Page 139 - Katherine Ryan press pack 2015-20

Cora Pearl – also named after a much celebrated but also dead 19th-century

concubine – is just down the road from the Petersham Nurseries store, a

shop that caters solely for upper-middle-class mothers looking for an

overpriced trinket with which to fill their Cotswold piles.

The restaurant has a similar, not unpleasant vibe. A carefree, cocktail-

sipping, cosy extravagance – think velvet booths and excellent refined

glassware – and a sensibility that only comes with either having too much

money or having lost far too much money. It’s the sort of restaurant where

it feels perennially like Christmas party season. The place the wealthy

would go to watch Rome burn. Or, in other words, really very posh.

'I HAD SOME INTENSE HOMOPHOBIC

HECKLING JUST THE OTHER NIGHT

AND THAT WAS A LONDON,

METROPOLITAN AUDIENCE'

Ryan is – predictably – excellent company. She’s been touring her stage

show, Glitter Room, for almost a year and this week she’s on to her final

few performances. A lot has happened to comedy, or certain titans of

comedy, in the past year, I say: the downfall of Louis CK and Bill Cosby

being the notable headlines. Has Ryan felt a flux, a shift from within the

industry? “Actually, what I’ve noticed is men being more vocal if they feel

their values are under attack. I had some intense homophobic heckling just

the other night and that was a London, metropolitan audience. This guy

was there with his poor fiancée, who was just sitting terrified, quiet as a

mouse. It was awful actually.”