IT'S rather ironic Iain Stirling's new show is about his 'forgotten' generation.

Especially as a comedian and television presenter, the stand-up has done pretty well crossing the generation gap himself.

Teenagers love him as that guy off CBBC, the man who fronts such shows as The Dog Ate My Homework. My generation, the 30s and 40s, know him through watching those shows with our kids, and now there's a whole new cross section of generations who might not recognise the face but will certainly be aware of his distinctive Scottish accent on ITV2's hit show Love Island.

Iain returned to voice last year's second series alongside presenter Caroline Flack and its huge rating's success is, in part, down to Iain's biting one-liners.

"I was pretty sceptical of it at first," he tells me, "but then they told me what was involved, flying off somewhere, doing four hours of work a day and then back to my swimming poll to have a cocktail while I try and make the most of the sun to top up my Scottish tan.

"They said they wanted someone with a regional accent so they couldn't really go for northern England as you'd just think of that guy on Big Brother so I guess it was Scottish or Irish."

Left to write his own script alongside the creator of the series Mark Bush-Cowley, who also works on the links on Ant and Dec’s I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here, Iain wasn't quite sure how is witty, snappy voice-overs would go down with the audience.

Pretty well it turns out.

"We really didn't know where we were going with the first series," he confesses, "but that was part of the joy of it. The idea was to push it as far as we could until an executive said 'No!'

"It's all a bit mad. We're off to the NTAs this week and we're up against Bake Off, a proper television institution and us, a bunch of people just mucking about."

As Iain is quick to point out, like Bake Off, the real stars of Love Island are the good old British general public.

"The cast are great fun," he adds. "My favourite person from the first series was a guy called Jon Clark who is now on the The Only Way is Essex.

"He was one of the funniest people ever, he proposed to the girl he met on the show five weeks after it had finished.

"He used to say stuff like my love for you is like a unicorn.

"And then I loved Nathan and Cara who won this year who are again from Essex, I never realised I got on so well with people from Essex until I did this show."

His trip to the Colchester Arts Centre is a pretty good place to start his new stand-up tour then.

In Onwards! Iain is exploring the perception of his generation within today’s society, as well as looking at their function within it. What critics have called 'an intriguing twentysomething perspective on the current state of his nation'.

Although when Iain explains it, the show sounds a lot funnier.

"They say our generation grew up with the internet," he says, "but I didn't have broadband and all the figures on my computer games were 2D. We didn't have a clue about all this technology we were dealing with, especially when it came to social media and that when you put something on Facebook, it stays there forever, and I mean forever!

"In a nutshell the show is all about how my generation, Millennials in their 20s and early 30s, are perceived by society and how we perceive society.

"It's about how we're being ignored both politically and sociably, even more so now and how nothing is really changing with that.

"The show has changed a lot in the past few months because there have been some big changes with Brexit and Trump so I talk about that a lot as well and more about how if we stopped arguing and maybe just listened to each other for a change.

"I've done the show quite a few times now as I always run it at the Edinburgh Festival which went really well so I'm looking forward to doing it to different audiences.

"I've already been working on new material for this year, I try and come up with a new hour of stuff for each year and so I'll be doing little bits of that on my show, just trying bits on the audience to see a reaction so it should be good."

Judging by his television work and his previous four stand-up shows, let's just say Mr Stirling's comedy credit is good.

It was while studying law at Edinburgh University that Iain began doing more and more stand-up and it was at one gig where he got spotted by a BBC television producer.

"I was doing a set at the Comedy Store in London," he begins, "and this lady came up to me afterwards and said had I thought about being a kids television presenter. I thought she was joking.

"Then she got in touch with me and I came back down to London for an audition. A week after graduating I was on a train down to London to begin presenting on CBBC."

Two years later he received a BAFTA nomination for Best Children’s Presenter, which was followed last year with another nomination in this category.

"It's great fun and I still do it now in Glasgow," he continues, "in the same studio where Mrs Brown's Boys is filmed.

"I'd love to be in that show, but not as myself, I'd definitely want to play a cross-dressing granny who is friends with Mrs Brown."

He's also creating his own shows for the channel, the comedy panel show The Dog Ate My Homework which have included such celebrity guests as Susan Calman, Katherine Ryan, Romesh Ranganathan and Joel Dommett.

"I think we've just got lucky with our guests," he says. "We didn't really go for big names. They're just my mates. Most tend to be not so well known and then have become famous afterwards, although Romesh does come back for each series, which is always a treat."

Iain Stirling: Onwards!

Colchester Arts Centre,

Church Street, Colchester.

Thursday, February 2. Doors 7.30pm.

£12, £10 concessions. 01206 500900.

www.colchesterartscentre.com