If you ask us, Katherine Ryan is well on her way to achieving National Treasure status. Sure, she might be Canadian, but with a British comedy scene STILL overwhelmingly dominated by men she’s an important presence blazing a trail for other women in her wake and expert at putting Jimmy Carr and his ilk in their place when she finds herself the butt of their jokes (she’s actually great pals with a lot of the big male names in comedy, so it’s all in good humour – although recently spoke out about a ‘whisper network’ in the industry to protect women from an unnamed 'sexual predator').
So we were a more than a little surprised to hear that Katherine had openly praised the content of prolific misogynist Andrew Tate,even going to far as to say she ‘liked’ some of his videos during her podcast Telling Everybody Everything last month.
Take-no-shit feminist that she is, it wasn’t long before she backtracked on her comments, recently saying she ‘obviously regrets’ making them after finding out the full extent of the damage he’s currently wreaking among young men and boys. In timing that only served to exacerbate the unfortunate comments, the podcast in question went out for public consumption the very same day that Romanian officials made Tate’s well publicised arrest over human trafficking and rape charges (which he'd previously denied).
In her first episode since the gaffe, Katherine explained she’d first been made aware of his reputation by listeners who accused her of being ‘as bad as he is’.
‘Who have I trafficked? Almost no-one,’ she said in her defence (for those unfamiliar with her work, we can almost confirm this is a joke).
‘Do I regret saying I like Andrew Tate? Obviously,’ she continued, adding that she’d been drawn in like ‘a 15-year-old boy, an incel’ – precisely the demographic that Tate targets in his videos, let's not forget. ‘I thought I liked what he said about freedom, but freedom in Tate’s world I don’t think applies to women at all.’
Kudos for Katherine for addressing her mistake and for taking the time the educate herself on what Tate is truly about, but we can’t help wondering – has she been living under a rock for the last six months? What about in July where there were more searches for Andrew Tate than for Kim Kardashian and Donald Trump combined? What about in August, when he was spectacularly banned from all major social media (before having his Twitter account reinstated when Elon Musk took over in November)? Andrew Tate’s is a name who most wish had never darkened their doors, putting the fight for gender equality back decades with his sinister indoctrination of young, vulnerable minds. No shade at all on Katherine, but the mind truly boggles at how she’d managed to avoid him for so long.