Through The Peephole

Having starred in the last scenes of hit Channel 4 comedy Peep Show, Isy Suttie's star is on the rise, says Joseph Francis

feature (edinburgh) | Read in About 4 minutes
Published 28 Jul 2008
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Maybe she’s The One. I really think she might be The One. I must know!

“So, are you The One?”

“Um, I think Dobby is The One, but it’s whether…”

“Whether Mark realises it in time?”

“Yeah.”

Well, so much for the World Exclusive. In fact, Suttie won’t even be drawn on whether Dobby will be reappearing in the next series of Peep Show, Channel 4’s wildly popular Friday night comedy. Or even whether there will be another series. Better put the Pulitzer on ice.

But she's certainly enthusiastic about the show. “I genuinely loved the show before I was actually in it, and it’s great to work on now. There’s a real family atmosphere among all the cast. David Mitchell’s always asking me for input on his crosswords. I never know any of them though. He mocks me for that.”

It hasn’t always been plain sailing for Suttie though. Raised in the harsh climes of Matlock, Derbyshire, she tells tales of misery and heartache as an aspiring young singer/songwriter in a prog-rock band with a penchant for fantasy role-play.

Role-play? Really? “Well, this was before the Internet. Or maybe the Internet just wasn’t in Matlock yet. Anyway, all my band mates used to play it.” I put it to Suttie that, in the light of her fantasy role-playing on Peep Show, she should probably prepare herself for the possibility of becoming a War Quest pinup. This seems to delight her.

Suttie may have left her fantasy role-play days long behind her now, but she’s persisted with the musical stuff. In fact, she started out as a gigging musician. “I quite wanted to be a serious songwriter. But then, when I first started playing shows people just used to laugh at the songs. I thought they were well serious and meaningful, but the audiences obviously thought otherwise.”

However earnest the intentions, her natural inclination to look for laughs probably made the transition from Serious Musician to comic inevitable. “Yeah,” she agrees, “I think that there was something within me that wanted to do comedy, but I didn’t necessarily realise it early on. I always liked finding ways to express myself, but I think my instinct was always to try and get a laugh as well. You probably start playing a joker to hide a world of pain…”

Surely Suttie’s world can't be too painful though? She hotly denies my suggestions that she might use her new found fame to wangle her way into chic London nightspots, pointing out in fact that her new Fringe show, The Suttie Show, is actually a study in failure, centring around the failure to live up to her childhood dreams.

Giving an example of one such disappointment, Suttie tells of how she wanted to play the piano in one of her shows. “I assumed I could play beautifully just because my mum used to be a piano teacher, and it wasn’t till half way through my second show that I realised ‘I can’t really play the piano!’ I had to fall back on a squeezy accordion instead.”

Doesn’t she get recognised constantly though, in the pub or on the street? That must be the stuff of childhood dreams. “Yes, I do, and that’s nice. I think the thing about Peep Show is that people are either die-hard fans or they don’t watch it at all. There’s not much in-between.”

But Suttie is not only involved in Peep Show. She’s currently getting ready for the Fringe show in which she will be performing alone for the second year running. And she’s also writing for Skins, another of Channel 4’s big name programmes, where she is the rather grandly titled ‘Comedy Consultant’, a role she shares with fellow Fringe comics Josie Long and Robin Ince.

So acting, writing, music and comedy all jostle for space on the Suttie resume. How can she possibly hope to combine such a diverse portfolio of interests? “Well, what I’d really like to do is write a kind of musical sitcom. I could do all the different aspects of it, the music, singing, acting, comedy.” If all that sounds a bit like hard work, though, there’s always the War Quest pinup gig to fall back on.