Iain Stirling - Not F*cking Ready To Adult

SPENCER OWEN

I’m pretty confident that you weren’t, at the age of 5 or 6 or 10 or 15, saying, ‘I want to be a stand-up because I want to have a big house.’

IAIN STIRLING

I didn’t know it was a thing.

SPENCER OWEN

You wanted to do stand-up.

IAIN STIRLING

But also because of my background I never knew that stand-up was … I mean, I knew there were Billy Connolly and Lee Evans and they were superstars, but I didn’t know you could make a living doing what I do. I did a show in Birmingham, 400 people, sold out the room, and I couldn’t believe it. I’m delighted with that. But if I was selling out the Birmingham Glee on my own tour when I was 22, I’d want to be at Wembley now. You’d drive yourself insane. That’s why I’ve enjoyed it, but I’m glad I’ve done uni and even the kids’ TV thing. It was a bit of fame but it’s not mad.

SPENCER OWEN

Yeah. You also learned the trade in so many ways.

IAIN STIRLING

Yeah. A central London club isn’t letting the guy that talks to a puppet dog in for free to a table with a bottle of vodka, and I’m not getting paid enough money to pay for it myself so I’m not going to those places. But then it comes when I’m 28 and I’m like, ‘Oh, it’s too loud, I want a seat.’

SPENCER OWEN

It’s the same with me. I get a load of plaudits from people, from parents saying they like my channel for their kids or whatever. It’s not that it’s something that deserves praise, it’s just that if I was doing what I do now at 18, I wouldn’t be making those rubbish videos probably, because I made those videos and no one watched them. I didn’t make videos filming a guy committing suicide in a forest, so, as a moral barometer, I’m certainly not at that level of it. But when we’re younger we do make mistakes. And a lot of the other YouTubers have never done anything that bad, but they’ve still made silly videos. I would have done it too. It’s just I never really knew what I wanted to do. Now I have ideas and there’s other things I’d like to go and try to do, but it was only when I was like 23, 24, maybe even 25, and I left full-time employment and deliberately said, ‘Right, I’m going to try and do this.’ Most of the YouTubers aren’t even that age yet. So how can they expect to know these answers? I remember sitting down with my dad when I finished uni, and I actually said to him, ‘What advice can you give me?’

IAIN STIRLING

If I had said that to my daddy he would have crumbled.

SPENCER OWEN

I remember him saying something quite boring – take your time, find what you want to do, don’t rush into anything, don’t rush into getting married, don’t rush into settling down, don’t rush into living in one place or doing one job. Just take your time, which was quite valuable in many ways. So I went and tried things. I did things I didn’t like, I did loads of jobs I didn’t like, some of which were rubbish jobs, some of which were actually good jobs, but I didn’t like them.

IAIN STIRLING

And that’s another problem with this social-media thing. It’s not just footballers or YouTubers, now everyone succeeds so young. You go and watch something like Britain’s Got Talent , and there’s a 17-year-old saying, ‘This is my last shot now.’ What you are talking about? You’re 17. You’ve got a young person’s railcard for another 10 years. You’re fine. The rush to get there almost comes down to that Instagram thing of ‘What’s the point in winning an Oscar when you’re 40 because you won’t even look good in a selfie?’

SPENCER OWEN

I’d much rather win an Oscar at 60.

IAIN STIRLING

Oh, mate.

SPENCER OWEN

Cos if you win it at 20 you’ve been to the moon. Where do you go?

AGE-WISE, WE’RE ALL IN THE ‘SHIT BIT’

In the same way that Spencer had the support of his dad, having a family around me is actually the main thing that has saved me from the fear of growing old and becoming an adult doomed to spend my life sitting on a couch in comfy slippers while struggling to understand technology. I look at my family at their different stages of life and realise that it’s not all bad. The beginning of life is great, we all know. Being properly young, not having a care in the world and more importantly having parents who are literally there to serve you from dawn till dusk. They read books that you tell them to sing to you. Sing! Grown adults have to learn songs and perform them to you like you’re a Roman emperor. A mini Roman emperor who could at any point shit himself.

Parents have a legal obligation to look after you, no matter what you do. That’s mad if you think about it. At the age of three you could just go about sticking marbles up your bum and some fully grown adult would have to say, ‘Well, I guess that’s our day spent sorting out the marble situation, then.’ If I had fully comprehended that notion as a kid I would have stuffed so much stuff up my bum at every possible occasion. ‘It’s pieces of Lego today, Dad. Forget the NHS, I think it’ll be worth going private because this will be happening a lot. And if you do nothing, the courts will get involved!’ For many millennials (particularly myself) this carries on long into your adult life. Well, maybe not the marbles thing – I’ve not done that in months now.

As great as being young is, there is a bit towards the end of life that I properly relish – being properly old, like nearly done, old. I can’t wait to get to the stage when I can go out in public with my family, say something horrific and then just turn to them and say, ‘Well, now that’s your problem.’ Go to the restaurant, scream something politically incorrect, turn to my son and say, ‘You go deal with that and I’ll stay here and finish off my Bolognese … I would probably tip the guy too – I was out of order!’ I love old people like that. Just no one left to impress. No picture that they need to pose for to get likes on Instagram. No boss to answer to. They can do what they like, to who they like, when they like – so long as it doesn’t involve too many stairs.

Despite all this freedom, however, what old people like to do is gardening and when they like to do it is 6 a.m. What is it with old people and getting up early? I know they say the early bird catches the worm but not when that bird has a Zimmer frame. Have a lie-in! What have you got to do that’s so urgent? ‘I need to send a letter.’ A letter? Do it in the afternoon or just don’t send a letter! Text your friend Karen and then press the snooze button. ‘Karen doesn’t know how to work her phone.’ OK, fine. Well, 6 a.m. it is then. Even if they do have an obsession with early rises and mundane tasks, there is still a madness that surrounds all pensioners, and for reasons that I believe become more clear as you read this book, I am so very drawn to it.

My gran was like that. Wonderful woman, all six foot two of her. Now, her height isn’t relevant to the narrative in any way whatsoever, but I think we’ll all agree it’s a lovely visual image to carry through this chapter – a tall, crazy, old, female version of me. Imagine me but taller, with a fetching grey perm – you are all very welcome. She wasn’t tied down by the rules of society; she didn’t have to go to dinner parties and pretend to be fine with the very obvious fact that Colin was getting way too much attention. Fuck you, Colin, you’re only three weeks old and already you’re pissing me off. As a little aside I got my friend to read this paragraph back for me just to see if perhaps me imagining my own gran telling a three-week-old infant to ‘fuck off’ was too harsh, especially given my previous in this area, and my friend simply replied: ‘Who the fuck calls their baby Colin?’