

He said: "There's a lot of mature elements to this show as well as I talk about different pressures on dads compared to mums and how tricky it is to be a mum in this modern era of social media, where there's all these pressures to behave in a certain way and all these markers of how good a mum is.

"However, a dad has the bar set much lower and you can get away with things, such as if you get your daughter dressed for nursery, you're treated as this sort of hero that's managed to do a thing.

"As well as that, people will also treat you like you don't know what the hell you're doing and I find I'm getting 'mummy-explained' quite a lot as a lot of people would come to me in the street and help me fold down my daughter's pram or put on a pair of mittens as they assumed that, as a man, I wouldn't know what I was doing, so there's an interesting dynamic to it."

A big part of helping Iain get his bearings as a comedian has been looking at the ways comedy has done and he said he felt there were two ways of doing it.

He said: "You can have a thought in your head and be like Mike Wozniak or Sam Campbell and that thought is something no one else has had and that's what makes you.

"Alternatively, you can be like most comedians and have a thought that makes everyone go 'yes, I've had that thought and that's so true' and I think I fall within the camp of 'here's an observation that we've all been thinking about'

"I have thoughts that everybody has, but sometimes, I can't get my thoughts over the line because things go wrong that mean that I can't do like a normal person would potentially."

Iain's journey to this current stand-up show has seen him work in children's TV alongside Dick and Dom and Hacker T. Dog, as well as take part in possibly one of the most competitive series of Taskmaster in 2019.

He said it was one of the happiest filming experiences of his life, appearing alongside Joe Thomas, Sian Lloyd, Lou Sanders and Paul Sinha, although he admits he did get a bit carried away and competitive at the start of the series.

He said: "I got a bit carried away, but I'm really good friends with those from the comedy circuit and I got to know the others really quickly, so we all got on really well.

"The actual filming of the show is actually done really quickly as you're filming two shows a day and there's 10 shows in a series, so it's actually done in a week and it flies by.

"I was quite competitive and if you watch it, I was for about three or four episodes, which is a day and a half, but then I sort of calmed down a bit and sort of had a time of enjoying myself.

"It was an amazing privilege to do it though and it's probably the only show on television that's as much fun to make as it is to watch."

Iain said he found he was getting recognised more from Taskmaster, but also saw people who recognised his voice from Love Island, as well as seeing who the people were who had SKY and who didn't have SKY growing up.

He also said that his working life could lead to some funny conversations as even his friends would struggle to believe some of the things he'd done in his life.

He said: "I'm at that age now where at my shows, a lot of the people are Taskmaster fans, then I have this group of people in their early 20s who watched me on CBBC, while in their teens, it was Love Island.

"The variety of it is great though and I can always tell the people who didn't have SKY growing up and who didn't see me from CBBC as all the posh kids has SKY and were watching the Cartoon Network.

"I definitely get more recognised for my voice than my face and I've talked about this on stage as I'm more likely to get recognised on the phone than in a restaurant.

"There was a song that Dick and Dom did for me when I was on Taskmaster and that got me the sitcom as I'd go to the pub and tell my mates I'd dressed up as part of the cast of Scooby Doo for CBBC and they'd look at me and tell me my life was wild, so I've found it hard to have serious conversations with them as I've done some crazy things."

Looking ahead to coming to the West Midlands and performing at Birmingham, Iain said he had a big relationship with the city as it was the first city where he had a full weekend gig and had also realised how close it was to where he lived during an important moment in Scotland's recent history.

He said: "I genuinely love playing Birmingham as the Glee Club was the first club which paid me for a full weekend and I was there during the Scottish Referendum in 2014 and I remember going up on the Friday and, at the time, I only knew Scotland and London and nowhere else.

"The referendum result was coming out on a Saturday and I thought that I was going to be in a hotel room on my own for the result, but people then told me that Birmingham wasn't far from home and I could literally get on a train and go home for the evening and come back.

"Birmingham was where I did my first double-header on a tour and was the first big date post-Love Island and I ended up doing three nights at a lovely theatre there, which was the first time I'd added extra dates outside of Scotland, so I've always had lovely audiences and always enjoyed my time there."

Ahead of appearing at Alexandra Theatre in Birmingham, Iain said that anyone who didn't know his work could expect to have a night of fun with a show he had spent a lot of time perfecting.

He said: "I think people can expect a funny show full of storytelling, which comes from gigging for 15 years and knowing what I'm doing.

"It's just a show that I've spent a lot of time on and I really do care about stand-up as it was my first love and it's my job and I think the show I have is funny, full of observational storytelling and just something that people will enjoy."

Iain Stirling plays the Alexandra Theatre as part of his "Relevant" tour on March 24.

To find out more and to get tickets, go to atgtickets.com/shows/iain-stirling-relevant/the-alexandra-theatre-birmingham/