Iain Stirling reveals which jokes he’s not allowed to make on the Love Island voiceover

Without Iain Stirling’s constant snarky narration, Love Island would basically just be a bikini fashion show. Apparently when Iain Stirling first started doing the voiceover for Love Island, ITV was strict about what jokes he was allowed to make. But as the show’s gone on, the rules have changed. He has to be really cautious about how rude he is about the Islanders.

Iain Stirling told The Tab: “When I first started doing Love Island like, ten years ago, I was a new comedian. So I wanted to go in with both barrels. And it was Mark who I write with was like, ‘No, you can’t really do that. You can’t really make fun of them.’ For the simple reason that if you do that, you’ve got nowhere you can go from there, because you’ve to come back bigger and better every year. So the only option you’d have is to be nasty, which is a very slippery slope.”

Instead, Iain Stirling tries to adopt a persona which teases the Islanders instead of flat-out insulting them.

“We’ve always tried to be a bit more cerebral. The voiceover guy on Love Island loves these people and he admire them. And he’s secretly probably quite jealous that they’re so socially capable. He’s like the bullied kid that’s getting his revenge with the jokes.”

Plenty of comedic material here
(Image via ITV)

ITV did used to complain when Iain Stirling made jokes about the format of the show or the set. But in more recent seasons, ITV have relaxed their rules about this.

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“Certainly at the start, when we used to make jokes about how bad certain parts of the show were, ITV were funny about it. But now they sort of embrace that. I think that’s one of the real big accents of the show. One of the things that makes it, is it’s willing to make fun of itself.

“You can only really make fun of something for being bad if it’s sort of good. Otherwise, you’re just saying a bad thing’s bad, which is criticism, not a joke.”

He was “really happy” he was allowed to make a joke about the All Stars bombshell Danielle being, er,  somewhat obscure. When she arrived in the villa, he said, “I work on this show and I had to Google her!”

Iain is “sure she’d get it” if she ever watched that episode back. He wouldn’t make a joke he reckons an Islander would be too offended by. Although he worries some of his stand-up comedy shows from 10 years ago might now have aged great, he’s “overall pretty happy” with the vintage Love Island voiceovers.

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Featured image of Love Island via ITV. Featured image of Iain Stirling by George on a Boat.