Neil Sutherland

Neil Sutherland (born December 30, 1991) is portrayed by Blake Harrison; he made his first appearance during the pilot episode "First Day", broadcast on 1 May 2008. He appears in every episode of the series, as well as appearing in the follow-up films The Inbetweeners Movie (2011) and The Inbetweeners 2 (2014).

Neil is a student at Rudge Park comprehensive, along with Will, Simon and Jay. He is the most socially accepted out of the group as he is too stupid to really offend anyone, and he just does what he's told when he's told.

Personality

Neil is known to be the dim-witted, gentle and gullible "nice guy" member of the group. He often fails to appreciate that he is responsible for the bad situations he causes, and fails to pick up on sarcasm, often taking comments seriously and consistently believes Jay's compulsive and blatant lies. Neil's simpler mind means he is often happy and positive and he displays less of the selfishness and obsession with sex as the others. He tends to be the most sexually experienced member of the group. He is also a skilled dancer, as evident throughout the series.

Often happy and carefree, Neil is shown to be the most good-natured of the group, although he is often too stupid to realise when he is being helpful or not. As made obvious throughout the series, Neil is quite thick, and will usually do and say stupid things that the others find ridiculous. The most common insult to his IQ level that the others dish out is when they call him a 'fucking idiot' after he does or says something that is stupid. Neil is also shown to have a rather charismatic and flirtatious side, as he is the most successful with girls, and is the only one of the group to have had sex. His dimwitted side also leads him to be very naïve, shown by when he believes Jay's outrageous lies, no matter how far fetched they may be. This is also why Jay considers Neil to be his best friend and even tells him to be on his best behaviour. He is also very friendly, often attempting to solve the problem at hand, despite being unsuccessful at most attempts. He also has a large lack of general knowledge, even for the simplest of things.

Likes:

Pro Evolution Soccer

Sausage Rolls

Appearance

Tall and gormless, he is the most intimidating of the group (not saying much). Neil stands at 6ft1"; a tall guy that attracts the older women. He obviously has charisma, being more successful with women than all the others combined.  He usually wears the traditional school blue jumper and wears a variety of different clothing when out of school.

Relationships

Friendships:

Jay Cartwright: Neil and Jay are best friends, possibly because Neil is slow to pick up on Jay's consistent lying and is very vulnerable to Jay peer pressuring him. Their friendship is evident from Series 1 to Series 3 and then again in both of the movies.

Simon Cooper: Neil and Simon are quite close friends, despite a slight difficulty in making conversation between one another when Will and Jay aren't present. Despite this, Neil and Simon do have a strong friendship. Neil is a lot more sympathetic than Jay towards Simon as he often tends to him when he's upset and often helps him with anything he needs help with, such as getting changed for the fashion show in series 3.

Will McKenzie: Neil and Will are friends; even though Neil and the group tried to avoid Will at first, they gradually accepted him into the group, Neil often fantasises over Will's mum, even making her a Valentine's Day card. He also reveals to Will that he masturbates over her in Home Alone. Neil reveals that he does care a lot for Will, though, as he asks Simon in The Camping Trip that if he wants him to look after Will when Simon moves to Wales, he also admits to Will that he worries about him. In the movie, Neil and Will maintain the friendship (even though Will says "The lads on tour" with Neil replying "and you", which shows that he may not consider him to be fully part of the group yet). This is shown when he and Will have a heart to heart conversation. They develop a full and strong friendship in the first movie and maintain it throughout the second movie.

Romance

Girl at the Caravan Camp: In Caravan Club, when the boys are driving home from the caravan camp, the group notice stains on the seats of the car. Neil then reveals that they are stains from his semen as he and the girl from the caravan club came into Simon's car soon after the party, where she gave him several handjobs and he fingered her.

Girl at Jay's party: Neil mentions in Xmas Party that he "fingered a bird" at one of Jay's birthday parties.

Charlotte Hinchcliffe: Neil does mention to Will at the end of The Fasion Show, that he did kiss Charlotte once and also hints to Simon and Jay that he had fingered her.

Kerry: Neil mentions to Will, Simon and Jay in Will's Birthday that after Will was thrown out of his house for unintentionally upsetting Kerry at his birthday party, he received oral sex from her several times that night in his bedroom.

'Saucy Asda' Karen: During Series 3, Neil works on-off at Asda and begins a relationship with a co-worker named Karen (who works at the cheese counter). In the final episode of series 3, Neil worries that he has impregnated Karen after having sex with her as she texted him claiming she was "positive", but receives a text near the end of the episode revealing she was "positive" for chlamydia, not pregnancy. He celebrates the fact that he has contracted an STD from her, assuming that this is a good thing.

Nicole: In the first Inbetweeners movie Neil has an age-appropriate girlfriend named Nicole, whom he swears he couldn't cheat on whilst on holiday because he thinks he loves her and he has "effics" (ethics); however, his definition of cheating changes conveniently with his sexual activity, such as it's not cheating if there's no kissing, or not if only "the tip goes in; any more than that is cheating".

Lisa: Despite already having a girlfriend (Nicole), Neil meets and becomes attracted to Lisa during the first Inbetweeners movie, he is the first to show interest in Lisa, Alison, Jane and Lucy. Lisa at first struggles to get together with Neil as they found it hard to speak to each other and he often ends up dancing with older women every time she sees him. When it comes to the boat party, a boy called Richard introduces him to his parents when Neil is about to kiss his mother as a polite gesture, Lisa says her first line "Back off bitch, not this time". Neil then realises how much Lisa cares for him. However, Lisa finds out about his girlfriend during the boat party and she expresses her unhappiness with the situation because she too has "effics". Neil tells her Nicole dumped him before they left for Malia, he only claimed that he still had a girlfriend so Will, Simon and Jay didn't make fun of him. Lisa and Neil begin an official relationship and are constantly seen making out throughout the credits scenes. Neil's claims about not going out with Nicole any more are revealed to have not been true as she appears at the airport waiting to welcome him home. Neil quickly runs off with Lisa to avoid Nicole, leaving her confused. Neil and Lisa's relationship ends before the events of the "Inbetweeners 2".

Michelle: When the group find Jay in Australia, Neil mentions that he had fingered his cousin Michelle.

Nikki: Current Girlfriend (The Inbetweeners 2). Neil meets Nikki at Byron Bay when he is visiting Jay in Australia. While camping at the youth hostel, Nikki falls out with her husband round the camp-fire and takes off her shirt and sits next to Neil, clearly implying she is attracted to him. In the credits scenes, when Neil returns from Vietnam, he is greeted by his father, though ignores him and begins to make out with Nikki (who was also waiting for him at the airport); implying that they had begun a relationship.

Family:

Kevin Sutherland: Father Kevin Sutherland is the father of Neil and Katie. He is currently single; his wife having left him. His occupation or employment status is not directly stated, however, it is acknowledged that he is short of money, with Jay regularly calling him 'pikey', suggesting that he is most likely unemployed. A recurring theme across every series is whether or not Kevin is gay. Both Kevin and Neil deny this and try to justify otherwise, for example, Neil acknowledges that his Dad has a collection of heterosexual and lesbian pornography (which could not be located). There are subtle hints however that Kevin is indeed homosexual. For instance, when accompanying Will's mother Polly to a meeting with Mr Gilbert following Will's assult by his work experience colleagues, Kevin expresses his disgust of them throwing "a young naked boy into the water", an image he appears to dwell on. Polly quickly points out that she "never said Will was naked".

Katie Sutherland: Sister Katie is Neil's attractive elder sister who currently lives at home with the Sutherlands, along with her boyfriend. Katie is incredibly assertive and often loosely hostile towards the boys (bar her brother, Neil) and reveals in the series 2 episode "A Night Out In London" that she is fully aware of Will, Jay and Simon's physical attraction towards her.

Mrs Sutherland: Mother: She never officially appears but it is mentioned several times throughout the series that Neil's parents divorced, resulting in his mother moving out and abandoning him. Jay also believes the reason she divorced his father was because he is gay. She still clearly cares for Neil as she buys him a motorbike for his 18th birthday, but she never officially returns to visit him.

Neil's Granny: Neil's granny is his father Kevin's mother. Her name is unknown however, she was in shock when Neil told Simon to "not spunk on the sheets". She is a cold woman, never seems to smile often and takes matters very seriously.

Characterisation

Neil is known to be the slow and gullible member of the group. He often fails to appreciate he is responsible for situations he has caused – blocking the toilet at Will's, soaking Simon's car upholstery with various bodily fluids etc. He fails to pick up on sarcasm, often taking comments seriously and consistently believes Jay's compulsive and blatant lies. Neil's simpler mind means he is often friendly and outgoing as well as more accepting of Will and he displays less of the selfishness and obsession with sex as the others.

He works at Thorpe Park as a mascot/character and it appears he is the subject of bullying by fellow employees – although in typical Neil fashion this point is lost on him and he finds it amusing that his clothes keep going missing saying with a laugh that "Last time this happened they burnt them!". He also used to work at ASDA and early in the movie we see Neil behind the deli-counter at a supermarket serving a line of customers. His dream job is said to be an airline pilot, after trying to apply for a pilot as work experience and offering to fly the flight to Crete in The Inbetweeners Movie. He has, along with Simon, passed his driving test and owns a car, but he is yet to drive it as it does not have an engine.

He can do "The Robot" – in fact, it is the only dance moves he has which he performs at every opportunity with abject concentration to quite skilled effect. He has a crush on his biology teacher Miss Tims, the partner of fearsome head of Sixth form, Mr Gilbert. His friends tease him about his father being gay (the term the group like to use being bender or Will's portmanteau (while drunk) "bumder"); both Neil and his father strongly deny these rumours.  

Despite being the slowest member of the group and less outwardly concerned with sex, he has by far the most luck with women, fingering several girls, and having spent a night in Simon's car with a Goth in the series one episode "Caravan Club." It is also revealed that he snogged and fingered Charlotte Hinchcliffe after Will was with her, although telling Will only of the snog but gesturing to the others behind Will's back. He also managed to get a blowjob off Will's crying date Kerry at his 18th birthday party. In a deleted scene from Series 3, Neil's father reveals that Neil's middle name is Lindsay. In the show, Neil is known to end up with sexual encounters with various seen and unseen female characters on the show, eventually ending up with chlamydia - which he is actually happy about since he assumed her text saying 'the test was positive' meant that she was pregnant.

Neil has many personality "ticks": he becomes emotional and "teary" when he needs to defecate but can't, he occasionally urinates sitting down "as a treat" (he defecated in a bidet as a treat whilst on holiday) and has a "problem" with bed-wetting - possibly latent trauma due to his mother and fathers divorce in his early years.

Trivia

• Throughout the series and the movie, Neil seems to be more interested in 'one night stands' than having a lasting relationship. He also appears not to care about the age of his partner as he is seen pulling some middle-aged women at the bar.
• Neil is the only member of the group who does not cry in the Inbetweeners series 1-3 because he stopped worrying about stuff when he stopped believing in God (bar both the movies).
• He is the third oldest of the four.
• He is known in the movie for his impressive dancing skills which gets the boys talking to those girls in the club.
• His mental age is revealed to be 12 in Will's Birthday while he was playing Brain Training.
• When he was younger, he used to stick Lego up his anus.
• In "Work Experience", he thought someone who flew planes was called an "Aeroplane Driver" and requested to be one. In the movie, he asked if he could attempt to fly a plane.
• Despite his lack of intelligence, Neil was studying two A-Levels (in Tech and Design, and PE) at the time Will joined Rudge Park. In order to progress to sixth form, he would have had to have passed GCSEs, not necessarily in these subjects, but with relatively good grades.
• In series 1 Neil was taking Biology, however, in 'Exam Time' he is not sitting the AS Level exam in that subject. This is most likely due to the fact that he either dropped out or was kicked out after he attempted to kiss Miss Timms, the Biology teacher at the Christmas prom.
• Neil is shown to be bad with animals when he punched a fish to death in The Field Trip and killed a dolphin by feeding it inedible squeaky toys in The Inbetweeners 2.
• In The Field Trip, he used to go fishing with his father.
• In Will's Birthday, he says he believes in Santa Claus.
• In The Trip to Warwick, Neil wets the bed he is sharing with Will and it is revealed Neil has a regular problem with bed wetting.