Isy Suttie

Early life

Suttie was born in Hull to an English mother and Scottish father, and brought up in Matlock, Derbyshire. From an early age she expressed a desire to act and write. She began playing the guitar and writing songs at the age of twelve after she was refused saxophone lessons. As a teenager she was a member of a progressive rock band called Infinite Drift. She attended Highfields School in Matlock.

Career

Suttie trained as an actress at the Guildford School of Acting, graduating in 2000. In 2001 she composed and directed a score for Peter Weiss' play Marat/Sade at the Arcola Theatre in London. Suttie began performing stand-up comedy in 2003. Her act normally consists of music, stand-up and stories, either as herself or under the guise of a character.

Suttie's first television writing was for two series of the popular teenage drama Skins, under the guise of "comedy consultant".

At the 2005 Edinburgh Fringe, Suttie was one of the acts in stand-up showcase The Comedy Zone. In 2006, she acted in Danielle Ward's Take-a-Break Tales at The Pleasance with Neil Edmond and Emma Fryer. In 2007, she performed her debut solo stand-up show, Love Lost in the British Retail Industry, which she took to Sydney Arts Festival and on a UK tour in 2010–11, and in 2008 her second solo Edinburgh show The Suttie Show. She played psycho killer Sorrow in the revival of Danielle Ward and Martin White's cult musical Gutted at the Leicester Square Theatre for two performances in February and March 2011. She took her third solo stand-up show, Pearl and Dave, to Edinburgh in August 2011. She appeared at the Just for Laughs Comedy Festival in Montreal in July 2012.

Suttie occasionally duets with folk musician Gavin Osborn and supported Jim Bob (previously of Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine) on tour in 2010. She also appeared with Jim Bob for the fourth year of the "Nine Lessons and Carols for Godless People" event at the Bloomsbury Theatre in December 2011.

Suttie appeared in the short film that accompanied the song "God of Loneliness" by Emmy The Great, alongside Shazad Latif, directed by Chris Boyle.

Suttie was nominated for Best Female Newcomer at the 2008 British Comedy Awards and Female Breakthrough Artist at the 2011 British Comedy Awards. She was regional winner of the Daily Telegraph Young Jazz Competition (1995) for composition, winner of the Julian Slade Songwriting Competition (1998) and Chortle Awards best newcomer nominee (2005). In 2013, the BBC Radio 4 version of Pearl and Dave won a Gold Sony Radio Academy Award.

She provides the voices for BBC One's Walk on the Wild Side in addition to voicing the character of Josie The Dog in Kristen Schaal and Kurt Braunohler's Penelope Princess of Pets (Channel 4 Comedy Lab). She provides voices for children's series The Revolting World of Stanley Brown. Isy is also the voiceover of several TV commercials.

Suttie has previously appeared as a special guest on the popular podcast, Answer Me This!, in April 2013 alongside hosts Helen Zaltzman and Olly Mann.

Suttie played a waitress called Kiki alongside Alan Davies in BBC Two's Whites, which aired in autumn 2010. She has also made TV appearances in Holby City, as Mary Shelley in The Trouble With Love (BBC Two), as various characters in The Incredible Will and Greg (Channel 4), as Lianne in Rab C. Nesbitt (BBC), as a judge in Genie in the House and as a nurse in two episodes of Skins (Channel 4).

She has been on the UK team for the monthly podcast "International Waters", hosted by Jesse Thorn of maximumfun.org. She appeared on episode 2 at the end of March 2012, alongside Dan Antopolski.

In 2012, Suttie voice-acted in the CBBC show The Cow that Almost Missed Christmas alongside Johnny Vegas. The show was a one-off animation which gave a unique interpretation of the Christmas Nativity seen through the eyes of a cow called Marjorie, who Suttie voiced.

She played the regular character Esther Blanco in last series of Shameless, broadcast in 2013. In January 2013, she appeared in the ITV comedy drama series Great Night Out as Bev.

She was cast as IT geek Dobby in Peep Show in 2008, a role that she continued to play for the remainder of the show's run until 2015.

Suttie has written and appeared in many shows on BBC radio, including her own BBC Radio 4 series, Isy Suttie's Love Letters, which began in 2013. She is also a regular presenter of The Comedy Club on BBC Radio 4 Extra and has acted in two of Tim Key's radio shows.

In August 2013, Suttie appeared in the one-off revival episode of the television series Knightmare as Treguard's assistant Veruca/Daisy. The 26-minute episode was aired as part of YouTube's "Geek Week" celebrations.

Suttie appeared in the S4C Welsh learners programme Hwb as a Welsh learner (which she is in real life) in a regular sketch called "Y Wers Gymraeg" ("The Welsh Lesson"), starring her partner Elis James.

In 2014 she wrote and starred in a short film, The Best Night of Roxy's Life, alongside Philip Jackson and JJ Burnel of The Stranglers. The film tells the story of Roxy, a Stranglers superfan who meets JJ, her hero.

In February and March 2014 she starred as Phyllis Pearsall, the creator of the A–Z map, in the musical The A–Z of Mrs P, which ran at Southwark Playhouse.

In January 2016, her first book, The Actual One, was published by Orion.

In September 2016, she began a six-episode run on the Channel 4 TV show Damned as Natalie, a temporary receptionist. She also appeared in the sitcom Man Down as Miss Clarke.

Personal life

Suttie is engaged to Welsh comedian Elis James. The couple live in London and have one daughter, born October 2014.