Katherine Ryan

Some Lesser Known Facts About Katherine Ryan

• Her father, Finbar, belongs to Montenotte in Cork, Ireland. He moved to Canada when he was 30 years old after working as a draughtsman with Cork County Council.

• Katherine Ryan and her two younger sisters grew up in Sarnia, Ontario, Canada.

• Every summer during their childhood, when Katherine and her sisters were taken to Cork, Ireland, by their father, Katherine discovered Penneys, a national institution.

• Her parents separated when she was a teenager.

• Katherine Ryan holds both Irish and Canadian passports.

• While studying at university, she worked at Hooters and later trained other waitresses.

  

• During this time, she performed at open mic nights for fun. She developed a comedy routine by the time she graduated.

• Katherine Ryan was one of the dancers on MuchMusic’s Electric Circus show.

• After completing her graduation, she continued working for Hooters as a corporate trainer. She travelled across Canada and helped open a branch in Nottingham, UK.

• Katherine Ryan then appeared on the television show Video on Trial, a Canadian music video review show, from 2005 to 2008.

• After that, her partner once wished to visit London, so she agreed to go for a month in 2007.

• In January 2008, Katherine Ryan moved to London from Canada permanently.

• The same year, she won the Funny Women Award and Rachel Stubbings and Sara Pascoe were runners-up.

  

• She gave birth to her daughter, Violet, in 2009, and she raised her as a single parent.

• In 2012, she appeared on the show 8 Out of 10 Cats.

• On 23 February 2013, Katherine Ryan competed on the reality show Let’s Dance for Comic Relief, which aired on BBC One. She performed as Nicki Minaj to Starships. She reached the finals and finished fourth.

  

• In July 2013, she performed at Whitney Cummings’ Just for Laughs Gala.

• Katherine Ryan then started performing comedy routines at the Edinburgh Festival.

• In 2013, she appeared on the show ‘Mock The Week’ during the episode ‘Unlikely Lines From a Cosmetics Commercial’ and commented a joke. She said,
  

  We don’t test any of our products on animals. We use Filipino children.”

• After that, Filipino groups held silent protests outside the BBC office and demanded an apology from her.

• In another interview, Katherine Ryan was accused of racism on social media. She encouraged a Sri Lankan designer by saying,
  

  You need to really back yourself. Do you know how confident a straight white man would be right now? Think about Boris Johnson, how pleased he’d be right now.”

• The BBC defended her and stated that the comment was in line with her usual style of humour.

• On 6 June 2014, Katherine Ryan was featured in the music video of the song Consent by Jack and Dean.

  

• In 2015, she replaced Steve Jones as the host of the show Hair on BBC Two.

• Katherine Ryan then became a panellist on the shows Bring the Noise, which aired on Sky 1 and Safeword, which aired on ITV2.

• In 2015 and 2016, she wrote a weekly column for NME, a British entertainment magazine.

• In 2016, Katherine Ryan competed in the reality show Taskmaster Season 2 and won. She defeated Doc Brown, Joe Wilkinson, Richard Osman, and Jon Richardson.

  

• She toured with her comedy show Kathbum in 2016. The show was named after what her younger sister used to call her.

• In 2016, Katherine Ryan lent her voice to the character Ranceford, a fancy white cat and leader of the Sunshine Circle for Cats in the show Counterfeit Cat, which aired on Disney XD and Teletoon.

• In 2017, Netflix released a stand-up special show ‘Katherine Ryan: In Trouble,’ which was filmed at the Hammersmith Apollo in London.

• That same year, Katherine Ryan co-hosted the show Your Face or Mine? with Jimmy Carr for four seasons on Comedy Central.

  

• In 2018, she appeared as a team captain on the American panel show The Fix.

• Once, Katherine Ryan talked about her relationship with Bobby on the show The One Show.

• She said that she loved Bobby, who was the quarterback of their school’s football team.

  

• They went to prom together but broke up because he wanted to focus on football.

  

• Twenty years later, in 2018, Katherine Ryan saw him in a pub in Canada.

• She realized that she had always loved him.

• In 2019, Katherine Ryan and Bobby Kootstra entered into a civil partnership in Denmark. Her elder daughter, Violet, was present at the ceremony.

• In July 2019, she appeared in her second stand-up show, Katherine Ryan: Glitter Room, which aired on Netflix.

• In 2020, Katherine Ryan appeared in the comedy show The Duchess, which was about a single mother in London. The show was aired on Netflix, and she worked as the writer, executive producer, and creator of the show.

  

• In 2021, she hosted a six-part reality competition, All That Glitters: Britain’s Next Jewellery Star, which aired on BBC Two.

• The same year, Katherine Ryan hosted the dating show Ready to Mingle, which aired on ITV2.

• In 2021, she published her biography ‘The Audacity.’ The book tells her journey from being the daughter of an Irish immigrant in Sarnia, Ontario, to becoming one of the most successful comedians in Britain.

• The biography was considered intense and interesting as it contained a few contradictions.

  

• In November 2022, Katherine Ryan was interviewed by Louis Theroux for the BBC series Louis Theroux Interviews. During the interview, she spoke about an ‘open secret’ in which a well-known television personality was accused of abuse.

• In January 2023, she appeared as Pigeon on the reality show The Masked Singer Season 4.

• In 2025, Katherine Ryan appeared as a judge on the television reality show Canada’s Got Talent Season 5.