The ever-endearing Katherine Ryan arrived on the south coast on a very cold and blustery Friday evening to bring her ‘Kathbum’ tour to Southampton’s O2 Guildhall.
Support for the evening came in the form of Boston-raised stand-up Alex Edelman, who won Best Newcomer at the 2014 Edinburgh Fringe Festival for his show ‘Millennial’. Now based in New York, Edelman was able to provide numerous laughs during his short set, telling tales of his time spent in the UK over the past few years. He expressed his love for Greggs and explained how he thought the pitch for the idea went in the boardroom: “Right guys, listen up. I have an idea. We are going to sell pastries! But not good pastries, shit pastries!” Which brought a massive boom of laughter and cheer from the audience. Edelman impressively set the tone for the evening and left a lot of the crowd wanting to see a lot more of him in the future.
There was quite a long interval between the support act and Katherine Ryan which lead to much of the audience becoming restless and agitated, but the headliner eventually made her way onto the stage to rapturous applause. Ryan is a very familiar face on the UK comedy circuit having spent a lot of her time on comedy panel shows such as Mock the Week and 8 Out of 10 Cats. It didn’t take her long to get into her groove and she soon had the predominantly-female audience in fits of laughter.
As has been with the case with a lot of her stand-up routines in the past, a lot of Ryan’s material related to popular culture and making fun of celebrities. Those to feel her wrath this time around included Taylor Swift, Cheryl Fernandez-Versini and, in particular, Katie Price. When describing how she indirectly went on tour with “the lovely” Peter Andre she proclaimed her love for his Iceland adverts, saying how they were very funny and well-written and that “all good mums go to Iceland, so he’d never have to bump into his ex-wife”, which brought a massive cheer from the entire audience. But she cut the applause short saying how we should all be ashamed of ourselves and that Price was a great mum. She admired how Price “has given birth three times, all by caesarian, yet all her children have still come out of a c**t!” before admitting she’d been on our side the whole time and was just setting us up for the main part of the joke.
A large proportion of the Canadian’s set also centred around being a single mother and her lack of luck in the love scene. But, as is usually the case with Ryan, all of her jokes and quips would still be empowering to the strong independent woman in every female. Just because social convention, particularly in her hometown, states that she should be married by now, that does not mean she has to and it does not have any bearing over how good she is as a mother and how well she can raise her daughter.
Katherine Ryan once again was able to deliver a hilarious routine, which provided plenty of laughs to everyone in attendance. Even though her target audience is very much targeted towards woman, I, along with every other male there, also found her incredibly funny. If she carries on the trajectory she is currently taking, Ryan’s star is just going to shine brighter and brighter.
Tickets for the remainder of Katherine Ryan’s ‘Kathbum’ tour can be found via this link.
