Love Island's Iain Stirling used to rehearse Queen's death every year while hosting CBBC
21.05.2024 - 12:31
/ dailyrecord.co.uk
Love Island's voiceover star Iain Stirling has opened up about the sombre rehearsals he had to go through while working at CBBC, in case he needed to announce the death of Queen Elizabeth. The comedian discussed the behind-the-scenes details on the Some Laugh podcast, hosted by fellow comedians Marc Jennings, Stephen Buchanan and Stuart McPherson.
During his stint on the children's channel from 2009 to 2013, and a brief return in 2015, Iain revealed that there was an annual plan in place at the BBC for such an event. He shared that he would practice the announcement every year due to the live nature of his TV work.
Iain even disclosed that he had a black T-shirt stashed under his desk ready to wear if the news broke. While chatting on the podcast, Iain recounted: "When I was at the BBC, for kids TV, we used to rehearse every year for what would happen if the Queen died, because we were on live TV. So I genuinely had a box under my desk with a black t-shirt in it."
Stuart queried: "What would happen? You and the dog singing 'God Save The Queen? " To which Iain responded: "Every time we rehearsed they insisted on having the puppet dog in it, and trying to make that not offensive, which is impossible.", reports Wales Online.
"So I would go, 'Unfortunately, Queen Elizabeth has sadly passed away.' The dog would go: 'Ohh. No! ' And some producer would be like: 'Cut! '".
"And then they tried doing him not talking. So I go: 'The Queen's passed away,' and he would be sobbing... If the Queen had died when we were hosting kids TV, what would've genuinely happened was, it would've been me and then they made the dog stand in a corner facing the wall."
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