The Scottish heart of TV’s Love Island

The night before we speak the controversy over whether Georgia kissed Jack, or Jack kissed Georgia, was still reverberating. It still rages even now on social media. Some fans believe that there are actually, out there, two different takes of the same act, as if it were repeated and filmed twice – and are outraged at the possible fakery. Fans, too, are still fuming over the fact that Dani Dyer was shown footage of her boyfriend Jack Fincham in another villa, as he discovered his ex-girlfriend was also there. The question on many lips is, ‘Is Love Island becoming too manipulative?’

This is the world of Love Island and its fandom, and its one which Stirling plays to. Indeed, it has long seemed like the voice of that fan. He also comes across, increasingly in this series like the show’s god-like puppet master and chief manipulator, the one who sends trouble-making texts into the villa, with the words, “I thought it would be a nice little treat to let the girls watch the show. Enjoy!”

He emphasises, however, that he is not actually in control. It’s all a joke. “That’s a new twist. That’s been new to this show where I’ve almost become the voiceover and I’ve self-proclaimed myself as the puppet master now as well. The reason we did that really was that there were more jokes to be had if you’re in control of it all. It widened the net. More potential for gags. That is the only reason we did it. But it is funny when people go, ‘Why? Why? Why did you send that text that upset Dani?’ They really think it’s me.”

The comedian is in Majorca for the full two-month stint that is Love Island this year –one which has seen the continued rise of the show, against the backdrop of Brexit chaos and uncertainty. But this year's Love Island hasn’t been without its own controversies and shadows. Among them has been the sad death of former contestant, Sophie Gradon, and her boyfriend. As tribute to Gradon, Stirling shared his favourite moment from her time on Love Island, a speech she made in which she declared, “Life shouldn’t be about judging one another.”

Stirling, who is Edinburgh raised, went to Liberton High school, and is a law graduate of Edinburgh University, grew up in a family that revolved around law - his mother, Alison, did research for Edinburgh Law Society, and father Roger, worked in a law firm – but, as a teenager was lured by the heady delights of The Oxford Revue and The Durham Revue, towards comedy and the Edinburgh fringe.

In the early days of the show, he was unknown to most viewers, except those who had happened to see his previous work on the television circuit or children’s television. People listening to him developed their own ideas about what he was like. Some seemed to think he was actually David Tennant. Others, he has said, assumed he was “a fat, 40-year-old father-of-three”. According to one online poll quite a lot of people used to think he was gay – perhaps wishful thinking in a show that seems to be relentlessly driven by heteronormative ideals .

Stirling, however, is in a yearlong, loved-up relationship with fellow reality television presenter Laura Whitmore, and, as the years go on, looking increasingly less like a lonesome, sweaty comedian, and more like a buff and tanned contestant from Love Island. Recent photographs of him caught kissing Whitmore at Wimbledon, shirt half-unbuttoned, testify to this. “It was our anniversary,” he says, of their public smooch. “So if you can’t be happy on your anniversary, I don’t know when you can be. I snuck back from Majorca – obviously quite badly since I ended up in the papers. I went and watched Nadal playing. I love Wimbledon. My dad used to be an umpire at Wimbledon you see.”

When he is doing the voiceover, he has, he says, a character in mind. “This man has never left the booth. He’s in there all the time. And when the show finishes he just waits in the booth for the show to come back. He’s gone a little bit crazy.”

Stirling, it’s been widely, documented didn’t really want to do the Love Island job in the first place. “I started to realise how great it was, when, after I’d done Series One, the woman that runs the Latitude festival, who is lovely, phoned me up to book me for Latitude because she loved Love Island. When that happened, I was like what the hell is going on?”

At 30 years old, the comedian is gradually positioning himself, not only as the voice of Love Island, but of his generation. Come August, following the series final, he will not only be taking a show, Iain (Stirling) Does Jokes (With Pals) to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, but publishing a book, titled Not Ready To Adult Yet, prior to re-hitting the road with his stand up tour, U Ok Hun?. Not Ready To Adut Yet is partly a tale of the multifarious ways in which he himself has messed up and failed to cope, but also a commentary on why Millennials are struggling to grow up.

Of course, the trend towards resisting adulthood is nothing new - research has suggested that over the last half century, generation after generation has been delaying the transition further. But, says Stirling, “The difference is, for the Millennials, we also had this social media in which everyone else would lie to you and say, ‘No, no I absolutely get it I’m fine, I’m smashing.’ That’s the fundamental difference.’”.

Accompanying the book is a series of podcast interviews. One of them is a recording of a chat he had with his mum. Entertainingly, she starts off the conversation by observing that she’s very happy to do the interview because it means having a chat with him while he doesn’t have a phone in his hand. As a result of writing the book, he says, he has made some changes in his life. “I use my phone a lot less now since I’ve written it.”

Writing a book has also left him feeling more adult. “I feel adult when I make spaghetti bolognese. So writing a book, makes me feel pretty adult. It’s hard to do. It’s so many words.”

One of the perplexing things about the popularity of Love Island, is that, here is a show steeped in traditional gender stereotypes, and in which it feels like the LGBT movement never happened and feminism is asking a girl asking a boy for a date, yet the supposedly “woke” generation is tuning into it in their droves .

How does Stirling explain its popularity? “It’s about relationships. We talk about relationships essentially throughout the entire programme and there’s very little deviation from that – and relationships are the one thing that everyone wants to gossip about most of the time. It’s like Love Island went, 'Do you want to know about that stuff? Well, here’s a show that’s an hour of it every day.'”

What Stirling says he is most interested in, about the contestants, is their “journey”. Among those he says he is enjoying following most this year, he says, is the Scot, Laura Anderson. “To start with people struggled to warm to her. She does this thing that it’s a real Scottish girl thing you get in mid to late twenties girls that grew up with that sort of Clueless, almost American accent – it’s that vocal wobble at the end of her words.”

Anderson, however, has gone through a double whammy of two break-ups, each of which involved a hint of betrayal by the man she is with, and at point of writing, is so down she has said, “I have no ego.” “That’s why,” Stirling says, “this show is so amazing because there’s nothing more beautiful than watching someone go through the break up process. You watch them go through heartbreak, as Laura has, then pull themselves together and find someone new and then do the exact same thing all over again, and you just want to go and give that person a great big hug. This is why Love Island is so brilliant, because it makes us human in a sort of weird way. ”

Love Island 2018: The Big Stories

Dani Dyer and and Jack Fincham. They’ve been the villa’s sweethearts right from the start, no matter what the producers put in their way, and the one big question everyone is asking is not whether they’ll break up, but it they’ll get engaged before the show is up.

That Georgia Steel and Jack Fowler kiss. Who kissed who? You wouldn’t want to have this out in court, because it seems like everyone who has seen the footage has a different idea about who made the lunge. When Idris told Laura that it was Jack who went in for the kill, Ofcom received 600 complaints from those who thought this plainly wasn’t true. It doesn’t help that it looks suspiciously like there are two different sets of footage – begging the question, ‘Is any of it for real?’ Where’s VAR when you need it?

The death of Sophie Gradon. One of the stars of Series Two, Gradon was found dead several weeks ago, reportedly having taken her own life. Speculation followed on the pressures of being a reality television star. Former Big Brother contestant, Sallie Axl, for instance, observed that reality television causes a “black cloud of pressure” to maintain fame. There have also been calls from former Love Islanders, for more aftercare.

Gaslighting grumbles. Was Adam Collard gaslighting Rosie Williams when he started ignoring her on the show and blaming her for the rift? Certainly, Women’s Aid saw "clear warning signs" of such unhealthy behaviour, and used it as a hook to explain the pattern to the show's audience.

The shock mass departure. Wasn't it emotional? First David Davis, then Steve Baker, then Boris Johnson. Oops, sorry. That was Brexiteer Island, not Love Island. Don't know if you saw it? Too busy watching Love Island, probably.