I Was Ellie Taylor's First Boyfriend, Apparently

Imagine my surprise when, courtesy of Anne Marie Draycott pointing it out on Twitter, I saw this clip of Ellie Taylor on Live At The Apollo.

"So," she says, in a routine which I can only imagine she's been doing for the last year or more, "I was going out with my first boyfriend, Kevin Sutherland."

She goes on to describe my Bart Simpson tattoo and my Liverpool FC bedspread, and how she lost her virginity to them, and to me. Well, I hate to disillusion everybody, but there are clearly two Kevin Sutherlands in the world, what are the chances?

I would love to find out whether it's the name of her real first boyfriend, or whether she attempted to come up with a made up name and somehow came up with mine, rather giving the lie to my imagining that I have, at least, been heard of by some of my fellow comedians. How soon they forget.

This is not, of course, the first time my name has found its way into a comedy I had nothing to do with, as anyone who's familiar with The Inbetweeners will know.

Yes. As well as being Ellie Taylor's first boyfriend, I'm also Neil's gay Dad. I get about a bit.

This bit of name-calling has an easier explanation, resulting from the days when Iain Morris and I worked together on some sitcom writing a little over 20 years ago. He created the character Jesper who went on to be in the sitcom Yikes It's Jesper, co-written by myself and Ken Elkes, with additional material by half a dozen writers including Iain.

Having staged a couple of episodes as part of Situations Vacant, my first attempt at a live sitcom showcase, we sent Yikes It's Jesper to the BBC and it got snapped up by a producer who knew his onions, the excellent Jon Rolph. Iain, by this time, had graduated from University and gone to work for a series of TV companies, opting out of the project, so his character was written out and the piece renamed Come Together. It was given a BBC radio pilot starring Ben Miller, Arabella Wier, Melanie Hudson and Kevin Eldon, but amazingly didn't make it to a series.

A decade later Iain had worked his way to the top of the sitcom producing business and co-created The Inbetweeners with his fellow Channel 4 commissioning editor Damon Beesley, and the rest is history. I like to think his inclusion of my name for one of the more heavily-ridiculed characters in the show was affectionate. He hasn't, to date, commented on the matter.

Before he moved on to better things, Iain appeared in a few Sits Vac shows. Here he is starring as a posh rapper in Band For Life, a sitcom whose script was, being honest, no better than its title.

Kev F Sutherland, as well as being the man behind The Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre runs Comic Art Masterclasses in schools, libraries and art centres - email for details, and follow him on Facebook and Twitter. View the promo video here.