The comedian will have you in stitches, but she can also leave you speechless. Katherine Ryan talks to Eva Wiseman about breast implants and potty training – and the jokes even she wouldn’t risk today
Katherine Ryan has named her autobiography The Audacity, a word (she explains) most commonly used to indicate disapproval. “Like, ‘HOW DARE she carry herself with that wicked abundance of self-belief? How AUDACIOUS!’” It is the perfect title. The absolute perfect title for a memoir by a comedian equal parts louche and lurid, famous for her uncompromising attitude, convincing invulnerability and refusal to self-deprecate. Her cover photo, shot when she was nine months pregnant, sees Ryan lucent and blonde in an ice-blue gown trimmed with marabou feathers, holding aloft in her left hand her favourite of her three tiny dogs.
It is these small dogs that greet me at her front door, and an entirely other lady. Instead of TV’s Katherine Ryan, be-lashed and dazzling, a happy cross between Christine Baranski and Taylor Swift, I’m welcomed by real-life Ryan, makeup-less in leggings, immediately offering me a plate of halloumi salad and a selection of milks for my tea. A breast pump sits on the counter beside a bag of golden hair extensions and outside, by the dainty heated swimming pool, her 12-week-old baby Fred sleeps gently in his pram. The atmosphere is one of Californian tranquillity in the London suburbs, only punctured slightly by her description of a man lowering his anus on to a bed post.
