TV star: ‘I loved working at Hooters’
COMEDIAN Katherine Ryan enjoyed being a Hooters girl in Nottingham before she was famous.
A well-known face on Channel 4’s 8 Out Of 10 Cats and Would I Lie To You?, she was drafted in to help relaunch the sports bar famed for its scantily clad waitresses.
Ryan, who was pictured in Nottingham with a placard saying “We Move Today”, and a gang of others Hooters’ girls stopped traffic as they marched from the old site, down London Road to the new bar at the Hicking Building, for its official launch in 2006.
By then the Canadian star who had first started waitressing at the Toronto branch of Hooters, had become a corporate trainer.
She took part in the inaugural bikini pageant at the Toronto bar – and won.
“I thought, ‘Sure, I’ll be in a bikini contest’. I think I saw the irony of it. I thought it was fun and I thought it was funny. I did loads of things because they were fun and an adventure,” she told The Times.
Hooters was where she got her first taste for making an audience laugh. Far from being sexist and degrading to women, the 37-year-old insists Hooters was was a matriarchy where women ruled the roost.
“I think comedy helped me to be a successful Hooters girl really,” said Ryan, who is currently presenting a new series, BBC Two’s All That Glitters, a competition for jewellery makers.
Ryan has many connections to the city. “Nottingham is the first place I ever visited in England. I lived with Miss Hooters England for a little while in Toronto – she’s from Nottingham too,” she said.
Hooters opened in 1998 on the opposite side of London Road, and remains the only branch in the UK.