Katherine Ryan Opens Up About Breast Implants and Past Relationships

We still have a sex life. I don’t know when normal people have sex, but we usually try to fit it in at 10am. I don’t know who’s having sex at night. Aren’t they sleepy? My mistake was accepting toxicity as normalcy. I felt that I could rescue these men and fix the relationship. I wouldn’t have labelled it “abuse”, but when you see the way young women speak now, you’re like, that was coercive and it was emotional abuse, and he was quite aggressive. I didn’t recognise those things. I just thought, oh, every man’s a bit of a dick. Ten years down the line, something really vanilla I’ve said will today be considered a cancellable offence. I do worry about offending people. I like to push the envelope and discuss quite contentious subjects. So naturally, that will upset people. I had breast implants when I was 21. It was one of the best decisions I ever made. I’m probably going to get those taken out when I’m done breastfeeding because breast implants are emblematic of the Noughties. No boobs is “it” now. • Honest, funny and principled — why women love Katherine Ryan It was a big ask to have a newborn in a script meeting for four hours, and to have me with my boobs out [breastfeeding]. They were great about it. There were moments in that recording [of Have I Got News for You] when I thought, should I have come back to work so early? When the warm-up comedian said to the audience, “Katherine Ryan’s had a baby,” they went, “Yay!” Then he said, “Two weeks ago.” It shifted to judgment really quick. Melanoma is a serious form of skin cancer that spreads rapidly. When I was 21, I had melanoma in my leg. Cut to 20 years later and I had a really weird mole on my arm. A dermatologist said it was fine. It’s really easy to accept that as an answer because it’s good news. I think a lot of people die that way. It’s better to be a bit crazy than dead. I went to a second doctor who said, “With your history, I’m happy to remove it,” and the results came back: melanoma. I was pregnant with Holland [her youngest daughter, born last October] and I thought, “Oh my goodness, I have melanoma again.” I’m so vocal about everything now. When I go to a dermatologist they’re like, oh gosh, I’d better remove that for her because she’ll talk about it on a podcast. It would be helpful if people who access cosmetic surgery were honest about it. I would be, rather than pretend that I had just started sleeping better. It would save people thinking, “Do I need to dunk my face in ice water?” No, she’s had a facelift. We don’t believe in letting small children cry it out in their rooms. We don’t feel safe letting them sleep in a separate room. So the easiest way to respond to their needs immediately is to sleep with them. Usually they’ll end up in the big bed with us. Co-sleeping is really important to me. Before I moved here, I was quite financially solvent. I was working at [the restaurant chain] Hooters, earning loads of tax-free tips. But in London it was bleak because people don’t tip. It turned out that my partner was not always reliable financially. Then I decided to have a baby with him and it got even worse. • Read more TV reviews, guides about what to watch and interviews Canadians use maple syrup for everything. I have it every day in coffee. We put some in bolognese. Everything we eat has some maple syrup in it. I sound like Buddy in Elf. Leaving my daughter’s father was really hard. I didn’t feel like I had the right to do that. I didn’t know what would happen.