Katherine Ryan reveals she had ‘scary’ male fans would often follow her home after gigs and opens up about calling out sexual predators in the comedy world

Katherine Ryan has opened up about her ‘scary’ experiences with men in the early days of her television career.

The comedian, 41, is hugely successful in her field and has appeared on shows including Mock The Week and 8 Out of 10 Cats.

And talk to Good Housekeeping UK she now recalls several encounters with male fans who tried to follow her home after performances.

She said: ‘When I started in television, male viewers could be strange to me.

“I had very strange lone wolf men… Before I had a tour manager, they would follow me to the train and keep talking to me.

“I tried to be polite and set a boundary, but some of those interactions were scary.”

She also discussed addressing sexual predators in the comedy world, but said she has had luck with most of the shows she has worked on.

Katherine said: “No one has tried anything weird with me because I’m probably really scary.

‘I am aware that by saying that I could be seen as a victim blaming person, so I want to make it clear that I am not saying that someone else has received poor treatment because they have ‘the wrong energy’.

“I think some of the luck I got was the guys I came up with: Joe Lycett, Rob Beckett and Romesh Ranganathan are just really, really good guys.”

It comes after Katherine last October shared the pointed message she sent to former male colleagues who got in touch after revealing there was a ‘dangerous male comic’ on the circuit.

The star claimed last year that there is a ‘dangerous comedian’ working in British showbusiness.

She hosted the Glamor Women Of The Year Awards in London in October and was honored with a Feminist Hero Award for speaking out about the alleged predator.

During her speech, Katherine revealed that a host of men she had worked with previously reached out following her confession – all looking for ‘proof messages’ that she was not talking about them.

“So I had to copy and paste a hundred times. “Do you really think you should text me after everything that happened between us,” said Katherine as she revealed how she responded, causing a huge laugh from the female audience.

Katherine said last year she was “struggling” with deciding whether to work with “someone who I believe is a perpetrator of sexual assault” or turn down jobs.

Referring to the male comedian in her speech, Katherine began, “After some soul-searching, I thought, ‘Why should I stay home? He’ll be there in his unnecessarily tight jeans, he’ll be there with an indoor hat or a Tibetan monk for opinions, or whatever he’s up to.”

“And so I accepted the gig, but every time I had to speak to him I said things like, ‘I don’t get paid enough to be here, especially for how often my face will be on the news when your victims come forward. . ‘ and funny jokes like that.

“It happened so long ago that we still used the word victim by the way, we now say survivor, which would have been a completely different Destiny’s Child song, less powerful.”

Katherine went on to say that everyone in the industry already knew this man was a predator, but survivors didn’t feel comfortable speaking out.

“I tried not to get him canceled because everyone knew,” she said. “Why didn’t you tell journalist Katherine,” everyone knew. “Why didn’t you tell the police,” everyone already knew. Everyone knew, but they couldn’t prove it.

‘What the journalist wanted from me was never his name, but the names of the women. The women who had told me their stories and I believe in a woman’s right to physical autonomy, just as I believe in the right to autonomy of her voice, and if they don’t want to come forward, that’s their business. So I couldn’t say anything.’

Speaking about the other men, she continued, “But because I didn’t want to name my colleague, a funny thing happened. I started receiving texts from guys I had worked with over the years, like actors, comedians, musicians, just like “Hey Katherine, how are you.”

“I didn’t know what they wanted so I showed these texts to my husband and he said, ‘Oh, they just want a poof text, they want you to send them something nice back so they can show their agent and their wives that you certainly weren’t talking about them.”

“So I had to copy and paste a hundred times: ‘Do you really think you should text me after everything that happened between us?’

The Canadian-born comedian told host Lauren Laverne on an episode of Desert Island Discs last year that while she believed the man “is or was dangerous,” she was willing to appear on a show with him. The episode came out as Russell Brand was at the center of allegations of rape and sexual assault, which he denied but had previously been recorded.

Katherine has been outspoken about the issue and is said to have challenged Russell when they co-hosted TV comedy show Roast Battle in 2018, making on-camera comments about him that were later removed from the broadcast.

You can now read the full interview in the February issue of Good Housekeeping