Katherine Ryan has hit back at critics and defended a controversial joke she made on Mock the Week that got her “cancelled” back in 2013.
On the show, the panellists were asked to come up with an “unlikely line from a cosmetics commercial” as they battled it out to deliver the best joke on stage.
When it was the 38-year-old’s chance to shine, she delivered a highly controversial joke which caused a wave of backlash to come her way after the show.
As the Canadian comic took the microphone, she said: “We don’t test any of our products on animals. We use Fillipino children,” which understandably landed like a lead balloon.
(Image: Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images)
And now the mum-of-two has reflected on the risky one-liner in her latest interview with the Radio Times in which she confessed she doesn’t “spend loads of time or energy” worrying about how she comes across on TV.
She told the publication: “I don’t spend loads of time or energy trying to change their mind.
“What I was saying with that joke was that Western cultures present this pious image where they’re like oh, ‘We don’t test products on animals.’
“But if you dig deeper, they’re doing something much worse, they have underpaid workers or child workers in places like the Philippines,” she explained.
(Image: Redferns via Getty Images)
The blonde bombshell went on to add how the age of the internet has made it difficult to escape cancel culture because everything is online.
She added: “[After a while] it went away and then teenagers find comedy online from years ago and they just can’t believe it and then I get cancelled all over again!”
This comes after the new mum jumped to the defence of fellow comedian Rosie Jones after she was criticised form making a joke about climate change activist Greta Thunberg.
(Image: Instagram)
The comic was hit with incessant backslash online following her controversial joke while she appeared on the New Year’s Eve special of The Last Leg back in 2020.
Jones said: “Greta’s amazing and what she’s doing is brilliant. But don’t do it now. She needs to live a little, she’s only 16.
“She should be doing two things – drinking Lambrini and getting f*****ed.”
(Image: Instagram)
Ryan later spoke out after the event, and told the Metro how many viewers simply misunderstood the joke.
She explained: “A lot of the time when people get offended, it’s not the joke, it’s the fact that they’re too thick to understand the joke.
“I absolutely think that’s what happened.”
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Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
