“Why can’t I simply be regular?” laments the comedian and voice of Love Island, Iain Stirling. To which watching followers can solely reply: “However you are. You’re as regular as might be.” Stirling’s present, Failing Upwards, recorded at Alexandra Palace and launched on Amazon Prime Video, finds the Scotsman adopting probably the most regular of thirtysomething standup poses – that of the hapless manchild ill-fitted to maturity, right here redeemed by the love of a accountable and exquisite spouse. Irregular it's not, however the abjection and idiocy of Stirling’s self-portraits, energetically animated, typically elevate a smile.
Failing Upwards is strenuously of-its-moment in its depiction of feckless, emotionally underdeveloped males and competent, caring girls, even when there’s a thread of humblebrag in Stirling’s repeated declare that, in his marriage to TV presenter Laura Whitmore, he’s “punching above his weight”. An indication of the occasions too, maybe, is the extent of Stirling’s neurosis about his supposed chubbiness, which – after yet another routine about his tubby stomach consuming the waistband of his boxer shorts – feels laid on a bit thick.
The present’s backbone is a visit he takes to “scorching yoga”, in a bid to impress his pregnant spouse. Once more, he overdoes the body-horror of this expertise, as he's pressured to make use of a second-hand yoga mat, all “piss fumes and pubic hair”. However there’s deftness in how the anecdote branches out into, and returns from, sub-sketches about girls’s nights out, the impossibility of behaving naturally in entrance of a digital camera and – a standup standby, this one – airport safety.
I can’t say I greeted all his comedian observations with the laughter of recognition: some are hoary generalisations, others (“you'll be able to’t drink espresso in your thirties”) simply overplayed. And the Scottish stereotypes are a bit tiresome. There’s nothing, lastly, to justify Stirling’s normalcy anxiousness – there are Greek monks much less orthodox than this present. However there are sufficient flashes of wit and comedian craft (the outline of his posh yoga instructor; the punchline to his women-on-the-piss act-out) to make sure that, if all of it feels a bit acquainted, that’s no bar to being humorous, too.
Iain Stirling: Failing Upwards is on Amazon Prime
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