Katherine Ryan has said the father of her oldest child Violet is ‘not the type of dad you would want for your daughter’ and has ‘never paid anything for her’.
The Canadian-born comic, 42, has never disclosed the identity of her 16-year-old daughter’s dad but confirmed he was a comedian she met on the circuit back home before moving to the UK.
Panel show stalwart Katherine has previously said very little about him, deliberately avoiding any badmouthing, but this week revealed she felt less compelled to do so now Violet was 16 and could ‘see for herself’.
‘I’ve been careful never to s**g him off just because I don’t think it’s the right thing to do,’ Katherine shared on the Juicy Scoop with Heather McDonald podcast on Tuesday.
‘And I really protected him while my daughter was young. I would never say anything bad about him.
‘But now she’s 16, she can see for herself that unfortunately, he’s not a bad person, but he’s never made any sacrifices, never paid anything for her, just kind of texts her, which I think is breadcrumbing.’
‘Breadcrumbing’ is a term commonly used in the context of relationships, whereby one person sends irregular and often vague messages to the other to keep them engaged, but without any intention of fully committing to them.
She added: ‘Like, “Hey, love you. How are you?” Which is better than no contact. But he hasn’t been the type of dad that you would want for your daughter.’
Katherine, who reunited with childhood sweetheart Bobby Koostra and entered a civil partnership with him in 2019, also has three further kids: Fred, four, Fenna, three, and four-month-old Holland.
The Duchess star also confirmed that Violet’s dad was ‘not really’ involved with her life before joking that she too could be an excellent ‘non-contact parent’ or father that puts in minimal effort.
‘All you have to do with a teenage girl is drive to the mother’s house, send her a text, and go, “Do you want to come get Starbucks with me?” It’s all they have to do, it’s all teenagers care about!
‘If not, I’ll go get you a Starbucks. I’ll drop it off. You come to the car, I’ll give it to you, I’ll say, “Hey, how are you? I love you. Here’s your Starbucks, bye.” No pressure.’
Katherine also revealed that she had no time for the excuse from dads that their kids were just ‘using me for rides’.
‘The flow goes one way – parent to child. There’s nothing they [children] can do wrong. Just make yourself available, make some type of sacrifice.
‘And unfortunately, my daughter doesn’t have the dad that I would want her to have. But he’s not a bad person,’ she added.
Tinsel Town actress Katherine also said that her and Violet’s father’s relationship was struggling before their daughter was born.
‘We weren’t really good even before that,’ she explained. ‘So as soon as I had her, I was like, oh gosh, I’m going to have to make a go of this myself.
‘I thought that being a stand-up comedian was conducive to single motherhood. you can be home in the day. And then you work when they’re sleeping.’
Violet, she added ‘came everywhere’ with her when she was young and Katherine was starting out her career as a comedian in the UK.
‘The UK is so amazing for stand-up because it is small, but there are gigs in all these towns and cities every night of the week. So I started touring properly, like a small tour, when she was three or four.’
Katherine recently revealed that she had undergone a £16,000 full facelift eight weeks after Holland’s birth to ‘reclaim her identity’.
After explaining the surgery included ‘a little bit of fat transfer to my cheekbone area, and a small bleph[aroplasty]’ she reassured fans on her Telling Everybody Everything podcast: ‘I am not crazy. I’m not trying to wind it back to 2006. I’m just trying to look the way I did, like, pre-COVID, pre-six pregnancies in five years.’
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