Katherine Ryan: Telling Everybody Everyone

Episode: Tattle

Straight-talking Canadian comedian Katherine Ryan opens up about dealing with criticism and people not liking her.

‘I’m always trying to teach people my special programme of not getting riled by things,’ she said.

Ryan explained that there’s a ‘very famous celebrity’ – who she doesn’t name – who refuses to work with her.

She has only met him once when she ended up sat next to him at a BBC dinner when she was at the start of her career,

She admits she ‘wasn’t the ideal dinner guest’ as there was a lot going on in her life.

But she doesn’t know why he doesn’t like her.

‘In life you have to be okay with the fact that some people aren’t going to like you.

‘What’s the old saying? You can be the juiciest peach and some people don’t like fruit.

‘So I don’t put a lot of energy into trying to guess why this person doesn’t like me.

‘Our only interaction has been the dinner from only a decade ago.’

Ryan then responds to some of the comments made about her on Tattle, which describes itself as a ‘commentary website on public business social media accounts’.

‘It was very interesting to see this thread about me,’ she said.

‘As I read the comments, some of them are quite mean but there were some legitimate questions on there.’

How often she has Botox and when she last had it.

Sharing photos of her teenage daughter Violet on Instagram.

Why she has never named the father of Violet.

How she can afford her lifestyle.

And how her comedy has changed over the years as she has grown up and has a family.

Ryan tackles it all.

The questions and comments people feel the need to post online mean that anyone working in the public eye like Ryan does needs to have a thick skin.

She is happy to take some of the negative comments, saying everyone is entitled to their right of reply.

‘Desperate for attention’, ‘bratty’, ‘fake’ , ‘vile’ and ‘arrogant’ are just a small selection of the comments posted on the thread.

‘You’re confusing real life with our characters in comedy,’ she tells one person who accused her of making a misogynistic speech.

Fortunately for Ryan, she doesn’t seem to get too rattled by the comments and turns it to her advantage by using them as material for her podcast.