Meet the Iron(ing) Man
Tony Starch and His Passion for Extreme Ironing
“If something's absurd, I'm going to look into it.” — Tony Starch
By day, Tony Starch is mild-mannered Tucson high school educator with a Freddy Mercury mustache and a passion for teaching math. By night? A man on a mission, iron and ironing board always in hand, bouncing from one offbeat location to another — tree, department store, virtual reality studio, arcade, playground, food court, pool – to iron clothing, stage photoshoots, and definitely not save the world.
“Extreme ironing shouldn't exist,” Starch tells me, almost succeeding at keeping a straight face, “and yet it does.”
Not all passions need to change the world. Sometimes, the best ones embrace the absurdity in life, reminding us to have fun and not take life too seriously.
Extreme ironing isn’t anything new: it’s been around since 1997, when Phil Shaw, known as “Steam,” combined the mundane task of ironing with the thrill of outdoor adventure in Leicester, England.
Initially a tongue-in-cheek response to his housemates’ complaints that he didn’t iron enough, Shaw and his friends started taking an iron and ironing board to unusual and often challenging locations, documenting their efforts through elaborate photoshoots.
The sport gained popularity, leading to the formation of the Extreme Ironing Bureau and even a world championship in 2002. Today, it continues to inspire a small but dedicated community of enthusiasts who embrace its absurd and adventurous spirit.
My deep dive into extreme ironing led me to Starch’s Instagram, filled with elaborate and absurd images of him in bizarre locations, always accompanied by an iron and ironing board.
“It’s great having that one thing on the internet that no one really knows about,” he says. “When you find it, you’re like, ‘What the hell, this exists? Like, why don’t I know about it?’ It’s just fun having this somewhat anonymous thing, which no one really knows or believes it’d be you. And when [people] stumble upon it… they’re just amazed by it.”
Starch, known in real life as Kieran McGann, first heard about extreme ironing in high school in the 2000s. Back then, he played a lot of video games. He saw a six-minute CBS special showcasing the sport (“Probably in the background while I was playing an eight-hour shift of World of Warcraft,” he says, laughing). Fascinated, he made a note in the back of his mind, then quickly forgot about it.
It wasn’t until a few years later, in graduate school, that Starch did anything with it. He was looking for a project to pour his energy into when he remembered the special. “It popped back in my mind that, ‘Hey, this would be a fun thing to do as an excuse to get out, hang out with my buddies, explore new places, and just play around with the camera,” he says.
His first ironing photoshoot took place at the McKale Memorial Center, the athletic hub of the University of Arizona where he was a grad student. Seeing that people often brought dogs to basketball games, he thought, why not an iron?
“I just walked in with an ironing board and an iron,” he says. At first, no one really cared. Then a family behind his ironing setup started to complain and sent security over.
“Security came over, asked if the iron was hot, if it was plugged in. And I’m kind of looking around because it’s a basketball stadium. Where are you going to plug an iron in?” The security guard left him alone and let him do his thing.
Since then, Starch has staged photoshoots at countless unusual locations—from an obstacle run (he and a friend would stop at each obstacle and pose with the iron) to Joshua Tree to one of his favorites: the top of an abandoned basketball hoop.
Naturally, his photoshoots attract a lot of attention from curious bystanders and people who discover his photos online. After all, that’s the essence of the “sport”—if you bring an iron and ironing board to a strange location and no one sees it, did you even do anything at all? The purpose is to be seen, whether by onlookers or through photographic proof.
Although Starch now loves the attention and the laughter his photos evoke, he wasn’t always this way. Growing up in Tucson, Arizona, he was reserved and quiet. “I didn’t really like to cause a scene or have people stare at me or look at me,” he recalls.
So what caused the shift? How did Starch overcome his shyness and embrace his passion for life’s absurdities?
“Honestly, I’m not sure,” he admits. “Something flipped and I just decided to have fun. It was more just… I could sit here and be bored and just kind of be boring, or I could go out and do something fun, which is going to be ridiculous, and it’s going to get people to stare… but who cares? Because I’m going to have fun.”
Starch’s mindset echoes the philosophy of sports psychologist Michael Gervais, who emphasizes rejecting the fear of others’ opinions, or what he calls FOPO. By following his passions without fear, Starch inspires others to take life less seriously and find joy in the absurd.
“It’s fun going out and watching people react to the ridiculousness,” he says. One memorable photoshoot took place in a tree in Mount Lemmon. As Starch and a friend were taking photos, two girls walked by, refusing to make eye contact. “They were absolutely embarrassed by the fact that I even existed near them,” he says. Later, he left a business card with his Instagram handle on their car. I bet those girls looked up his account—and never forgot the encounter.
“Unfortunately, I can’t be the ironing man at school because nothing would get done,” he says when I ask him what his students think of his alternate persona. “So I have to be a little more boring and math-y.” But all the students know about it and think it’s hilarious. It helps build bonds with the kids.
Six years after that first photoshoot, Starch’s passion for extreme ironing remains as strong as ever. He has several projects in the works, including building an ironing board that will hold his weight so that he can hike out and stand or lay on the board without worrying about it collapsing and setting up a website to sell merchandise to fellow enthusiasts.
His ultimate dream? To receive an honorary PhD in—you guessed it—extreme ironing.
“Honorary doctorates are kind of bullshit anyway,” he says. “You just get them for going and talking. So why can’t I get an honorary doctorate in extreme ironing? There’s no reason I can’t. They can just make up a degree.” We are both laughing at this point. I can’t help it.
“No one’s going to complain,” he adds. “No one’s going to be like, ‘Oh sir, that’s not an official honorary doctorate degree.”
“What would it mean to you if you got it?” I ask him.
“It would just make me smile and that’s about it,” he says, “And that’s all that matters.”
His passion may not “matter,” but this is someone who knows what matters most in life. And honorary degree or not, I have a feeling he’ll continue to make the rest of us smile in the meantime.
Takeaways
Here is one big thing I learned this week about passion, one exercise you can do to stoke your own inner fire, and one aspect of Starch’s intense enthusiasm that rubbed off on me — and that I now want to learn more about, too!
One Lesson: Finding Joy in the Absurd or Ordinary
Tony Starch’s passion for extreme ironing highlights the importance of finding joy in the absurd or ordinary parts of life. Through extreme ironing, he transforms a typically mundane task into an adventurous and entertaining activity, reminding us that it's okay to pursue passions that may seem silly or unconventional. This lesson encourages us to view all of life with wonder and embrace activities that make us happy, even if they don’t seem to “matter” in a traditional sense.
One Exercise: Revisiting Lighthearted Passions
Reflect on passions you might have written off because they seemed too frivolous or unimportant. Consider what might happen if you leaned into them purely for the fun of it. Ask yourself: What activities have I dismissed as too silly? How might embracing these activities bring joy and spontaneity back into my life? Inspired by Starch, try one of these lighthearted pursuits this week and see where it takes you.
One Curiosity: Other Offbeat Passions?
Starch’s dedication to extreme ironing got me wondering: what other offbeat passions exist that attract such dedicated enthusiasts? When it comes down to it, how many passions come down to embracing a fun, lighthearted approach to life? Here are a few I learned about when going down this wormhole: ferret legging, pumpkin chunking, extreme unicycling, gurning, and air guitar championships are just a few of the ones I discovered (you can be sure I will do some future profiles on these enthusiasts!).