Katherine Ryan, comedian

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 29 October 2023

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Katherine Ryan is a Canadian comedian and writer. Her edgy and provocative routines have led to sell-out tours, comedy specials on television and her sitcom series The Duchess. Based on her experience at the time, the Duchess tells the story of a successful, happily single mother and Katherine wrote it out of frustration because she believed no one else was telling a story like hers on screen. Katherine was born in Sarnia in Ontario where she attended a local French-speaking primary school. The school celebrated the arts and Katherine became a musical theatre enthusiast who could sing, dance, write and act. Later she moved to Toronto where she studied city planning and worked for a branch of the restaurant chain Hooters. She credits the latter with teaching her the value of being entertaining and smart. In 2008 she relocated to London with her boyfriend and a few years later she got her big break as a comedian, performing on the panel show 8 Out of 10 Cats. By now a single mother to daughter Violet, she developed a rapport with audiences by sharing stories from her own life – both funny and sad. She describes her tendency to connect with her fans in this way as her “language of love”. In 2019, while filming an episode of the BBC series Who Do You Think You Are in Canada, she met up with her high school boyfriend, Bobby. They hadn’t seen each other for 20 years but the spark was still there and later that year they married in Denmark and went on to have two children together. The programme was recorded on September 6th. DISC ONE: Spice Up Your Life - The Spice Girls DISC TWO: The Real Slim Shady - Eminem DISC THREE: La Isla Bonita - Madonna DISC FOUR: Soul One - Blind Melon DISC FIVE: 22 - Taylor Swift DISC SIX: Psychic City (Classixx Remix) - Yacht DISC SEVEN: Crash Into Me - Dave Matthews Band DISC EIGHT: 16 Shots - Stefflon Don BOOK CHOICE: The Highway Rat by Julia Donaldson, illustrated by Axel Scheffler LUXURY ITEM: A hat and skincare set CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Spice Up Your Life - The Spice Girls Presenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Paula McGinley

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts
0:04.9	Hello, I'm Lauren LeVern, and this is the Deser Island Discs podcast.
0:08.6	Every week I ask my guests to choose the 8 tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take with them
0:13.9	if they were cast away to a desert island.
0:16.5	And for right reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast.
0:21.2	I hope you enjoy listening.
0:30.0	My cast away this week is the comedian and writer Catherine Ryan.
0:45.9	She's one of the most successful stand-ups in British comedy, with a sell-out tours,
0:49.8	Netflix specials and a sitcom to prove it.
0:52.8	She delights in subverting the stereotypical image of a stand-up.
0:56.4	She has an empiriously glamorous onstage persona,
0:59.5	describing her recent tour costume as the Statue of Liberty and Drag.
1:03.6	Her savage punchlines often skewer the bleakest realities of life as a woman,
1:08.2	and her sitcom The Duchess, about a successful, happily single mother,
1:12.5	was written out of frustration that she couldn't see anyone telling a story like hers.
1:18.0	In her early 20s, she moved to London from her Canadian hometown to support her partner's
1:22.8	comedy career. Things didn't work out as planned, the relationship failed,
1:27.1	and it was her star, not his, that began to rise.
1:30.3	By this time, she was a single parent, earning her stripes on the circuit
1:34.3	as her baby daughter slept backstage.
1:37.2	She says, for many years, I was the unwelcome surprise on a mixed bill,
1:41.2	and now people come to see me on purpose, which is all I ever wanted.
	...

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