Katherine Ryan went too far in gushing about a brand she had been paid to promote when she appeared on live TV, broadcast watchdog Ofcom has found.

The comedian waxed lyrical about Gousto meal kit boxes when she appeared on Channel 4’s Sunday Brunch in November, despite rules prohibiting such overt plugging of products.

However, the broadcaster has escaped censure after explaining all the steps they took to stop Ryan breaking the broadcasting code.

Producers invited the comic on the show to talk about her tour, and also agreed she could talk about Gousto’s campaign inviting people to share their  ‘dinner time dilemmas’ with the chance of winning a plate designed by the artist Margo McDaid, also known as  Margo in Margate.

But Ryan – who had a commercial deal with the brand –  also said on air: ‘Gousto actually make me feel like a chef and I absolutely love receiving them and we make restaurant quality meals, and it makes it so much easier being a working mum, because Gousto wants to take your dinner time dilemmas off your plate. 

‘You don’t have to be thinking about meal prep or running around the shops. You just have the meals that you choose in advance, all the meals arriving straight to your door,  fresh and you can feel like a chef cooking it.’

One viewer complied to Ofcom, which launched an inquiry.

Channel 4 showed the regulator correspondence between the production company and Gousto’s PR team which insisted they had to have an ‘editorially interesting contribution’ and reminded them that ‘compliance with the Ofcom Broadcasting Code was a priority from the outset’. 

Ryan was also told in briefing notes that she had to limit commercial references, and before going on air was ‘briefed in person about compliance requirements and cautioned against making promotional references about Gousto’.

Channel 4 added that "the producers and presenters had no prior knowledge or expectation that the guest would make the references she did during the programme. The repeated references to Gousto were unsolicited, unscripted, spontaneous, outside the scope of the agreed contribution and clearly not part of the editorial intent’.

The broadcaster pointed out that the presenters interrupted Ryan to steer the conversation  back towards the ‘dinner time dilemmas’ campaign, as agreed.

 In their response to Ofcom, they added: ‘Despite all of the above safeguards, Ms Ryan responded to the presenter Tim Lovejoy’s first question with what could be perceived as a pre-prepared response about how beneficial and convenient Gousto was to her as a working mother. 

‘This hadn't been discussed or cleared at any stage. The guest in a live scenario appears to have gone beyond what the producers expected to be a reference to the campaign’.

During an ad break  Ryan was ‘spoken to by a member of the editorial team. She expressed remorse at having strayed from the agreed script and gave her assurances that there would be no more mentions of Gousto in the programme’.

The incident resulted in ‘refresher training’ to the Sunday Brunch production team.

The watchdog put their initial findings to Ryan and her agent, but they did not respond, and today published their verdict, which did not censure the broadcaster.

It read, in part: ‘Ofcom acknowledged that Channel 4 had implemented an extensive range of pre-transmission compliance measures… to avoid references to Gousto becoming promotional.  Despite these procedures the guest did not appear to have followed the briefings given and the segment contained several overtly positive references to Gousto and its products

‘We considered the additional references she made to the brand, such as its ease of use, convenience  and the quality and freshness of its ingredients clearly promoted the company and the attributes of its products and service. We considered the use of favourable and superlative language to describe Gousto’s products and service was therefore promotional.’