The Sunday Times Magazine • 21alcoholic but he was Irish and born in 1952, so he wasn’t
as involved with the children as my mother. And he had
certain expectations of her that I could see were unfair.”
When Ryan was 15 her mother divorced her father,
quickly hooking up with a younger man, but she still
had a houseful of girls to look after. “She made so many
personal sacrifices just to be our mother. She didn’t do
the things she wanted to do. I think she would have
liked to be in the performing arts, to have freedom of
expression. I think she would have liked to be me.”
Her mother’s oppression was the spur to Ryan’s
ambition. She began working as a stand-up in her early
twenties while she was living in Canada, but her head
was turned by a fellow comedian, 12 years her senior,
“from a different shit town up the road”. They had a
relationship and moved to England, so the boyfriend
could pursue his nascent comic career while Ryan sold
subscriptions to business magazines to pay the rent
— doing occasional spots of stand-up. She was
pregnant by the age of 24, even as her relationship was
foundering, and two years later was a single mother.
Comedy was useful because she could look after
her baby during the day and work the circuit at night,
leaving Violet with the female comedians backstage
when she did festivals. “I realised I had everything
when I had nothing, when things were really tough,
when I was here and Violet was small and I was very
fearful — like, ‘How are we going to survive?’ One
morning I just woke up and was, like, I have [good]
mental health and that is huge. I just thought, ‘You
can do it, there is no reason why you can’t, you have
everything.’ So I just bathed myself in gratitude.”
Ryan’s physical health, however, had begun to
deteriorate. She felt permanently exhausted and sores
appeared on her face. Eventually she was diagnosed
with lupus, an incurable condition that affects the
immune system, and one she is still managing.
“I feel nauseous and tired a lot of the time,” she says.
Then she realised her comedy was actually helping.
“Recently I was feeling particularly nauseous, really
tired, and then I was at my show and I was, like, ‘At
least I’ll feel really good for an hour.’ It occurred to
me, I wonder if that’s why I got into these adrenaline
performing arts, because comedy terrifies a lot of
people, it makes them feel sick, but it actually makes
me feel very well. When I am on stage, that is the
only time in the day that I will definitely, reliably,
not feel like I am exhausted or about to throw up.”
It also allowed her to inhabit a persona, strong,
forthright, no-bullshit, that she was not quite able
to muster in reality. She had moved from a failing
relationship with Violet’s father — whom she has
described as lovely — to dating a catalogue of
unsuitable men, including one who quickly revealed
himself to be controlling, jealous of her success and
threatened by her bravado. He once called her a “c***”
in front of her family (causing her sister to spit at him
in retaliation). “I was attracted to unpredictable,
intense men,” she says.
The only time it was all right was when she was
performing. On stage she could act out doing the things
she couldn’t bring herself to do in real life. “I would
say, I broke up with my boyfriend because he treated
me this way. I had jokes about sex workers I would find
him with. I was very strong on stage. I was modelling
how one should deal with that, but then I was going
straight back home to him. It is also a disassociation,
a way of minimising what was happening.” She would
even maintain this act if her boyfriend was in the“I HATED THE WAY I
WAS. I JUST WANTED
TO BE THE KIND OF
GIRL EVERYONE
LIKED — PRETTY
AND SOFT”
On her late hero
“Joan Rivers
got exactly
what she
wanted from
that final
surgery — to
stop ageing.
Finally, she
nailed it”On men
“I feel that men
are nature’s
gun. You
know, you’re
statistically
most likely to
be killed by
the one in
your house”On her daughter
“I really
recommend
having an
English child.
It’s like having a
tiny, ineffective
butler at home”On dieting
“We want you
to be smaller
so that you take
up less space.
That’s not your
space. What if
a man wants
to golf in it?”➤
RYAN’S
ONE-LINERS...
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