Isy Suttie

Talking Shop: Isy Suttie

Musical comic Isy Suttie is best known for playing Mark's love interest, Dobby, in cult Channel 4 comedy Peep Show.

Talking love with Isy Suttie

Not content with invading (in the nicest possible way) our TV screens this autumn with Peep Show series 7 and Whites, Isy Suttie has a nice juicy run of shows at Soho Theatre.

Portrait of the artist: Isy Suttie, comedian

'I called a geeky-looking guy up on stage and he grabbed my left breast. It was horrible, but I carried on'.

Interview: Isy Suttie

The Peep Show star talks about missing Edinburgh, finding her feet as a musical comic and what that crazy David Mitchell gets up to when he's not filming...

Mark's (David Mitchell) impending fatherhood fast approaches in this sitcom about two hapless flatmates whose horrid luck provides consistent amusement for the rest of us. He and Jeremy (Robert Webb) decide to throw a party, each seeing it as an opportunity for romance. Jeremy tries to make his casual lover Elena (Vera Filatova) jealous. Mark, meanwhile, hopes to finally hook in his long-term object of infatuation, Dobby (Isy Suttie).

Into its sixth series, you feel that Peep Show could and should be with us for decades yet, like Last of the Summer Wine, only funny. This week, Mark trains his ever-desperate sights on the ever-wonderful Dobby (Isy Suttie) while Jeremy finds love with the entirely unsuitable Elena, a Russian lover of music and poetry. Sophie, however, appears when it's least convenient and spills the beans about her pregnancy. Long live the Croydon dystopia.

Hurrah for the return of the Bafta award-winning comedy about two socially inept flatmates. After last week's typically witty first episode in which Mark (David Mitchell) and Jeremy (Robert Webb) tried to avoid facing up to the fact that one of them is to become a father, Sophie (Olivia Coleman) finally reveals whose baby she's carrying. But both boys are more interested in pursuing their respective love interests: Mark makes a final play for IT worker Dobby (Isy Suttie) and Jeremy takes a shine to an arty Russian émigré.

Danny Robins' Music Therapy is a new show described as a sort of Top of the Tops meets Trisha. Here was an opportunity for Robins, along with guests Isy Suttie and beatbox champion Beardyman, to solve both listener and world problems through the therapeutic qualities of music. 'Think of me as a melodic Jeremy Kyle,' suggested Robins, but without 'the latent sense of evil'.

Some of the most amusing sections in this, the first of four programmes, occurred when Robins went out and about hoping to administer his particular style of musical medicine to hard done by members of the community. These included abused traffic wardens and fishmongers feeling the effect of the credit crunch - for the latter, Robins set himself up as an in-store DJ presenting Radio Fish Shop. Suttie's clever song 50 Ways to Sack Your Cleaner, aimed at middle-class housewives who could not bring themselves to let the 'help' go, was another highlight.

Robins' personable style and natural comic talent, paired with a good script, created some genuine laugh out loud moments.

Described by one of the many jingles that stud the show as 'Top of the Pops meets Trisha', the premise is that music can be used to sort out problems. Actually, what it really does during a highly entertaining half-hour is illustrate them. So traffic wardens get a reworking of MC Hammer's U Can't Touch This (it's 'You can't park there'), while a reworking of Paul Simon's 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover becomes a list of ways for timid middle-class people to fire their cleaner. And so on. Robbins is aided by the musical comedian Isy Suttie and the remarkable beatboxer Beardyman. It's worth tuning in for him alone.