Comedy: Isy Suttie talks supermarkets, Peep Show and weird fans
Isy Suttie picks all the most glamorous locations for her comedy; the IT department at JLB Credit in Peep Show, a restaurant kitchen in new BBC sitcom Whites – and a supermarket in Matlock for her debut solo show, Love Lost In The British Retail Industry.
“I used to work in a supermarket – the one in Matlock that it’s set in,” says Isy, best known as Dobby, the latest objection of affection for Mark (David Mitchell) in Channel 4 comedy Peep Show.
“I wanted to set it in a supermarket ’cos I think it’s quite an artificial setting, like a hospital, lots of luminous lights and it’s not a place where you’d expect to fall in love, so I like that.”
Premiered at the Edinburgh Festival in 2007, Love Lost is a musical love story based around Carl and Lisa, who both work in the supermarket.
“There are four characters and I play them all,” says Isy. “It’s basically the only four accents I can do!”
Born in Hull but raised in Matlock, Isy (short for Isobel) is an accomplished musician, who as a teenager won a Daily Telegraph Young Jazz award for composition.
So how come she ended up in comedy alongside the likes of Mitchell and Webb and Alan Davies?
“I don’t know if I thought about how I wanted to end up, but I knew I wanted to play music in some capacity for a living – and act,” says Isy, 32.
“I’ve been writing [music] since I was ten or 11, and that’s something that’s always come quite naturally to me; I did try and do serious music for a while, but I just wasn’t good enough, I think, at writing ‘folky’ songs – or whatever category I would have fitted into if my lyrics didn’t have a comedy bent.
“I think my voice weirdly sounds best when I’m doing comedy stuff ’cos I’m not thinking about singing, I’m thinking about the laughs.
“When I was doing the serious stuff I used to think ‘how long am I holding this note on for? Am I sounding right?’ The path was a bit windy, but it happened quite naturally.”
