Copyright

HarperCollinsPublishers

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First published by HarperCollins 2018

This edition published 2019

© Iain Stirling 2018

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2018

Cover photograph © Jay Brooks 2018

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

Iain Stirling asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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Source ISBN: 9780008288006

Ebook Edition © May 2019 ISBN: 9780008288020

Version: 2019-05-22

Dedication

To my mum Alison, my dad Rodger and my sister Kirsten. This book isn’t for you, it’s because of you. I love you.

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

WHAT IT MEANS TO BE AN ADULT

INTRODUCTION

I ONCE TOLD AN EIGHT-YEAR-OLD TO GO FUCK HIMSELF

CHAPTER 1

BAD PARENTING

Mollycoddled

CHAPTER 2

SCHOOLED

‘The Best Days of Your Life …’

CHAPTER 3

LIFE ON THE SMALL SCREEN

The Years BW (Before Wi-fi )

CHAPTER 4

U OK HUN?

The Power of Love … Island

CHAPTER 5

THE GRASS IS ALWAYS GREENER

We’re All Fake Happy

CHAPTER 6

NINE TILL FIVE …

What a Way to Make a Living (Apparently)

CHAPTER 7

SNOWFLAKES

A Generation that Likes to (Political) Party Hard

CHAPTER 8

FEAR OF FAILURE

Here Comes the Science Bit …

CONCLUSION

THE INSPIRATIONAL SPEECH MOMENT

A TREAT FOR THOSE WHO’VE SKIPPED TO THE BACK

‘The Millennial Circle’

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

About the Publisher

adulting

NOUN

informal

The practice of behaving in a way characteristic of a responsible adult, especially the accomplishment of mundane but necessary tasks.

However, the entire time you are carrying out said tasks you are uncomfortably aware that you have no idea what the hell you are doing, you will fuck it up and eventually be found out.

‘Fucking hell, this adulting is IMPOSSIBLE. How do I explain to my boss that I’m late for work because I dropped my phone in the toilet while watching a YouTube video and taking a shit?’

WHAT IT MEANS TO BE AN ADULT

I’m constantly told by my parents, friends and my birth certificate that I’m an adult now, but what does that even mean? And why does it seem to be so insanely difficult? Following some in-depth research/googling I have ascertained that, generally speaking, the idea of being an adult is split into two camps, that of the ‘responsible adult’ and the ‘irresponsible adult’. These two definitions are as follows.

Responsible adult: taking on the new-found responsibilities that come with being a grown-up, such as getting a job, buying a house and having children.

Irresponsible adult: now the restrictions of childhood have been removed you can do or act however you want. For example, staying up as late as you like, drinking alcohol, spending your money as you choose.

Whether ‘responsible’ or ‘irresponsible’, these actions carry with them that bizarre feeling of, ‘Wow, I’m being such an adult right now.’ I’ve listed a few of my favourite such moments that make you feel like a grown-up here:

 COOKING MEALS FROM SCRATCH

 GOING ON HOLIDAY WITHOUT YOUR PARENTS

 DRIVING, PARTICULARLY DURING A TRICKY PARALLEL PARK

 FIRST TIME YOU GO INTO YOUR OVERDRAFT (LOSES ITS ALLURE QUICKLY)

 REALISING YOU CAN EAT OUT EVEN IF IT ISN’T A SPECIAL OCCASION

 BEING IN THE SUPERMARKET AND REALISING YOU CAN BUY WHATEVER YOU LIKE

 DEFROSTING A FREEZER

 DRIVING THROUGH A CITY CENTRE AND BEING ABLE TO CONFIDENTLY STATE, ‘THAT USED TO BE A BLOCKBUSTERS’

 LIKING COLDPLAY

 BEING ABLE TO LEGALLY RENT A VAN

 BEING TOLD TO TURN THE VOLUME DOWN BY YOUR NEIGHBOURS RATHER THAN YOUR PARENTS

 IRONING YOUR FIRST SHIRT

 HAVING A NIGHT OUT THAT DOESN’T INVOLVE PRE-DRINKING

 THE FIRST TIME YOU REALISE YOU LIKE OLIVES

 HAVING A COFFEE INSTEAD OF A DESSERT

 HELPING YOUR PARENTS PICK UP SOMETHING THAT’S HEAVY

 WHEN YOU’RE HUNGRY AND WAITING FOR SOMEONE TO COOK YOU DINNER THEN REALISE THAT SOMEONE IS YOU

 MAKING PEOPLE TAKE THEIR SHOES OFF BEFORE COMING INTO YOUR HOUSE

 WHEN BANK HOLIDAYS BECOME A CHANCE TO CARRY OUT CHORES, NOT NURSE HANGOVERS

INTRODUCTION

I ONCE TOLD AN EIGHT-YEAR-OLD TO GO FUCK HIMSELF

A few years ago now I told an eight-year-old to go fuck himself. That moment was unintentional and clearly unfortunate, but it would go on to help me haul myself from a malaise I had found myself in for a number of years. Like many of life’s significant events, I was worryingly unaware of its importance, as is the case with the majority of life-changing moments: applying for a job, meeting the person who goes on to be your significant other or even buying that leather jacket that remains, to this day, a real staple in your wardrobe. It was just another moment like all the others; in fact, minutes before, I was sitting backstage at yet another gig, readying myself to perform to a new group of strangers like I do every night of the week.

What was it then about that particular night that sticks so solidly in my psyche like an annoying bit of apple skin between teeth? The fact I swore in a child’s face certainly adds to the level of permanence afforded to that particular memory, but it’s not just the extreme embarrassment of the situation. Only last year I walked into a hotel room where a businessman was taking a shit, where I told him my full name and then left. Although that incident still haunts me today – and I’m assuming that businessman – it is this particular gig that always comes to me in my moments of solitude. In the shower, just before I go to bed, when I’m on a train with only a podcast and my own thoughts to keep me company. Boom! There it is. That little voice hidden in the depths of my mind pops in to quickly remind me of that evening.

‘Hello, Iain. Remember that time you told an eight-year-old to go fuck himself? You do? Oh good. Well, have a nice night.’

I certainly could have been in a better place, being recently single, technically speaking ‘out of work’ (though financially buoyant) and, most crucially, unfulfilled. That’s the big one. You ever felt like that? Even though on the face of it life is good – your work is tolerable, bordering on enjoyable, your social life is filled with interesting and entertaining friends, and your family are as supportive and loving as ever – for some reason there is that niggling feeling deep down in the depths of your soul that something’s not quite right, something’s missing. You feel like a selfish prick for even entertaining it; you have everything you’ve ever needed and so many people have made so many sacrifices so that you could have it, but ‘it’ isn’t enough and you can’t for the life of you work out why.

What the fuck even is ‘it’ and why can’t I just have ‘it’? ‘It’ is like The X Factor of life satisfaction, but none of us seem to have the Simon Cowell-esque ability to identify it correctly; it always seems to narrowly pass us by. There is nothing you can do to help identify it more clearly – literally nothing. I even spent a month with my shirt unbuttoned offensively low and my trousers pulled embarrassingly high. It didn’t help – I just got funny looks.

For years I was told by friends, family, school teachers, colleges and even social media that I was special and destined for great things. I’m fully aware that’s not unique to me, by the way. I’m sure you too have been awarded certificates at school and told how beautiful you are in Facebook comments, as we live in a world where praise is constantly heaped onto everyone. Despite this wall of positive encouragement, however, in the specific moment I swore at an eight-year-old, I just felt like another cog in the machine, another Starbucks-drinking, McDonald’s-munching face in the crowd.

To some of you this lack of fulfilment will resonate; to others, however, it will sound ungrateful, an odd note on which to start a book. I’m fully aware that many of you will be reading this on your holidays: you’ve found a sun lounger, bought your fruity cocktail, taken the obligatory photo of your legs with the ocean as their beautiful backdrop and posted it online with the sole intention of mocking your friends who are currently dragging their sorry asses into the office for another torturous Monday. You’ve then opened this book and thought, ‘Fuck me, this Love Island prick’s a bit down in the dumps.’ Fear ye not, my ITV2-loving amigos, for this book is about optimism and ‘living your best life’, as is famously said by tedious people on Twitter – and now me, apparently. Not to mention the story of me telling that eight-year-old to go fuck himself is in fact a bloody doozy – so there is plenty to look forward to!

WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?

Despite heavy reliance on my own personal experience – I mean, ‘myself’ is what I know best, the only thing I can truly call myself ‘an expert’ in – this book will not be an autobiographical romp through my life to date. I’ve not done enough stuff yet. You gotta think word count. I would really have to drag out that time I went caravanning with Pam and Bill in order to achieve anything other than pamphlet status. And no one wants to hear about that holiday. A boy called Craig chopped a wasp in half but otherwise it was largely uneventful.

Instead I’ll talk about my generation – millennials. They’ve got loads of stories. They’ll know loads of Craigs. Craigs who’ll have done things other than demonstrate serial-killer tendencies during a long weekend in Moffat. The millennial was born between roughly 1981 and 2002, basically (although not exclusively) old enough to remember what they were up to during 9/11 but too old to grasp the notion of watching young lads with mad fringes playing the computer game Minecraft on YouTube. It’s a generation famed – should the copious BuzzFeed articles be believed – for failing to grow up, never being able to properly ‘adult’.

That’s me, I’m like that, but why are we all perceived this way? If that’s also you then strap in. If it’s not then don’t you worry your non-millennial head. Most of the stuff I’m going to talk about here is universal and hopefully funny regardless of the digits you have etched onto your birth certificate. As well as talking about my generation, I will also talk to my generation, in a series of conversations with fellow millennials about their own personal journey through life, their hopes and fears, and the lessons they have learnt on their path to adulthood. A few of them have got well over a million followers on Instagram, so that will be bloody exciting.

I hope that through the process of researching and writing about my generation I will better understand how we work, and as a result better understand myself. Why was that night I swore at a child such a pivotal point in my personal development? Why does that precious ‘it’ always manage to slip me by no matter how much luck is thrown my way? And, believe me, luck is what we all have in abundance, even if it doesn’t always feel like it. You are lucky. You’re reading this book, which means you’re most likely from a first-world country, one of those that allows freedom of speech and has sufficient educational facilities to make literacy the norm, and you even have enough expendable income to be able to buy this in the first place – unless you’ve nicked it, of course. We’re bloody lucky and privileged and all the rest, yet sometimes it doesn’t feel enough. Why? What are we so scared of?

FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION

That night stays with me to this day for the simple reason that it was the first time in my short lifespan that one of my biggest fears became a reality – a fear all millennials share when it comes to life: the fear of doing it wrong. Fucking up. Becoming an adult is scary and easy to get wrong, so this fear of fucking it up hangs over us like a rain cloud hangs over a cartoon character having a bad day. University costs a fortune, reality-TV stars are millionaires by the age of 21 and everyone on social media seems to be smashing life (as well as avocados). So if you take a wrong turn at any point, well, why did you even bother? Success has changed from a marathon to a sprint and the starting line is very much over-capacity. You’d better make it to the finish and you’d better do it quick! I mean, who wants success in their fifties? You can’t even look good in the photos.

The really weird thing is that for years failure was seen as a necessary rite of passage to success. Like many of you reading this I can often find myself deep in a late-night YouTube hole. And when I’m properly stuck down there, one of my most common places of solace, after blackheads being popped and kittens performing on musical instruments, is the inspirational talk, normally a celebrity collecting an honorary degree with a rolled-up certificate in one hand, a funny hat on his or her head and some inspirational music in the background, which I do hope was added in after. I mean, surely even the most wet-behind-the-ears graduate would realise the ridiculous levels of self-importance attached to bringing your own Enya CD to a university speech. Anyway, the point is that during these talks failure is hyped up beyond belief, fetishised to the young people in the slightly less funny hats who look up in awe.

These stories begin in various ways: ‘I didn’t land my first proper acting job until I was 40,’ ‘I had several failed companies before making my millions aged 55,’ ‘I sawed my own arm off with a penknife.’ Yet despite the severity and diversity of the challenges our speakers have faced, they always end the same … ‘But look at me now.’ You don’t get much more adult than that! Standing in front of an audience being open and frank about all your failings but still managing to have achieved something special – now that is good-quality adulting.

Failure today, however, simply isn’t an option. You must succeed young, without any periods spent on the dole and ideally with all your limbs still attached. Failure to meet this new-found desire to succeed quickly leaves us in a constant state of flux, doubting our every decision. It still blows my mind when I’m watching some reality TV show and I see a 14-year-old being interviewed backstage saying something like ‘I’ve been working my whole life for this’ or ‘This is my one shot.’ I feel like grabbing them and screaming, ‘There’s no rush – when I was 14 I was sitting in a caravan watching someone chop a wasp in half!’

Despite the knowledge that time is on my side I have those moments of doubt every day; sometimes it’s a light murmur under the surface and other times it’s debilitating in its severity, but it’s always there. The feeling that I’m not good enough, I’ve not achieved enough, I’m not happy enough, that’s not good enough, they’re not good enough, I’m not thin enough, my photos don’t get liked enough, my job isn’t impressive enough, I don’t earn enough and so on. It will continue, I imagine, until death. Sweet, blissful death. And even then I’ll be thinking, ‘Oh Christ, I’ve only gone and died – this is embarrassing.’

As depressing as it may sound, these worries are necessary for our journey into adulthood. Without a fear of failure or a desire to achieve we would all just coast along, never really achieving anything. We’ve all got that mate who’s seemingly happy all the time. Who wants to be like them? They’re creepy – constantly smiling, never hungover, big fan of their boss, constantly eating ‘superfoods’. Get in the bin. I’d rather be in a Wetherspoons chatting to my equally hungover friend Karen about how Jim from accounts is a fucking prick, his eyes are too close together, I hate those ‘wacky ties he wears’ and ‘correctomundo’ isn’t an actual word, it’s a waste of oxygen.

Young people today seem to fail to realise how young they actually are. If you are under the age of 25 you have no fucking clue how many bites at the cherry you actually might have. Fuck up a bit. It’s really important. Fuck up. Hell, if you’re reading this on a bus, punch the person sitting next to you. You could go to jail for two years, get out and still be eligible for a young person’s railcard. You are so young. Yet despite this knowledge of our youth, a fear of failing is what seems to pin our generation down. Anyway, enough waffle, let’s get started. Here we go – an adult man who once feared failure, avoided it at all costs, will now retell each and every failure he’s ever had to you, the reader, so you can realise that maybe failure isn’t all that bad.

CHAPTER 1

BAD PARENTING

Mollycoddled

When you watch as much Love Island as I’m contractually required to do, you really do start to become enthralled by every single minute of it. Don’t get me wrong, there are downsides. I mean, essentially I am paid to sit in a small booth while a bunch of young people go into a villa and, well, fuck each other, and then I … watch. For ages. For too long, you might even say. That’s how I pay my mortgage. Worse still, my parents have seen to it that my overly supportive millennial upbringing didn’t end at the point I left home for London to become a stand-up – not a chance. My parents still keep every cutting, record every show and retweet every bit of praise I receive on their own custom-made Twitter accounts, or ‘Iain Shrines’ as they hate that I call them. My dad’s account is the very cleverly named MySonDoesJokes – give him a follow, he’d bloody love that. My sister is a bit angry about it, but MyDaughterDoesMediaManagement doesn’t quite have the same ring.

Having supportive parents is wonderful but somewhat annoying for me as an artist. I mean, all good art comes from pain – great artists have suffered and then told their stories to the world through their chosen medium. Thanks to Alison and Rodger being bloody saints means I’ve had none of that. I’m trying to write a book here, Mum and Dad, can you please give me something to work with? They haven’t even had a divorce, the selfish pricks! I’ve tried everything to get something out of them but they are simply too good.

‘Fuck you, Mum and Dad, I’m going to go be a comedian.’

‘Great! We can drive you to all your gigs.’

‘You are missing the point!’

The issue with my supportive parents – other than a lack of exposure to failure, the creation in my head of an imaginary safety net and an inflated sense of self-worth, all of which we will get round to talking about very soon – is the fact that when I say my parents watch everything, I do mean everything. Being the voice of Love Island and knowing that your parents watch is like being a kid watching a film with your parents when a raunchy sex scene would come on (my most vivid memory was the scene in Braveheart; at one point you see actual boobage – as a pre-teen I was in bits!) and you had that horrible moment of knowing that you and your parents were watching sex together, they knew they were watching sex with their child and the whole family would just sit in silence as Mel Gibson had his merry way with Catherine McCormack. Everyone would be transfixed by the screen, which by this time was absolutely covered in people having sex – it looked like the inside of an old phone box coated in those sex-line phone cards. The ones where you phone up and someone talks dirty down the phone to you – or so I’ve been told.

The entire evening would change from a chilled-out ‘movie night’ to a social time-bomb waiting to detonate in sexual congress and awkwardness, which would ultimately result in you praying for the sofa to gain sentience and gobble you up whole, or at least take you through to another room where neither your parents nor scenes of any sort of a sexual nature would be present.

Well, thanks to Love Island I get that feeling every day for an entire summer. And not only am I watching this with my parents, I’m actually talking them through the entire process. Just me giving my parents a step-by-step breakdown of the filth taking pace before their (and my) very eyes.

‘There you go, Father, that’s them off to the outside beds … Now what’s happening is that she has gone down there to perform what I believe is called a b –’

Sorry, I can’t. I just can’t. Anyway, you get the idea – the whole thing can be very grim. The thing I can be grateful for is that when it comes to Love Island my parents play a far more passive role in their viewing experience, because normally when it comes to the TV my parents enjoy something much more immersive. One Easter, I had a Saturday night off work, which for a stand-up comedian is very rare.

The upside of my job is that I’m my own boss and have days to myself to do as I please. In the majority of cases this will take the form of sitting in my pants playing FIFA, as this pleases me very much. However, the same can’t be said for the majority of the population, so as a stand-up comedian you have to work around everyone else’s social calendar. This means weekends and bank holidays are not a time to relax and socialise with friends, but instead mean going to theatres to entertain people who want to relax and socialise with theirs. Don’t get me wrong, there is a lot of free time being a stand-up comedian, and people often say to me it must be amazing not working during the day – you can just do what you like. And, to be honest, the first few years are incredible. However, after a couple of years or so there are only so many empty pubs you can sit in, or 14-year-old French kids you can smash on FIFA before the solitude becomes all too much.

Anyway, the point is I had a very rare Saturday night off, so I decided to spend it training up to Edinburgh to surprise my mum and dad. On arrival I walked into our living room to see my parents watching the television, as is customary on a Saturday night; however, my folks were not sitting on the couch as would be customary. My parents were sitting in the middle of the living room, on office chairs, facing away from the television, just staring at the wall. I approached the two pensioners, my brain quickly trying to work out if I could afford to send them both into homes, and asked them what was going on, to which my mother proudly declared: ‘We’re watching The Voice and playing along at home.’

My parents were watching The Voice and only turning around when they liked the voice of the person they were listening to. My mum wasn’t best pleased, however, as good old Dad had refused to turn even once, instead spending his Saturday night angrily perched on an old office chair, screaming into a wall: ‘Shite, he’s shite, she’s shite, everyone’s shite.’ I once mentioned this on Scott Mills’s Radio 1 show, and someone texted in to tell me you can also have the same ‘play along at home’ Saturday night experience by watching Take Me Out with friends and giving everyone a torch. I can imagine that really kicking off after a few bottles of wine have been sunk. Give it a go – tweet me the results!

NEVER GO CARAVANNING WITH YOUR PARENTS

Parents often say they want to give their kids everything their own childhood lacked. How many times have you seen some rich rapper in a television interview speaking about how they’re going to give their kids ‘all the stuff I never had growing up’? But in all honesty does a five-month-old need Gucci slip-ons? Yes, they look cute and durable, but was your childhood irreparably ruined because you didn’t have a pair of diamond-encrusted slippers? I actually think it’s often the negative experiences of growing up that help shape us. Without the rough do you always appreciate the smooth? I now really appreciate going on proper adult holidays, and that most certainly has a lot to do with my holidays growing up.

You see, as a child my parents made a big decision that would have a massive impact on my life for years to come. A decision more and more couples are making in this modern era. They decided … to buy a caravan. Yup, every summer Mum, Dad, my sister and me would cram ourselves into a four-berth and head off to Loch Lomond, Aberfeldy, Biggar, Aviemore or some other Scottish holiday destination that sounds less like an exotic getaway than a Middle Earth council estate, where you expect to see a bunch of orcs stealing lead from a roof or a bunch of elves drinking cider in the park, but instead witness old people attending bingo nights and families in tents entertaining themselves with games of charades.

So despite their fantasyland names, they were far from the exciting world of the ‘Rohan’ Bronx or the ‘Gondor’ high rises – they were caravan parks. And not just any caravan parks – Scottish caravan parks. The wettest places known to man. If you listen very carefully on arrival to any Scottish caravan park you can actually hear David Attenborough narrating Blue Planet. I mean, most kids return from summer holidays with a tan. I would hobble into class with trench foot. Caravans can’t deal with the extremity of Scottish weather. This is the sort of weather that requires bricks and mortar. In the story of the three little pigs not one of them chooses to stay in a caravan. Not one. And one of those idiots opted for hay. That means a pig, a fucking pig, looked at a caravan and thought to himself, ‘Nah, I’d rather live in a house made of horse food.’

I always think that if you’re buying a place of residence, you want to do it somewhere respectable. When we shot off to buy our caravan we went to a field. ‘An area of open land, especially one planted with crops or pasture, typically bounded by hedges or fences’, that’s what the dictionary defines a field as. Not as ‘a really brilliant place to buy a respectable house’. I would say the only thing of any value that has been bought in a field is a field.

Once or twice a year the Stirling posse would pack up and head off on our epic adventures to mystical faraway lands, such as Biggar, Forfar, Sandylands – the list goes on, and at no stage improves in quality. The other issue was that we had to drag our place of residence on the back of a clapped-out Ford Escort, meaning that speed was never really our friend. Hours would be spent travelling for very little reward (distance). When you are an excitable child off on their summer holidays, nothing quite takes the gleam off a four-hour car journey more than having your dad trot up a small hill to say to your mum: ‘I can see our house from here.’ I remember visiting family friends on our ‘holidays’. Like casually popping in for the day. On a holiday. It just wasn’t right. A holiday destination shouldn’t be a place where you can pop in for the day. It’s a holiday, not someone’s front room. I want to go to Mallorca and join a kids’ club run by a depressed actor like all the other normal children!

Now, I don’t want to fully destroy the legend that is the family caravan holiday. I’ve got many happy memories of that place. Yes, it was so cold that I vividly remember my mum having to get more dressed for bed than she had for the hike we had taken earlier that day. Yes, the thing was so small and the beds so close together that every time my dad farted I could genuinely feel my hair blow back. And yes, once I watched a child chop a wasp in half. But there was so much fun to be had fishing, boating, climbing, with the friends we made, the weirdos we met and that time my uncle Bill stopped a family from going home in the middle of the night because they thought a power station was going to blow up. The couple stayed, the power station didn’t obliterate us all, everyone was happy!

There is fun to be had in these places, and as a child sometimes it’s important to have to go and find it. Similarly, every time I now find myself on a sun lounger in my all-inclusive Spanish holiday resort, I think back to that tiny little Elddis caravan, and with a wry smile on my face take a sip on my Corona and realise how lucky I am. I’m now a great big adult that can decide where I want to go on my holidays, and sorry you have to hear this, Mum and Dad, but it isn’t fucking Falkirk.

I’m happy with what I had and delighted with what I’ve now got. Now that’s good parenting. I’m not scarred by the hardships of my childhood holidays, nor am I left with some misplaced sense of entitlement after too many trips to Disneyland as a youngster. And thank God for that, because is there anything on this entire planet more intolerable than a spoilt brat?

I’ve spent many years working in children’s television, and there is nothing more heartbreaking than being told someone important is coming to a filming day and they’re bringing their kid with them. I’d like to say at this point that if you’re someone high up in the world of kids’ TV reading this and you have children and I’ve met them, this definitely isn’t about them. It isn’t. This is about those other pricks and their spoilt-rotten little shits. You know the ones I’m talking about? Good, let’s talk about them.

When children grow up around children’s TV they become the most disruptive little gremlins ever to set foot in a studio. Jaded by the magical world of TV at the age of eight, walking about in a pressed shirt and a pair of chinos like they own the place: ‘Mummy, I’m bored, who’s he?’ I’m a Z-list children’s entertainer, you little shit. A lot of this may be me somewhat ‘projecting’ – as my therapist says, it 100 per cent is – but the point still stands that if you show kids too much of a good thing too young then they may well grow up not appreciating the privileges they have. This could lead to them conducting all sorts of wrongs, for example being rude to one of the greatest BAFTA-award-winning children’s TV presenters of all time. I mean, come on, ‘Who’s he?’ Take a running jump, you absolute tool of an eight-year-old. Again, if you work in kids’ TV, definitely not about your kid. They were lovely.

I don’t want this to come across as a weird ‘my parents are better than yours’ humblebrag, by the way. Similarly, if you missed the irony draped over the whole ‘I’m the greatest kids’ TV presenter of all time’, then that is solely down to my limited writing abilities. I know I’m not the best. I’ve met Phillip Schofield, Tim Vincent, Dick and Dom, Zoë Ball, Angellica Bell and Otis the Aardvark – I’m fully aware of the tough competition I’m up against. Let’s just say I’m top 10 and move on.

An important factor in becoming an adult is to avoid constantly internalising and comparing other people’s lives with your own. As a kid that sort of behaviour used to do you all manner of good: ‘But Ahir’s parents let him stay up until nine on a Friday.’ Boom! Next thing you know you’re watching the ‘late’ film on a Friday night like a proper fucking gangster! Isn’t parental guilt a brilliant thing?

Perhaps all our parents did was try to give us the best life possible, and it was us constantly comparing and contrasting with others that created this illusion that we are smothered and over-protected. Parents can’t protect their children for ever. I mean, I know eight-year-olds that have been told to go fuck themselves. You need to do your own thing, let others do theirs and hope for the best. I can’t beat Otis the Aardvark – he’s a talking anteater, for God’s sake. I’m merely a talking man. In the hearts of British children I’m always coming off second best in that exchange.

Now that I am an adult, or at least trying my bloody best, I think quite a bit about what was going through my mum’s head when she was bringing me up. I’m nearly the same age as she was when she had me. Fuck, I couldn’t imagine having a kid right now. Chances are I’d drop it. But she managed it and I’ve never really asked her how. I had been meaning to interview my mum for ages for this book. I had always managed to find a reason to put it off: it was too late, we were too drunk, my equipment wasn’t working properly. I’ve never actually thought, until right now, why I was so scared to sit my mum down in the podcast chair. I guess it’s the intimacy of it that was the real kicker. We’d never talked about anything like that in real detail, and now, like a true millennial, I had decided not only to have the conversation after three decades of my life, but also to record the whole thing. Freud would have had a field day (and not the type where you purchase a caravan). Sure, the microphones are somewhat phallic, but that sick Austrian quack needn’t know that.

So despite my reservations and fears about what might be said, I decided to sit down and speak to the main woman herself – Alison Stirling, my mother.

Interview with My Mum –

‘I will never make my children old before their time’

ALISON STIRLING

I intended to go back to work, but once I had you I thought, ‘No, there is no way. I don’t want to do that.’ I was kind of brought up in a nursery, and I didn’t think we were going to have a family. I was more shocked than anybody that I would want to give up work for it, but that’s what I wanted to do and so that’s what your dad and I did. That halved the money that came in.

IAIN STIRLING

Yeah, that’s why we had to go on caravan holidays.

ALISON STIRLING

Then Kirsten, your sister, came along 18 months later. The theory was that during the week I would get everything ready so that at the weekend we had family time. People used to say, ‘Oh, I can’t stand this,’ but I used to say, ‘Boring is as boring does.’ And we did a lot. I have to say I felt I loved it, but –

IAIN STIRLING

And you were brill, this is what I’m saying.

ALISON STIRLING

But at the end of the day there is a danger that I sometimes think maybe I didn’t allow you to develop, and, you know, there’s always that ‘If I’d done this, had I done that’ …

IAIN STIRLING

Develop in terms of, like, independently be able to do my own stuff?

ALISON STIRLING

Yeah, get up in the morning. That sort of thing.

IAIN STIRLING

Yeah, this is exactly the point I was going to make. It’s not a bad thing. What I mean is my childhood was amazing and you’re an amazing mum and Dad’s an amazing dad – parents that you know would lie down in traffic for you – but then it also means that when someone says, ‘This deadline was due a week ago,’ I’m now the sort of person to say, ‘It will be fine, someone will sort it out.’ Because in my head I’m going, ‘Mummy and Daddy will sort it out.’ And I think if I were to have kids I would get them to do more. But what I’m saying is that’s not bad. The point I’m making is what was it about? What aspects of your upbringing affected how you were as a parent?

ALISON STIRLING

My dad died when I was 17 days old, and there was my brother, 14 years older than me, and then there were three stepchildren and they were older as well, so, you know, my mother had a lot to do. She needed money, so she went out and worked. So from an early age I was in the nursery, and then when I went to school that’s when she said, ‘Well, we’ll get people in.’ And I hated it. I absolutely hated it. And she was trying her absolute best but it got to the stage that she got me a blackboard. I wanted a bike but we couldn’t afford one for Christmas so I got a blackboard.

IAIN STIRLING

Same letter. It’s still a ‘B’, Alison. It begins with ‘B’.

ALISON STIRLING

So I used to write notes to my mum on the blackboard, things that I would remember from school.

IAIN STIRLING

What, notes like you need to buy milk or like I learned that the sky is blue?

ALISON STIRLING

No, no. About something that happened that day – by the time she came in I might have forgotten about it. So I would write that down and then my mother would write something on the blackboard and it became a wee thing with us, and it was great. But it doesn’t beat coming in to your mum and saying, ‘You know what happened at school today?’ And then your nanna got ill. She got cancer when I was 12 and that kind of turned everything round. She had 18 months to live and it turned her absolutely wild. So she basically started giving things away because she wanted things to be in order and it was a hellish time to go through, and I realise now that I was a carer, but at that point I wouldn’t have known I was. We got a new washing machine and Mum couldn’t use it – I was doing it. So I think that’s what made me think I will never make my children old before their time.

IAIN STIRLING

I mean, I’m 30 years old and still wouldn’t know how to use a dishwasher.

ALISON STIRLING

What is it you said to me when I said, ‘Put that in the washing machine’? You said, ‘Is that the one with the round door or the square door?’

IAIN STIRLING

When was that?

ALISON STIRLING

You were in your teens.

IAIN STIRLING

I was easily in my teens. Oh my God.

A SHORT BIT OUTLINING HOW PARENTING HAS CHANGED

To help us understand how parenting has changed over the generations I’m going to use some terms to talk about each generation specifically. Once we’re all on board with that code we can plough on with my hilarious content! The three main generations I’ll be looking at are millennials (that’s me), who roughly speaking were born between 1981 and 2002, Generation X (my parents’ generation), who were born in the years 1961 to 1980, and finally baby boomers (my grandparents), who were born from 1941 to 1960. There, hopefully that’ll save some time.

Parenting has seen massive shifts over the years. For me, the biggest affecting millennials is the shift from a fairly laissez-faire attitude towards a much more hands-on modern approach. Indeed, Generation X were known as the ‘latch-door kids’ because their baby-boomer folks were often out working or socialising, so the kids had to let themselves in when they went home after school or being out with their friends. Many Generation Xers lived with their parents in a manner more akin to flatmates than legal guardians. Take my mum, for example, communicating with her own mother through a blackboard like some sort of post-war WhatsApp messenger.

In fact in the 1980s parents’ need to be away from their children and near their peers led to the construction of many age-restricted communities where adults could hang out in child-free zones, such as holiday resorts, and the rise of the infamous ‘kids clubs’ that are still popular to this day. Parents could go lie on a sun lounger while their kid was taken off to play with some out-of-work actor in his mid-twenties dressed like a clown or a prince (royalty, not the pop star). To many this might sound like sloppy parenting, but I bet it sounds like heaven to the modern kid who constantly has to keep their parents updated on their movements via their mobile phone, or can’t post anything online because they know their parents have set up secret online accounts just so they can keep an eye on their comings and goings. Want to go to the cinema on your own? Of course you can! Well, I mean, Mum and Dad will be there, obviously, but they’ll sit a few rows back.

KIDS ARE SHIT AT STUFF

On the face of things it would seem that this overprotection is born out of a parent’s need to protect and serve their precious little ones. But I mean, how can I, or any millennial for that matter, hope to embrace adult life when Mummy and Daddy are still willing to do your washing when you’re well into your thirties? In fact, after the podcast was recorded with my mum, she made us mac and cheese while I was on my phone.

But a sort of misplaced love isn’t the only factor at work here. Although it is an undisputed fact that children are beautiful and fragile presents from God that need to be protected and nurtured, there is no getting away from the truth that they take fucking ages to do stuff. Watching a child getting dressed (and please only do so if the appropriate social and legal norms are in place) is one of the most excruciating processes in the history of mankind. They don’t know which hole to stick their head through in a T shirt, socks are approached with a level of concentration that should be reserved for bomb-disposal experts and you can dream on if you think these dafties are getting anything on their person should that garment involve buttons. So at the end of the day it is much easier for Mum and Dad to dress the dithering idiot themselves, thus saving an invaluable half an hour. This time can then be spent doing fun ‘parent’ things like not sleeping or wishing you still had disposable income.

If any of you question whether or not parents dress their children out of love or necessity, simply watch a mother putting shoes on her toddler. It remains one of the most barbaric acts I have ever seen performed by one human on another. And I say that as a man who’s spent two long weekends on lads’ holidays to Amsterdam. Viciously smashing Thomas the Tank Engine strap-ups onto the soles of unsuspecting three-year-olds is not the action of someone in love, but rather of a women who is 20 minutes late for a swimming lesson.

This same notion applies to all aspects of life. You name it, kids are shit at it: setting the table, taking in the washing, doing homework. All activities can be sped up tenfold by simply doing them yourself. But this ‘overprotection’ comes at a price. Millennials are growing up not learning necessary life skills that will help them function in the real world and that will help them move out and go on to live their own independent adult lives.

Similarly parents can find solace through constantly caring for their offspring and this can cause them to turn into someone who not only creates a reliance on their services but craves it – the ‘devouring mother’. Having served others for so long she becomes obsessive, controlling and even violently scared of the idea of being alone. Mum might complain about my dirty pants and constant iPhone antics, but what would she do without me?

Disney films always manage to capture this idea brilliantly, whether it be the Evil Queen in Snow White or Ursula in The Little Mermaid. The lengths to which the devouring mother will go to maintain control over those that once relied on them are not to be underestimated. Admittedly the actions of our Disney characters aren’t exactly the same sort of thing you see happening as a result of a Gen Xer’s over-parenting, but to be fair to Walt (Disney) I think we can all agree that The Little Mermaid wouldn’t be nearly as good a film if Ursula’s evil deed was agreeing to pick Ariel up from the bus stop every day after school because she didn’t like the walk … sorry, the swim. If Ariel had been walking she wouldn’t have wanted picking up – that girl bloody loved a good wander!

As children begin to rely on their parents more and more to give them assistance through life, so parents begin to rely on their children to give them purpose to theirs. This cycle can lead to children not leaving home until much later in life. It is mutually beneficial for both parties so long as life is preferable ‘in the parental home’ or ‘under the sea’, depending on what literature you’ve read on the subject. And then there are several changing social factors:

 A rise in house prices means children don’t move out until later in life.

 Parents are having fewer children, so that each child gets more attention.

 Parents are having kids older, when they’re more settled, so are more likely to stay in with their kids than go out and socialise.

 An increased focus and pressure on giving children the correct moral compass.

Parenthood is something I think about more and more as I get older because for some unknown reason my friends keep insisting on having bloody kids. Making babies, on purpose. How adult is that? ‘OK, babe, I’m going to start leaving it in.’ I mean, they possibly put it in a slightly more romantic way, but you get the idea.

As a comedian who is forever trying to rid himself of his dreaded ego, other people’s children can be a real stumbling block on my path to enlightenment. Mainly due to the fact that most of my friends seem to like their children more than they like me. Me! How long have you known your kid? Like a couple of weeks? We’ve been friends since freshers’ week, you ungrateful bastard. What has your kid ever done for you? Every day you have to tell that thing to stop crying, wipe its bum and put it to bed. You’ve only had to do that for me twice. It was my birthday and you had given me a bottle of rum as a present – in many ways you only had yourself to blame. I mean, this shouldn’t even be a competition. Your baby can’t talk, I’m the voice of Love Island. I’m objectively better. That baby has never ‘cued the text’ or ‘paged Dr Marcel’. I should be top of your list all day, every day.

I guess I just question anyone who can feel something so strong towards someone who’s done so little. I know I’m a Liverpool fan and will follow them wherever they go despite a relative dry patch, trophy-wise, over recent seasons, but boy do they play good football and Jürgen Klopp is a total BABE. Seriously, even if you aren’t a footy fan you need to check out my main man Jürgen. The guy is like the dad you’ve always wanted. I mean, who wouldn’t want a dad called Jürgen? Am I right? Even if, like me, you have an incredible father who would quite literally lie down in traffic for you, a day spent watching Jürgen stare out the opposition from the halfway line while they do their pre-match warm-up is one of the most heroic pieces of needlessly alpha behaviour you will ever see. Try not to whisper ‘Daddy’ under your breath while he does it. I dare ya!

So while Liverpool can reward my love and loyalty even in the absence of any silverware, what can your baby do? It can’t even talk! The thing could be a prick. We don’t know yet. Half the people in the world are pricks so it’s statistically likely that your baby is an arsehole. It hasn’t even expressed a view. I mean, it could be a racist baby. You don’t know. It is bald and white, so it’s already got the uniform.

THE RACE TO ADULTHOOD

I used to dread the idea of getting older. There, I said it, I’m getting older. As much as it pains me to admit, the inevitable passage of time is slowly catching up on me. Hangovers are, not necessarily becoming physically worse, but the sadness that I feel the day after is really increasing – the dreaded ‘beer fear’ is getting more and more intense as I start to wizen with age. It’ll take more than a Lucozade and some screaming into the shower head to abolish that voice in my head asking, ‘What the hell are you doing with your life?’ In my early twenties the voice was a gentle whisper that I could ignore; when I hit 29 it bought a megaphone.

Older. Like, who would want that? More responsibility, more stress and more wrinkles. For us millennials the dawning of adulthood can be a real point of stress. We’ve grown up in a world where perfection is pitched as a realistic goal, a thing to be achieved as opposed to some sort of abstract concept to be aimed for but never quite reached. Because perfection is impossible, like not looking a total prick in a vest top or trying to sound interesting when talking about bitcoin.

Not only do we see adulthood as this part in our lives when we live in complete and utter bliss with all our shit together, but there seems to be a massive stress for my generation to get to that stage in life as quick as possible, with no slip-ups on the way. I mean, what would be the point in owning a beautiful new sports car when you’re too old and grey to absolutely smash the likes on Insta? I find it hilarious when an older person buys a fancy new sports car and is accused of having a mid-life crisis. Really? Are they having a crisis or just earning enough money now to be able to afford one?

The pressure is on. You’re getting old, and you need to sort everything out before you get there. If you are feeling like that right now I’m here to tell you it’s OK. If you’re reading this and panicking that you’re never going to win an award, make a million pounds or even run that company, then take a deep breath. Everyone is panicking, about everything, all the time. As you get older you learn one thing for sure. No one has a fucking clue what the hell they’re doing. Your mates don’t know what the hell they’re doing with their lives, your parents had no clue what they were doing when they brought you up – hell, even the President of the United States is just a big clueless mess guessing his way through life. Although that has become more and more horribly apparent in recent years.

In a recent chat with Spencer Owen, AKA Spencer FC, a brilliant content creator with over a million subscribers on YouTube, he spoke very eloquently about why he is glad success has come to him slightly later in life (by YouTube standards) and why too much, too soon can actually impact negatively on your life in the long-term. We started by discussing how hard it must be for pop stars who achieve success early on, which then fades.

Interview with Spencer Owen –

‘Someone asks you for a cup of tea. No thanks, I’ve been to the moon’

IAIN STIRLING

I look at some pop stars who are, like, private jets to LA, living the life, blah-di-blah. And maybe they didn’t save like they should have done. And they’re 24 …

SPENCER OWEN

Yeah, what do you from there? It’s like that Buzz Aldrin thing: you’ve gone to the moon and someone asks you for a cup of tea. No thanks, I’ve been to the moon.

IAIN STIRLING

I’ve been to the moon. What do you do?

SPENCER OWEN

I’ve had moments. I’ve been amazingly privileged to have played football in front of crowds of 20,000 and 30,000 people multiple times, which I never thought I’d say. And they’re amazing moments. The last Wembley Cup, I played in front of 34,000 people. I’ve put on that whole event – that was my baby. Huge success. Within an hour of the game finishing I’m sort of sitting there thinking, ‘What do I? What’s next?’ And you hear from World Cup winners – a much higher level. They win a World Cup, have half an hour of elation and ‘Oh my God, this is so good.’ And then suddenly you’re thinking I’ve just completed the one thing I had in my life driving me. So I think that it’s really important to stress that it’s not going to solve your problems. If you’ve got problems you need to deal with them wherever you are, whatever you do. I think that so many guys I talk to behind the scenes, hugely popular YouTubers with many more subscribers than I have, making crazy, crazy money, to the outside world have got everything they could possibly need. But they’ve just got no motivation. And you hit a point where you think, ‘So what am I doing it for?’

IAIN STIRLING

I mean, if you’re 20 and you’re jet-skiing in the Caribbean and have a massive big house, that’s cool, but what do you do when you’re … what do you when you’re 30 or 31?

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?’

Anywho, the point is I always admired my gran’s general disregard for ‘the rules’. Sometimes it was adorable, such as the time she assumed that Postman Pat tinned spaghetti shapes were all shaped like different post offices in her local area, and sometimes it was funny in retrospect, like watching my mum chase Gran’s 1970 black Ford Fiesta down the street after Gran had kindly accepted my and my little sister’s request to ‘get driven to the shops in the boot’. That is panic. The point is she was bloody marvellous. Awful driver, though, but still – six foot two.

THE ANTIGUA FUCK-UP (PART I)

One of my fondest memories of my gran was around the time of my first break-up. My family and I were on holiday in Antigua. I was comfortably in my twenties. Some of you might think that’s weird, and I guess in some respects it was. I had my reasons, primarily the nasty break-up and being a mollycoddled millennial. My mother still felt the responsibility was solely on her shoulders to make sure her ‘little boy’s’ broken heart was mended. Oh, fuck off, Freud!

You never really forget that first break-up. It never leaves, always there in the back of your mind, incurable, sort of like the sadness version of herpes. Mums are the only people that can really help, in my experience. My mum, I mean. I’m not just roaming the streets screaming, ‘She left me!’ at any woman with a buggy. I tried to talk to my friends about it – that was a bloody disaster. They just stare at you helplessly, a blank expression etched onto their faces, like when someone’s farted in a lift and everyone is trying to look like it wasn’t them that did it. I mean, I couldn’t move for messages on Facebook and Twitter hoping I was all right and ‘if I needed anything just ask’. Now, I’m not saying those people’s concerns weren’t genuine, but I will say that, although undoubtedly worried for my wellbeing, they certainly weren’t willing to travel in order to demonstrate it. There was someone who would, however. Someone who would move mountains for her ‘little boy’, her little 26-year-old, mortgage-owning, law-degree-having little boy – Mummy.

So I’m on this holiday, and I’m fine, totally fine, don’t look at me like that, I’m fine. We were three days in to ‘the big holiday’, and unlike our Scottish holidays of old there wasn’t a caravan in sight; however, exactly like our Scottish holidays of old, there was rain … and lots of it. Nothing gets a mum down more than rain on the main holiday. They obsess over it, constantly mentioning home. ‘In Scotland it’s beautiful,’ Mum would remark while staring out the hotel window at the grey antigen sky, like a convict looking out through his cell bars. ‘Three days’ rain on the main holiday. I can’t believe it. I’m going to call Thomsons.’ Yeah, Mum, you do that. I’m sure there is some policy that covers entirely uncontrollable and unprecedented Caribbean drizzle. They’ll give us a full refund – they can claim the costs back from Mother Nature’s insurance policy.

In order to alleviate some of the pent-up cabin (relatively upmarket hotel) fever we decided to go on a family drive. Is there anything more relaxing than a family drive? Mum shouting at Dad for driving too close to one side of the road, Dad not speaking to Mum because it wasn’t until two hours into the drive she realised the map was the wrong way round, while the kids in the back are relentless with their constant stream of ‘Are we there yet?’ and ‘Iain pulled my hair again’, which for the record was an absolute fucking lie. The only person totally at peace in this tin can of pent-up passive–aggressive anger was my gran, who just sat in the middle seat knitting. Not a worry in the world. Just absolutely over the moon to be out the house.

We drove on some more until we came to a red light, barely visible as the thick rain lashed down all around. My dad nearly missed the light, slamming on the brakes just in time and skidding to a stop as my mother muttered something loving under her breath about him being a ‘homicidal maniac’, and then we waited. What a holiday this was shaping up to be. I should get the selfie stick out right now!

After a few seconds I noticed a huge Antiguan man walking alongside the car. Now Antigua isn’t one for pavements and all that boring infrastructure stuff, and why not, it’s a paradise. You don’t need pavements in paradise. We all know what happened to paradise when they put up a parking lot so I was delighted that Antigua had decided to keep things simple. While we waited patiently for the lights to change, this behemoth of a man was now sludging his way through the grassy knoll that ran adjacent to the road. Eventually he stopped, almost parallel to our vehicle, and started to fiddle with his belt.

Now the next 30 seconds of my life are etched into my psyche in such detail I don’t think the images will ever leave me. I could be on my death bed, surrounded by loved ones, adoring fans, my wife and kids staring into my dimming eyes, and as they all ask me, in perfect unison, ‘What are your dying words, our beloved?’ I will whisper with my final breath, ‘Once, in Antigua, me and my mum spent 30 seconds staring at the same stranger’s penis … Oh, and I once told an eight-year-old to go fuck himself.’

Our Antiguan man-mountain of a friend had decided to remove his aforementioned penis – from his shorts, not physically from his body; he didn’t rip it off, stick it in a jar and hand it to my beloved mother – he simply popped it out his pants and started having a widdle in the street. So as a man peed in the middle of the afternoon in the middle of the road, the Stirling family stared on. Mother seemed furious that yet more unwanted drizzle had affected our main holiday. I was paralysed with fear – ‘paralysed by the penis’, if you will. Someone had to do something, but who was it going to be?

‘WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?’ I’VE NO IDEA, MATE. I’M ONLY SEVEN.

It’s weird the first time you find yourself in a situation in which you feel like you need to protect your parents. The role reversal is a real rite of passage into adulthood. That first time your dad can’t pick up a particularly heavy box or needs consoling following the loss of a pet, or when your mum is left helplessly staring at a stranger’s penis. Having these figures of strength and unconditional love turn to you for help and showing they’re not infallible – nothing makes you feel more like a grown-up. Like the first time you cross a road before the green man comes on and you notice those around you follow you on your journey to the other side of the road. I’ve never felt more powerful in my life. Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Iain Stirling is a fucking alpha male!

The reason this role reversal hit me particularly hard was in no little part down to the fact that when it comes to my own parents I am a textbook millennial. My parents have always put my hopes and desires above their own at any cost. Evenings were spent taking me to any club or hobby that remotely tickled my fancy. Football, tennis, golf, swimming, boy scouts, amateur dramatics – you name it, I was painfully average at all of them, but Christ was I diverse. In theatre, people speak of the ‘triple threat’, one of those talented son of a guns that could sing, dance and act. Well, I, Iain Stirling, was more like an sexuple threat. I would sing, dance and act, while in a swimming pool, playing golf with Akela looking on, ready to give me my putting badge. This severely watered down my ability to excel in any particular area, but I was having a lovely time and Mummy said I was good, so what does actual objective success even matter? As I type this I can imagine my mum saying to me, ‘You weren’t average at all, son. You were uniquely talented.’

Every problem I ever faced was never faced alone. I always had the support of my loving parents no matter what. And when it came to her baby boy there were few lengths my mother wouldn’t go to. When I got bullied, my mum didn’t just go into the school. She didn’t just tell me that I should ignore it. What Alison Stirling did was sign me up to self-defence classes three times a week. She had to buy me all the gear, drive me there and back in the evenings and give up her weekends for competitions and exams – all because of that one time Gavin pushed me in a puddle.

Now I’m not saying all my mother’s acts of parenting were needlessly overbearing. Self-defence is undoubtedly a useful skill, and the weekly socialising and exercise were great for my physical and mental health. The issue I have is with the discipline Mother decided for me – judo. The problem was that judo didn’t have any real-life implications in terms of thwarting those evil bullies (well, Gavin). As a martial art it is definitely one of the more passive disciplines. On the intimidation scale I was less Conor McGregor and more Gandhi. First of all, for judo to work you and your opponent need to be in a hold, and secondly for that hold to work you both need to be wearing the appropriate gown. ‘Oh, you want my lunch money, do you? Well, stick on this dressing gown because we’re about to cuddle.’ I carried on with judo for a further seven years, until a little girl called Katie snapped my collarbone and, as a family, we decided I should maybe focus on the arts. During those seven years the bullying never subsided, but my health improved significantly, so it wasn’t a complete waste of time. I imagine Gavin is now a professional internet troll.

Although it seems like a great thing for millennials to grow up with parents willing to go above and beyond in order for them to live the best lives possible, some experts have spoken out, claiming millennials have grown up with what is now being regarded as ‘bad parenting’. This phrase might make it sound like we all grew up with some sort of abuse or neglect, but actually it’s quite the opposite. ‘Bad parenting’ is the idea that our parents told us throughout our childhoods that we were special and could achieve anything we wanted, so long as we wanted it badly enough. During my childhood I remember my mum constantly telling me that I was ‘special’ and could ‘achieve anything’.

Other ultimately useless information was also thrown at me on regular occasions, such as ‘Iain, the bullies are picking on you because they’re jealous.’ Yeah, that’s right, Mum, the bullies are jealous of my stutter and my lazy eye. The truth is that kids pick on kids because kids are pricks and picking on people is fun. It’s called ‘making fun’ for a reason. Sometimes as a child you need to be told about the harsh realities of life, which I was protected from my entire childhood. I was never told about failure growing up; I was constantly protected from it. I don’t think I went to a funeral until I was at university. Heaven forbid I would be made aware of the fact that all people eventually die. I wasn’t ready for that. I was only 20.

As well as limiting our exposure to the harsh realities of life, our parents would also go above and beyond to ensure our dreams and desires could be realised. Millennial kids were never brought up with a belief that they were flawed or that they had to be realistic in their dreams. Yet despite this increased protection and support, millennials are still overall a lot less happy than their Gen X parents. How can this be? The answer is in our increased life expectations, dreams that were far ahead of anything Gen X parents ever hoped for. Essential happiness comes down to a very simple formula.

HAPPINESS = REALITIES – EXPECTATIONS

It makes total sense if you think about it. Your happiness is essentially the current situation you find yourself in, less what you expected your life to be like. This is the mistake many parents have made. Tell your kid they will grow up to be an astronaut and, shock horror, a reliable, well-paid job in admin will never really live up to their childhood expectations. This is not to say a child’s dreams shouldn’t be nurtured and encouraged, but you also need to teach them about the world’s harsh realities to temper expectations. I asked my mum whether she felt any pressure to monitor my expectations when I first started in comedy.

IAIN STIRLING

I’m at university. I’m studying law but I clearly want to be a comedian, which in our family is not a thing you do.

ALISON STIRLING

No.

IAIN STIRLING

Is there a worry like, ‘Well, I want to encourage him and make him do well, but if this idiot keeps doing gigs above pubs to six people for the rest of his life …’?

ALISON STIRLING

Do you know what, I can honestly say, ‘No.’ Your sister wanted to dance and the school made a big thing of it and said, ‘You’re surely going to discourage her.’ And I said, ‘There is absolutely no way I would discourage this.’ And I, hand on heart, wanted you to do what you wanted to, because my mother banged on about how she wanted me to be a hairdresser. She was going to buy a shop and I would do hair, and she would tell everybody. And it got to such a stage that I dreaded the time to leave school because I thought I’m going to have to tell her, but she would just think it was just a phase I was going through and all of a sudden I would want to do hair.

IAIN STIRLING

And the weirdest thing about it is she’s doing all that because she wants you to do well, do you know what I mean?

ALISON STIRLING

I think she just thought that this is something she could do for me, so instead of asking, instead of letting me find what I wanted to do, it was just, ‘This is the thing.’ And I remember I would go through hoops to try not to hurt her in any way by saying, ‘There is not a hope in hell that I will ever be a hairdresser.’

IAIN STIRLING

I’m never doing a blue rinse in my life.

ALISON STIRLING

I could not. I’m not artistic and the thought of standing with somebody’s hair and doing something with that, no. It just was not on the cards for me. That was never going to happen, so I think I realised from an early age that you’re going to get on so much further if you do what you want to do. If you make the wrong decision, it’s your decision. You do it.

IAIN STIRLING

Yeah.

ALISON STIRLING

If somebody else makes the decision it’s so easy to then say, and I’ve heard all this with friends, ‘Oh, my parents made me do this.’ And what they get is not a chip on their shoulder – it’s a boulder. So your doing comedy was absolutely not an issue. People in the law school would say, ‘Oh, for goodness sake, why is he not doing this?’

IAIN STIRLING

Because he thinks it’s the most boring thing that’s ever happened in his entire life.

ALISON STIRLING

Yeah, or they’d say, ‘You’ll be disappointed,’ and I’m going, ‘No, I would never be disappointed,’ because part of me knows that if you wanted to do it, you would apply yourself because that’s what you chose to do and, to be fair, when you did your first sketch at school, I mean, you just loved it. You came alive in that. You never came alive in law school.

IAIN STIRLING

As you know I studied with very, very clever men, in that they all went on to do amazing things – Samoa, Hong Kong, they’ve been everywhere with the law. They’d go and speak to the dissertation adviser and all that, and it wasn’t that I was lazy and didn’t do it. It just never dawned on me that it was an option because I was never that into it. So I was trying really hard, but I think the thing about being passionate about something is that you’re going to work hard at it by default because you’re thinking about it all the time.

ALISON STIRLING

Exactly.

IAIN STIRLING

Like even if I go out and get absolutely hammered, and it happens more often than it should, I’ll lie in in the morning and write a funny bit of stand-up. Well, not even write it, I’ll just think it and I’ll have a thing for stand-up so I’ve done work that morning, whereas with law I didn’t like it. So I had to drag myself into that library and force my way through all those books. So I was not as good at it just because I wasn’t into it.

ALISON STIRLING

And I think that’s the thing. I’ve definitely learned that from Mum. When I didn’t go into hairdressing there had to be these excuses because she’d told so many people, and I did fine. Like you, I applied myself in what I wanted to and I did well and that’s fine. I wouldn’t have done well in the hairdressers. I would have been absolutely miserable.

IAIN STIRLING

You would have hated it.

ALISON STIRLING

I would have hated it. Well, you never know, I might not have.

IAIN STIRLING

You’d be good at chatting to people, the people bit.

ALISON STIRLING

Yeah, the chat is one thing. But what about the haircut?

IAIN STIRLING

Well, I had a lovely chat but I’ve not got an ear. Apart from that …

ALISON STIRLING

And the hair. I’m not sure what this is supposed to be.

THE ANTIGUA FUCK-UP (PART II)

So, back in Antigua, the whole Stirling clan are staring at a stranger’s ding-dong. Like an X-rated Gogglebox. I’d say everyone was watching on in horror, but that isn’t actually true. Mother was doing that classic middle-class British thing of just pretending that the horrific event unfolding five feet from her head wasn’t happening. It’s a real British talent, acting completely indifferent as horror unfolds all around. So as this man urinated next to Gran, Mother started showing the family the many interesting functions of the rental car: ‘Oh, look, you press this button and the lights come on. The CD goes in and if you press here it comes straight back out.’

I, as the son and the man I was slowly becoming, failed in my challenge to step up and deal with the situation myself. So it fell to Gran. After a long pause and a few more buttons pressed by Mum, my gran declared loudly: ‘Look how black it is.’

Now, for the record, I am fully aware that this is a totally unacceptable, offensive thing to say. And everyone was offended by the statement – except me. Because I wasn’t looking at the guy outside our rental car; I was looking at my gran, who wasn’t looking at the man either. She was staring out the opposite side of the car, into the sky, at a massive rain cloud. This gave me the opportunity to finally save my family. I wasn’t an alpha who could take control – I had been too mollycoddled by my loving parents to take any action that didn’t involve their direct support and encouragement – but what I could do was be funny. So, with my parents still in utter shock and disgust at the situation that was unfolding, I said: ‘Hey Nanna, want to stand underneath it and I’ll get a photo?’

My gran’s reply was almost instant: ‘Pass me my umbrella.’

At which point Mum just panicked and shot off. She went from awkward Brit abroad to bank-job getaway driver in two sentences. It was a beautiful thing to watch as my mum sliced through the thick drizzle (from the clouds, not the penis), jumping red lights like she was trying to drive away from her own shame and embarrassment. It’ll not work, Mum, because Gran’s in the back. After a minute or so, and with my parents still totally oblivious to the whole cloud situation, my gran said: ‘I’ve not seen one that big since your grandad passed away.’

What a lovely moment. God bless you, Nanna.

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