The Audacity: Why Being Too Much Is Exactly Enough: The Sunday Times bestseller

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Films are judged for production, concept, delivery/performance, creativity, writing and overall funniness. The top 10 films are then viewed by an independent judging panel of top television and film industry professionals who will choose one overall winner and two runners up. The final three will be invited to attend the grand final in London on the 23rd September. But we are getting ahead of ourselves, because this version of Ryan, the one who hosts panel shows and receives evisceration requests, was shaped by careful accident over 38 years, beginning in Sarnia, a small petrochemical town in Canada. She was restless and popular, and at 19 worked as a waitress with a friend called Jessica. In her book, Ryan calls this chapter “How To Let Your Friend’s Murder Define All Your Relationships”. One day Jessica didn’t turn up to work and soon Ryan heard she’d been killed by her ex-boyfriend. “That’s how it happens,” Ryan’s mum told her that evening. “If you leave them, they sometimes kill you.” “I felt guilty writing about that,” she says, “because when you write your own book, you really centre yourself. She wasn’t my best friend, she wasn’t my sister, but it affected me, and it affected all the young women in our town, too. It was a lesson. When your brain is still growing, the events of your life write on the canvas of who you are. Without even knowing it I learned, ‘If you piss them off, they’ll kill you.’” Years later she’d joke on stage, “Things like, ‘Men are nature’s gun. You’re statistically most likely to be killed by the one in your house. Haha.’ And until recently I didn’t even realise myself, how scared I was.” I think it is unrealistic to hope that everyone is going to like you As much as I liked to think of myself as an adult from birth, I was a teenager when this happened and it left quite a traumatic imprint that I’ve had to work very hard to overcome for the benefit of my healthy relationships with men. I'm often asked how I developed my lurid level of courage and assurance and for tips on how others can match. The Audacity is my chance to share my blueprint for just that. You will

The Audacity by Katherine Ryan | Waterstones

Soon after, I was scheduled to open up the restaurant with Jessica for lunch. I arrived at 10am to set up the covered patio bar for a private party. Jessica wasn’t there but I filled the ice, set all the chairs up, wiped the tables and carefully prepared as she’d shown me. Yes – we require all films to be 6 minutes or under, to be entirely original dialogue, to not feature brand logos and most importantly, to only use music with the written consent of the performer and/or publisher either personally or via the PRS system https://www.prsformusic.com/ . Katherine will soon be seen hosting primetime BBC Two jewellery-making competition series, All That Glitters. She hosted the marquee all-female special of Channel 4's Cats Does Countdown and was a team captain on the most recent series of 8 Out of 10 Cats for E4. Katherine also co-hosted C4's 2019 tentpole Alternative Election Special with Krishnan Guru Murthy. She has been a stalwart on all the UK's major panel shows and has co-hosted six series of Your Face or Mine, alongside judging four series of Roast Battle for Comedy Central. Having not yet made this connection, I flew around the house in a furious rage, ranting about how the bar should have immediately closed for observance, about how international news cameras would soon be descending upon the town to cover the story and about how wild it was that a young woman we knew was killed by a man we were also familiar with. He wasn’t a stranger or a demon or a masked intruder but a person Jessica had once trusted and loved.

Round the corner from the restaurant there was a comedy club and one day she signed up for its amateur night. “Not because I wanted to be a comedian, but because it would be fun for me, my secret. And then in the rest of my life I’d be a good girl, well liked, a good wife. It was a little exorcism of, well… audacity.” When she came off stage after that first set, where she joked about being a “dumb, useless girl”, she realised nothing had made her feel so shit and so alive all at once. She couldn’t wait to do it again. If I have to reassess what I’ve said, or apologise, I’ll do that Katherine is one of the smartest, funniest voices in comedy... an icon of our time. This book is absolutely hilarious, deeply insightful and truly original. You will love and devour The Audacity * Lou Sanders * Presumably, if you are going to read the book, you are like me a fan of Katherine and through her great podcast, also a fan of Violet. The book covers her life so far which has been exciting and sometimes traumatic in her usual pragmatic style. I listened on Audible as I love to hear authors reading their own stories and I find Katherine’s voice very appealing. The audiobook also has a bonus half hour from Katherine’s mother Julie, an intelligent, funny and very wise woman.

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I don’t read non fiction or memoirs all that often (I think this is probably the second I’ve read in over a decade) but I genuinely really enjoyed this, and getting to learn more about Katherine as a person as opposed to her curated stage persona was really interesting. Its funny, it’s sad, it’s engaging, I loved it. I like how she didn’t shy away from the less good things that she has experienced and seemed to put in all the important life events instead of just adding the good and funny ones.

Summary

Whatever strangers think of me is fine with me. How audacious is that? I can always take a joke, I don’t waste time worrying about things I can’t control. I embrace the reality that you just can’t please everyone, so you might as well put yourself out there and have a laugh. As my mother always said, "Katherine, if we all liked the same thing, we’d all be married to your father." From the star of The Duchess and the host of 'Telling Everybody Everything', the debut book from superstar comedian Katherine Ryan. Play it for laughs: performing on stage in Leeds in 2017. Photograph: Shirlaine Forrest/Getty Images The Audacity is exhilarating - fierce, funny and brilliantly written, but there is so much tenderness, honesty and generosity too * Daisy Buchanan *