20 • The Sunday Times Magazine
hen Katherine Ryan was a
younger woman, living in
small-town Ontario, working
at Hooters, a restaurant that
requires its waitresses to wear
tiny orange shorts and tight
vest tops to serve chicken
and beer, she dreamt of
getting bigger boobs and
losing the subversive part of her nature: “I hated that
I said the most controversial things. I didn’t want to
be that way at all. I just wanted to be the kind of girl
everyone liked — pretty and soft.”
It never worked. No matter how much fake tan she
applied or how much bleach she put in her hair, and
despite the boob job, Ryan could not stop making
clever jokes. So she gave in, embraced her spikiness,
and now this alchemy of extravagant glamour and cool
wit has made her a successful comedian. Her acerbic
style, inspired by her comedy heroines — the late
Joan Rivers and Betty White — is made all the more
cutting by the politesse of her delivery. She has her
own Netflix stand-up specials and comedy series, The
Duchess, as well as a popular weekly podcast and a series
forthcoming on Amazon called Backstage with
Katherine Ryan, which she describes as “The
Kardashians meets Live at the Apollo”.
Success has allowed her to buy a £3.5 million house
in north London, where she lives with her husband,
Bobby Kootstra, her childhood sweetheart from Canada,
their baby, Fred, and her 12-year-old daughter from a
previous relationship, Violet. The house is a slate-grey
edifice with a swimming pool and steel security gates.
When I arrive on a sunny morning, Ryan is upstairs
showering and I am greeted by three tiny dogs and
Violet, who offers me coffee from a swanky contraption
and settles me into one of several open-plan seating
areas, among multiple expensive scented candles.
When Ryan does descend she is solicitous and well
mannered, apologising for keeping me waiting, her
voice a sort of posh transatlantic drawl that sometimes
fades to a whisper, as if someone is secretly turning
down her volume. She is wearing monogrammed
floral pyjamas gifted by Boden, her hair still wet and
combed back off her face, barefooted with a matching
mani-pedi. “I look like Pete Davidson mostly in my
real life,” she says, although she doesn’t look anything
like Davidson, Kim Kardashian’s stand-up comedian
boyfriend; at 38 she is clear-skinned with an imperious
bone structure that is perfect for deadpan — her
default mode, constantly deployed, even in response
to a comment about her impressive work ethic:
“I used to work for below minimum wage and run
out of money at the end of every month, so if
someone offers me ten grand to go somewhere for
an evening, then you’d better believe I’ll be there. Will
I have to f*** a sheikh? Maybe, I don’t care, I’m going.”
W
Clockwise from
below: performing
at Latitude in 2015;
with husband
Bobby, daughter
Violet and son Fred
as The Incredibles
last Halloween;
with Bobby at their
high-school prom
On stage and television she is recognisable for her
sequins and lacquer magnificence, shimmery make-up,
tonged hair, diamanté headpieces, the sort of thing
you might wear to a 1970s sci-fi disco. This is not her
everyday wear — she considers it a costume, virtually
drag, each tour with its own signature outfit. For her
new live tour, Missus, it’s a blue lamé Gucci gown.
“It originated from bookers or boyfriends, just generally
men, saying, ‘When you do stand-up you have to be
invisible, you have to wear a hoodie and jeans, because
if you look too good the women will hate you and the
men will be distracted and won’t take you seriously,’ ”
she says. “So I did it almost as a rebellion.”
It is also a homage to the women who raised her.
Ryan’s mother and grandmother were elegant
matriarchs, the sort of ladies who wore leather gloves
to drive and tied string around their waists to remind
them not to overeat. “They would never have left
the house without make-up,” Ryan says. She was an
exemplary student, the oldest of three sisters, a high
achiever and self-proclaimed role model. Yet there
was a bleakness to her childhood in the Canadian
petrochemicals town of Sarnia, which was played out
against a backdrop of alcoholic male relatives.
“My childhood was fine, it was really fun. A lot of these
alcoholic men were very engaging, smart and funny until
they turned a corner and you were, like, ‘Woah.’ They
weren’t abusive but there was an ever-present darkness
and an entitlement. I watched a lot of these men just
walk all over these women who desperately loved them
and who kept the house and cooked the food, who raised
their children and worked full time. I saw a disconnect
there, an inequality,” she says. “My dad wasn’t an
