Katherine Ryan has admitted that she was once forced to apologise after calling out a child who “bullied” her daughter by name on a podcast.
The stand-up comedian has two children, 12-year-old Violet and eight-month-old Fred.
Appearing on Tuesday’s episode (15 February) of Mel Giedroyc’s Unforgivable – a Dave comedy series in which celebrities share their biggest regrets – Ryan revealed that she’d once “slagged off” child by telling an embarrassing story about him as “revenge” on fellow comic Richard Herring’s podcast.
“I thought it was a funny angle to bully these children in my stand up,” she said. “To talk about them, to slag them off, because to me, comedy is a lot about surprise. So it’s very surprising to have a sweet-looking, young single mom slagging off a bunch of toddlers.”
Admitting that she didn’t realise so many people listened to the podcast, Ryan said that the child had allegedly bullied her daughter “quite aggressively”.
“This f***ing kid,” she recalled. “I can slag this kid off, if his parents don’t like it, they can maybe sort the bullying out and give my child a good day at school… My daughter got a sticker for being a whistleblower.
“So I told this story but with his full name and then his mother confronted me in the school yard. And she said, ‘Well, you’ve certainly immortalised that story by telling it on Richard Herring’s podcast.’”
Ryan apologised to the other parent, telling Giedroyc: “I never should have used the child’s name.”
Last week, Ryan brought Violet up on stage at a comedy show in Leicester after a drunken fight broke out among the audience.
“We’re not at a nightclub, we don’t have to fight each other,” the 12-year-old told the crowd. “People are threatening each other, right? How about we all calm down. It’s like, where are we? Do you people know where we are?”
Unforgivable airs Tuesdays at 10pm on Dave.
