Katherine Ryan interview: Comedy is a Conversation

Katherine Ryan chats about fame, the welcoming UK comedy scene and the meaning of her show title.

Feature by Jenni Ajderian | 06 Apr 2016

Few comedians’ material is on the same level of high-calibre analysis and theme-spotting prowess as Katherine Ryan. Variously described as icy, waspish and acerbic, her cutting, introspective and up-to-the-minute barbs tend to tear apart the pompous and powerful. By punching up, she can expect to ruffle some feathers along the way, but instead of political satire her focus is more on celebrity culture as a whole, or the media's odd reaction to and celebrification of a news story.

“I'll hang celebrity stories on a greater theme,” Ryan says, whether using an example of a martyred lion to demonstrate how obsessed we are with fame, or of a woman contractually obliged to keep working with her abuser.

"It’s not just about Kesha,” she continues. “It’s about a recurring theme of women being assaulted and marginalised in that industry, and unfortunately that is not a new thing and it’s not going away. While the news changes, the themes remain the same: Oscar Pistorius in some ways is just OJ [Simpson] 20 years on. In a way it’s really discouraging.”

Katherine Ryan on comedy's enduring appeal

When on TV, Ryan is usually the one on the panel making incisive comments about celebrity, to the extent of making viewers guffaw into their tea, perhaps trying to figure out if the joke was too close to the bone. On the page, via her weekly column in NME, she wryly dissects politics, celebrity and the links between them, and in her live shows, she does all of this to ever-growing audiences. The current run of her third live show, Kathbum, has been extended and extended again due to phenomenal demand. Since the new year she’s performed Kathbum 23 times (if you don’t count the night she was on top of a mountain in Austria as part of Altitude comedy festival). 

“I say yes to a lot because I’m interested in a lot,” she tells us over the phone, just before show number 24 in Cambridge. “I just love comedy and I’m so open to watching other people in comedy. Anything that makes me laugh, I want to watch it, I want to listen to it, I want to be part of it. But standup is the bones of all of that. It’s important to be doing live comedy, because comedy is a conversation, and that’s when you get to see people and meet them and see their towns.”

Ryan's subject matter – pop stars, actors, make-ups and break-ups – has been likened to that of a women's magazine, and in many ways this is accurate. It's the editorial in that magazine, and how it treats its material, which makes it absolutely killer. “It’s important to entertain people and be funny and talk about the news,” she says, “but somewhere in there I always hope to have an introspective assessment of an important theme that matters to me.” Take that, Heat.

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There is of course an irony in someone who speaks so critically of fame and celebrity status becoming a regular on all kinds of TV shows, her face more and more familiar to the viewing public. Is she not concerned about becoming a celebrity herself?

It would seem not: when it comes to fame, “comedians are largely not interested. I don’t think that we court fame in the same way. Comedians, in my experience, are lovely, humble people, because even the biggest comedian in the whole world has to go on stage and risk dying on his ass.”

Anyone who has braved a preview show or a new-material night will recognise this: comedians old and new all need to preview their new jokes on someone. “It’s like every time you write new material you become a new comedian,” she observes. “And it takes a really long time to get to the point where people come to see you on purpose; you have to slog it out on night buses, being heckled, and for that reason comedians are really supportive of younger comedians starting out. We’ve all done the same. Actors or singers, you sometimes have an overnight success story, but with comedians it’s just not possible.”

Ryan, at this point, is far from new on the comedy scene, or on the shores of the UK. Having started doing stand-up at uni, she left her native Canada eight years ago and has been living, gigging and raising her daughter in the UK ever since. The comedy scene on this side of the Atlantic has been far more welcoming than the one out West.

“When you’re a comedian in Canada you have to travel a whole lot, of course, but you also have to play a lot of rural towns that are maybe just not interested in alternative comedy,” she says.

A person on stage telling jokes about celebrities, does that really count as alternative?

"The fact is that at that time, as a woman, I was an alternative comedian. But I found a place in the UK because it’s such a positive culture: people will pay to see live music and art every night of the week, and comedy is valued. Because of that, different kinds of comedy are valued, and I think a lot of Canadian comedians come over here for that reason.”

Kathbum: family and childhood nicknames

While writing her current show, Ryan found herself in an odd place identity-wise. “I’ve got to a point in my own life where my daughter is six and a half. She’s definitely very British, and I’ve been away from my family for enough time that I can now take a pause and look at where they are and where I came from. Taking a look back rather than a look forward.”

Writing a speech for her sister's wedding made the Ontario-born Londoner reassess what she left behind and what she moved towards. The show's title, Kathbum, is taken directly from her childhood: this was her family's nickname for her, and it has followed her ever since.

But what makes Ryan distinctive remains: "My style and my voice haven't changed. I’m kind of taking the pressure off celebrities in this show, and putting it on my family. The people who really deserve it.”

PC police, fear not: judging by her daughter’s performance alongside her at knockout five-star Fringe show The Wrestling last year, we can safely assume that the thick skin and the sense of humour run in the family.


Katherine Ryan: Kathbum:
Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool, 16 Apr, 8pm, £24.50/£18.50 
City Varieties, Leeds, 21 Apr, 8pm, £20.10
The Pavilion Theatre, Glasgow, 23 April, 7.30pm, £18.50/£15

http://www.katherineryan.co.uk