The Duchess star Katherine Ryan ‘A JOKE DATE CHANGED MY LIFE'

One of the funniest women on television, the cynical Netflix star reveals the surprising way she found true love

- SOPHIE HEAWOOD

I always loved him,” confesses Canadian comic Katherine Ryan, remembering her high-school boyfriend Bobby Kootstra, who she dated when she was 16. “I kept every letter we ever wrote each other.”

An awful lot has happened in the two decades since the 37-year-old broke up with her first love in Ontario and moved to the UK to build her career, becoming a household name thanks to the sarcastic putdowns delivered in her stand-up performances and on panel shows like QI.

More recently, Katherine went global, writing and starring in the critically acclaimed Netflix series The Duchess, and buying a Hollywood Hills-style mansion in North London, where she lives with her daughter Violet, 11, from a relationship that didn’t last.

Her single status has become part of her comedy act. “I love men,” Katherine says in her stand-up special Glitter Room, “but I feel that they’re like dolphins – in that they should be enjoyed on holiday.” Which is why we’re waiting for the punchline about her high-school boyfriend – Katherine is brutally funny and a killer joke about her childhood romance has to be coming. Yet the truth is more dramatic…

She recently went back to Canada, found her old sweetheart and married him. In fact, he quit his job to work with her and they now live together in English suburbia in what appears to be marital bliss. But how?