Who Is That Witty Scottish Announcer on Love Island?
Iain Stirling pulls a double shift as the narrator of both Love Island UK and Love Island USA—and during filming, he’s also on a tight schedule.
“At 12 in the afternoon U.K. time, I’d log on to Love Island UK,” the Scottish comedian detailed to TODAY in 2024. “By that point, the show’s all but finished. Then we’d write for two or three hours. Done by about 4, half 4. Then I’d get a child dinner, bath time, bed time—I’d love for it to be more rock ‘n’ roll than that, but that was my life. Then I’d have some food, and then I would log on to Love Island USA at half past 8, which is really early Fiji time.”
Stirling watches a rough cut from home over Zoom, exec producer Parrish explained to The Wrap, and he and the writers are “just observing funny things in the scene, or reminders of what’s happened in the story, that gets recorded…at home on his microphone.”
His narration is added to the episode before the episode is sent to Peacock’s legals and standards team (which does sometimes have notes that require last-minute changes).
“We’d try to finish by about 12 or 1 in the morning, then I’d stay up till half to 3 — which is still not the end of the show for the U.S.,” Stirling told TODAY. “In a dream world, I’d be staying up ‘til like, 5, 6, in the morning, but that would basically involve me never sleeping.”
Proof that the franchise can produce a forever bond: Stirling married former Love Island UK host Laura Whitmore in 2020 and they welcomed a daughter in March 2021.