Iain Stirling Quotes

I've been a comedian since I was fourteen. But I've never really been a CEO.

I have no qualifications to do anything else and there weren't any formal application forms you had to fill in for stand-up, so I thought I'd give that a twist.

I left home to become a singer and didn't realise when I turned comedian.

No, I never really set out to be a stand up. I wanted to be a writer of some sort. I thought I'd do a bit of stand up and hopefully that will lead to stuff and little did I know it kind of snowballed. Before I knew it I was doing stand up 300 nights a year.

What happened was, in my final year of university in Australia, there was a campus comedy competition, and I felt like it was something I could do. I won that competition, and I kept doing it, and I couldn't get a job in law. So I just kept doing comedy.

My family were nothing but pleased when I told them I wanted to be a comedian.

When I first graduated college, I told my parents I'd try to pursue comedy for the first year or two, and if it didn't work out, I'd put my nose to the grindstone and try to find a job somehow. I went to UCB, and it clicked with me.

I'm always doing comedy and will never hit up a 9-to-5 desk job.

You must realize that honorary degrees are given generally to people whose SAT scores were too low to get them into schools the regular way. As a matter of fact, it was my SAT scores that led me into my present vocation in life, comedy.

Stand-up came out of three things. Frustration, necessity and arrogance. I didn't have a great career ahead of me in anything. Someone literally said to me, 'You should try stand-up,' and took me to a venue.

I guess I still feel that I'm a comedian; if I had to pick one thing that I feel like I could do, it would be that. That doesn't mean that I like it, but I feel that's what I am.

Our first gig was a battle of the bands. We did 45 minutes of comedy and never played a note - and we won!

I do films which get me out of my comedian routine so that I don't get bored being a stand-up comedian. And with films, it's here today, gone tomorrow. So stand-up comedy is here to stay for me.

I'm proud to say that I've never had a normal job. I started doing stand-up when I was in high school, purely as a measure to never get a proper job.

We then took a shortened version of what we'd been doing in the pubs, with the best gags and things like that, out to cabaret clubs and things in the north of England for six weeks. And we became a big success.

In my early 20s I was so miserable doing construction, I wanted something that paid money. I liked nice stuff. I liked cars and architecture, and things that cost money. I wanted to not swing a hammer, and make money... and not do stuff that was dirty. I attempted to get into comedy. I started to do stand-up, but I wasn't very good at it.

I'm a stand-up comic. Anything else I do besides that is a plus, but stand-up comedy is what I do, it's what I've been doing and it's what I'm going to keep doing.

Did you know I started out as a stand-up comic? People don't believe me when I tell them. That's how I saw myself, in comedy.

I had always fancied a go at the comedy and when it started to go reasonably well and the opportunity arose for me to move into it full time, I just couldn't turn it down. I just took the risk, and I just wanted to see if it would work and thankfully it did.

I always want to go back and do stand-up; I like the freedom.

If I can make a teacher's salary doing comedy, I think that's better than being a teacher.

I was a stand-up comedian for 10 years, if you can believe it. And I gave it up at age 22.

I didn't really want to be a comedian.

It takes many years to be a great comedian.

I realize as I get older that stand-up is a huge part of who I am. I think I'll do it for the rest of my life.