Life's a beach
Love Island’s Iain Stirling swaps the pool for the coast as he hosts a new TV contest for building sand sculptures
BBC
- Katelyn Mensah
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He’s best known as the wisecracking narrator of reality series Love Island, but now comedian Iain Stirling is stepping out of the recording booth and on to a Scottish beach for new competition Race against the Tide.
“I’m a dad now,” Stirling tells RT. “Being a dad who does comedy, it’s hard to find things that I’ve been in that my daughter is allowed to watch, without going back to my time on children’s TV where she won’t even recognise me.”
Enter this new family-friendly presenting job for a series set against a gorgeous backdrop on the West Sands Beach in St Andrews. Each episode sees eight teams go head to head in a contest to create sand sculptures. And unlike other TV competitions, the ticking clock isn’t arbitrary – it’s mother nature. Each team (comprising a professional sand sculptor and a complete newbie to the craft) have just six hours to create breathtaking sculptures before the tide comes in to wash everything away.
Iain Stirling.
“Throughout the competition, I was surprised by what the contestants managed to complete within the time frame,” Stirling says. “Even when they had collapses, they still managed to make stuff that blew my mind.”
Thankfully for Stirling, he didn’t have to cast the deciding vote. Instead, at the end of each episode, the judges Sadie Clayton and Jamie Wardley must make the decision to send a pair home. Stirling tells RT he was happy to take “a very backseat role” when it came to feedback.
Some of the impressive sand sculptures made during the competition.
“Sadie’s an artist and sculptor by trade and she’s really interested in the character of the piece and what sort of process they brought to it,” he says. “Jamie is a sand sculptor, so he could tell how technically difficult it was, so we were covering all bases.
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“I just go to say, ‘Great!’ and then deliver the news in a ‘don’t shoot the messenger’ kind of way.”
Authors
Katelyn MensahSenior Entertainment Writer
Katelyn Mensah is the Senior Entertainment Writer for Radio Times, covering all major entertainment programmes, reality TV shows and the latest hard-hitting documentaries. She previously worked at The Tab, with a focus on reality TV and showbiz news and has obtained a BA (Hons) in Journalism.
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