大象传媒 Scotland - 大象传媒 Scotland - Iain Stirling on the 鈥榮nobbery鈥� of some Love Island critics

Iain Stirling on the 鈥榮nobbery鈥� of some Love Island critics

First it was the actor James McAvoy and now the voice of ITV2's smash hit show Love Island is getting a dig in against ‘the critics’.

When Quentin Letts sat down to write his review of Peer Gynt at London’s National Theatre he wasn't to know the anti-critic sentiment he would be stirring up north of the border.

Letts’ review remarked on the play’s “whining Scottish accents” leading to a discussion at this year’s Edinburgh festival over the merits of critics.

Sat alongside James McArdle, whose accent Lett's had been referring to, fellow Scot Iain Stirling was asked by The Edinburgh Show's Grant Stott for his own experience of critics and in particular the stronger critics of Love Island.

“There's a degree of snobbery to it really”, says Iain.

“The big thing I had a couple of years ago was more people applied to Love Island than do to Oxbridge.

You can see the point they're trying to make there, they're saying look at this generation that wanna just be on the television and get famous.”

“Actually you can look at that another way, where you’ve got this system in place now where a bunch of people feel so alienated from these places like Oxford and Cambridge that they were more comfortable applying for a television show.”

“There's a really interesting conversation that can be had but some of the people in the media and the world of critics...the art of conversation has been destroyed and everything's clickbait,” says Stirling.

Despite the recent run-in with Letts, James McArdle acknowledged the importance of critics for artists:

“Critics provide a checks and balance system to artists and I think that's really important. In theatre we have some amazing critics and reveiwers... they’re the ones who should be given the platform but we're just talking about this guy who knows how to get a headline.”