- If you love 'Love Island,' you probably love the voice of Iain Stirling.
- He's hilariously narrated 'Love Island UK' since season one and 'Love Island USA' since season four.
Epic entrances, shock recouplings, explosive fights — when it comes to the antics in the "Love Island" villa, Iain Stirling has seen it all.
Literally: the Scottish comedian has watched every morsel of "Love Island" footage as part of his job as the wisecracking narrator on all 10 seasons of the UK series. In 2022, he began pulling double narration duty, adding "Love Island USA" to his plate (he's back again this summer for season five of "Love Island USA," airing now on Peacock).
As it turns out, there's plenty to learn about human nature from watching thousands of hours of exceptionally symmetrical young singles making out and mugging each other off.
"It's interesting watching someone in their twenties having to recategorize themselves within their peer group," Stirling tells Insider. "As in, they all go in [to "Love Island"] as the good-looking one. And since they were kids at school, they've been the best looking one in their class, the best looking one in their friendship group. Most of them — unless they're from London — most of them are the best looking one in their city."
"And then they come into this villa, and then a couple of them are the good-looking ones. But most of them go — excuse my French — 'What the fuck am I then, if I'm not the good-looking one?'"
It's the classic case of no longer being a big fish in a small pond. Stirling calls Mitchel Taylor, AKA the infamous "Messy Mitch" from season 10 of "Love Island UK," the perfect example.
After the audience voted to couple him up with Molly Marsh on day one, she became a hot commodity in the villa. Mitch was smitten, but soon after, Molly stepped back from their relationship to explore her options, sending Mitch into a tailspin.
"He had this mental breakdown, it's like girls just didn't want to get to know him," Stirling says. "It highlights his flaws of personality, because he was getting away with stuff purely based on the fact that he was good-looking."
Throughout the season, Mitch earned his "messy" moniker for blatantly gossiping about other Islanders, often using the information to curry favor with girls he liked in the villa. It all came crashing down when his gossiping resulted in several fights (not to mention several pies in a brutal game of "Snog, Marry, Pie").
"He's gone for this really interesting journey of discovery where he's like, 'All right, I can't talk about people behind their back and just tell a girl what's happening, I've just got to build trust," Stirling continues.
Not that Mitchel learned that lesson in earnest — he was messy all the way through his final date with Ella Barnes, who learned shortly after the two made it exclusive that Mitch had told the guys he thought she was "fake" the night before.
"It's a good tip if you're ever on a reality show: There's something about talking about someone behind their back when it's filmed that looks really bad," Stirling says.
"So you could say something horrendous to someone's face on telly, and everyone's like, 'Whoa, that's amazing, that's great telly.' But then if you're filmed and they catch you saying, 'I don't really like the way he was acting today,' you look evil, you're really unlikeable."
Somebody, let Mitch know.
"Love Island USA" airs nightly on Peacock at 9 p.m. ET.