When comedians Isy and Elis met at a standup gig in Barnstaple in 2009, the first thing she noticed wasn’t his humorous charm, but his Ribena-soaked jacket. “I was excited to be booked alongside Isy because I’d seen her on Peep Show,” says Elis. But while driving from his home in Cardiff, disaster had struck. “There was a carton of Ribena between my legs and I had to brake suddenly,” he laughs.
They had a brief chat before going on stage, and Elis thought she was “really funny and pretty” while Isy noticed he was “fun, if a bit haphazard”. After the gig, Elis accidentally left the jacket behind. Isy was “pleased to have an excuse to see him again” and found his details on their booking email so she could let him know. “Now I wonder if he did it on purpose!” she says.
They became Facebook friends and, although they both fancied each other, Elis’s profile said he was in a relationship, so Isy didn’t think anything would come of it. “I’d actually come out of a relationship 18 months earlier but hadn’t changed my status. It was back when Facebook would announce your breakup to the world with a broken heart. I didn’t want messages from people I went to school with telling me there’s plenty more fish in the sea.”
In December 2009, they were booked to do another gig together, this time in Cardiff, where Elis was living. They had a drink at the bar afterwards, and Elis managed to slip into conversation that he was single. “I don’t know how, but I already knew,” says Isy. “So I was really excited to see him again.” Elis stayed in her hotel room that night. “We had such a laugh. It was just the funniest time in the bedroom I’d ever had,” she says. For Elis, the evening was brilliant because he’d “held a candle for Isy for six months”.
They arranged to meet in London, where Isy lived, a few weeks later. “We went to a pub in Oval. It was the best date I’d ever been on,” he says. Even slipping on ice and bruising his coccyx couldn’t dampen the mood. “When I fell, I swore in Welsh, but I told her it meant ‘Jesus Christ’,” he says. “Afterwards, I think I knew we were going to be together for ever, and I never really even believed in that before.”
They quickly realised they wanted to be together, but the timing wasn’t ideal. “Isy was going to Sydney for a few weeks to work, then I was going there to do standup for three months,” says Elis. They had 12 days together in between the two trips, but being separated was difficult. “We were pining for each other so much,” says Isy. While Elis admits the tour was a great opportunity, he never would have accepted the offer if he had met his partner first. “The time difference was really hard. I’m useless with tech so I spent a fortune on phone calls,” he says.
Elis returned home in May 2010, and they spent as much time together as they could. “We often went to each other’s gigs because it was a chance to see each other,” says Isy. As well as understanding the physical pressures that accompanied life on the comedy circuit, from late nights to frequent travel, they had a shared appreciation of the psychological aspects of the job. “We both feel incredibly lucky to be still doing this 13 years later. But it’s nice to be with someone who appreciates those feelings of self-doubt and criticism,” says Isy.
The couple live together in London and have two children, born in 2014 and 2019. They became engaged in 2016 but haven’t set a wedding date yet. “We will do it, but we moved after the pandemic and still have to unpack the new house properly, which has been hard work,” says Isy. “Luckily we still find plenty of ways to make each other laugh.”
Jane Is Trying (W&N) by Isy Suttie is out now. Her tour show, Jackpot, is at Cardiff Glee on 8 January. See isysuttie.co.uk. Elis co-presents his Radio 5 Live show with John Robbins every Friday from 2pm-4pm.
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