Narrator Iain Stirling on finding love on Love Island

This Valentine’s Day we have two brand-new Love Island series and two new seasons. And one familiar voice is here to guide us through all four: Iain Stirling. The Scottish ex-law-student-turned-comedian has been Love Island UK’s narrator for 10 years now. He landed the job when the show launched in 2015, after his then-roommate, comedian Phil Wang, convinced him to take on work he’d actually get paid for. 

Iain admitted on a podcast that his friend Ray Bradshaw teased him saying, “I cannae believe you’ve got this when your voice is literally the worst thing about you.” But the fandom disagrees, and Iain’s lighthearted roasting of the contestants’ behaviour, the production in general, and life in the villa, has been part of the Love Island magic and madness for 10 years now. He’s even narrated the American version of the series since Season 4. Consider him the David Attenborough of this bizarre human mating ritual.

Binge the Love Island collection now: Love Island Games Season 1; Love Island: All Stars Season 1; Love Island UK Season 9-11; Love Island USA Season 5-6

How does he do it?

There’s a whole lot of Love Island out there, with each season coming in at an average of 49 episodes. Six days a week during production, Iain uses his special login details to enter the Love Island websites (which he can do anywhere in the world). For the UK version, work starts around 12 pm (noon). He watches through the edited version of the latest episode before thrashing out his script in about three hours, with the help of a couple of writer friends who’ve watched with him – including one of Love Island’s co-creators, Mark Busk-Cowley. He’ll then record what he wants to say and will have wrapped things up around 5:30pm. 

If he’s also working on a Love Island USA season, he then takes a break to eat and sort out tasks and childcare at home, while staying on call for any UK edits, before logging onto the Love Island USA website around 8pm and repeating the process. But he has admitted that it has taken longer to write and record his narration for the American season, as he has to account for phrases that won’t cross the pond successfully, along with the fact that the American version is wordier. He’ll generally have finished recording around midnight to 1am, but only goes to bed around 3am (again, staying on call for any last-minute edits) and then wakes up with his toddler around 7am. 

And he’s revealed that the job gets even harder later in the season, at which point he’s used up every joke he can make about each of the couples, and everyone’s too pie-eyed about each other to be causing any more trouble. 

We have Love Island at home

While Iain is our voice of sanity amidst the cheating, meltdowns, “pash” sessions, and hot tub snogs, at home his refuge from the Love Island madness is his wife, Laura Whitmore, who hosted Love Island UK from 2020 to 2022 (Seasons 6 and 7). And he admits that while they were both working on the show together, they saw each other even less than usual (although they did get to hang out all over the world together).

Love without the Island

Despite both their high-profile Love Island work lives, the two have gone in the opposite direction to the show’s contestants when it comes to their own love life. No big black bobbly microphone necklaces for them. Their courtship happened over DMs, and we’d imagine it involved rather more words, and a lot less eggplant, sweaty face and tongue-out emojis than the normal Love Island cheeky banter.

Laura and Iain first crossed paths at the 2016 British Academy Children's Awards. But Laura revealed on the “JD In the Duffle Bag” podcast that the two just sent messages back and forth for nine months until Laura took the plunge. “When we first met he didn't even hit on me, he was too nervous to hit on me! I think he was intimidated by me. I remember Iain was too scared to ask me out so in the end I had to ask him out. He used to send me random messages, DM me and ask me about my dog,” she says. 

On Doireann Garrihy's Laughs of your Life podcast Laura also revealed that they shared their first kiss (or in her words, shifted) at the gay bar Freedom. Five months into dating they went Instagram-official as a couple by posting a snap together in New York in September 2017. And that year Laura “secretly” (although she later admitted that pretty much everyone must have known) flew out to Spain to visit Iain on the Love Island set in Majorca. 

Iain posted a move-in pic online in December 2018, and a year later, after landing her Love Island gig, Laura jokingly posted on her Instagram, “The Love Island team are the best in the business… including the voice and heart of the show, Iain. He thought he was getting a holiday away from me … not a chance.” They celebrated Iain’s birthday together in South Africa in January 2020, while Iain was working on the first-ever Love Island Winter series, which Laura was hosting.

Unlike many of the Islanders who’re back for the first-ever All Stars season, they took it all the way to the altar. In January 2021, Laura posted an image on her Instagram showing herself and Iain dressed in their finest suits (his black, and hers white) to get married in a tiny lockdown ceremony at Dublin’s City Hall, a few months after they actually tied the knot on 11 November 2020. Their daughter, Stevie Ré, was born in March 2021, and at this point, Laura and Iain have no interest in any new bombshells entering the villa.

Marriage and murder

These days when Laura and Iain aren’t up to their ears in babies, bikinis and beach bodies, they have some more sinister bodies in their sights. Together they host the true crime podcast Murder They Wrote, which they launched on 6 November 2023. As of February 2025, they were up to 60 episodes (which you can find on Spotify and BBC Sounds), and they’ve tackled everything from the Mississippi Legs Murder, to deadly nurse Jolly Jane. 

Iain told Today.com, “The one thing we are both genuinely into is true crime. Then we got offered this true crime podcast and we were like, ‘Well, this is great. We’ll literally just tell each other a true crime story every week.’ When we’re both really busy with work, it’s actually a really nice day in the week where we just actually sit down, and we’re present, and we’ve not got our phones on us, and we just actually talk to one another.”

Now say it with us, “The Islanders are comparing themselves to animals. If I was an animal, I would be a little horse … because if I was a little hoarse, they’d give me the day off.”

Binge the collection now

Love Island Games Season 1: Host Maya Jama puts fan-favourite couples and teams from previous Love Island seasons around the world to the test in Survivor-style games (if Survivor was made for drunk toddlers).

Love Island: All Stars Season 1: We’re back in Love Island UK’s Season 9 Villa in Franschhoek, South Africa, as host Maya Jama invites previous season’s fan-favourite hotties to try fin love again.

Love Island UK Season 9-11: We’re back in the Mallorca villa with host Maya Jama and a cast that’ll have you wondering, “Are these humans, or is AI getting really advanced”?

Love Island USA Season 5-6: Host Ariana Madix welcomes sexy singles to a brand-new villa. Look out for previous seasons’ stars, and Love Island UK’s Maura Higgins hosts the brand-new Aftersun sessions.

Read more here.