Katherine Ryan’s ‘single parent shame’ stopped her from returning to native Canada

‘There was this sense that I had chosen badly,’ comedian revealed

Katherine Ryan has revealed that she used to be reluctant to return to her native Canada due to her “shame” over being a single parent.

The stand-up comedian moved to Britain in 2008 alongside her then-boyfriend, with both eager to make it on the comedy scene. The pair had a baby, Violet, in 2010, before they split up. Ryan has not publicly confirmed the identity of Violet’s father.

In a new interview with The Guardian, Ryan said that after splitting from her boyfriend, she decided to try and make it on her own in London.

“I didn’t mess around, I didn’t stay out for drinks, I didn’t have flatmates,” she recalled. “I’d had a youth already – I didn’t take drugs or do anything too wild back in Canada, but I went to the Playboy Mansion, I got to be a podium dancer, I got to work at Hooters, we had fake IDs at 14, we were having bush parties. I’d done all that. By the time I was in London, I thought: ‘Now let’s get serious.’”

But while she was happy to be a single parent in London, she was nervous to return to her hometown of Sarnia, Ontario, as one.

“I really felt shame about it,” she said. “There was this sense that I had chosen badly; in heteronormative relationships, women are the gatekeepers of who gets to be a father.”

Comedian Katherine Ryan in 2025 (Getty Images)

Today, Ryan is in a civil partnership with her high school sweetheart Bobby Kootstra, with whom she shares two additional children, Fred and Fenna.

“Sometimes I think there’s another life where I haven’t done that, and it’s still just Violet and me, chic, cosmopolitan, portable,” she joked. “But we can’t fully escape where we came from, it turns out.”

Last year, Ryan clarified reports that she had been diagnosed with cancer for the second time, confirming on Instagram that she’d merely paid for a mole to be removed from her arm – later tests proved that the mole was early stage melanoma, which is a form of skin cancer.

“The melanoma thing from my podcast got picked up [by the media] with added commentary like ‘takes a swipe at the NHS,’” she began. “It’s all fine, it’s not a big deal, so don’t stress. And one more thing, it’s not a battle. There’s no battle. The battle is done. I had a mole removed. It came back melanoma, very early melanoma, it’s fine.”

Ryan was previously diagnosed with Stage 2 skin cancer in 2004, but has said it wasn’t “that serious”.

“It wasn’t into my lymph nodes, I didn’t have to have chemotherapy,” she said. “It did recur, but it was easily dealt with. I feel like I was really lucky just to get that lesson, that little smack on the arse of ‘Hey, wait a minute. Listen to your body, here.’”

Ryan with her civil partner, Bobby Kootstra (Getty Images)

In November, Ryan laughed off a series of complaints made by BBC viewers over a foul-mouthed joke made by Ryan and fellow comedian Maisie Adam during an episode of Have I Got News for You.

The joke, which involved David Beckham and King Charles, was met with condemnation from some people watching at home. “Unacceptable,” one person tweeted. “This is a recorded programme, so who at the BBC felt it was OK not to cut or bleep it out?”