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‘Especially in this nation, I think you craved me. You didn't comprehend it but you needed me, to lift some of your own embarrassment.” The comedian, the forty-two-year-old Canadian humorist who has lived in the UK for nearly 20 years, was accompanied by her newly minted fourth child. Ryan whips off her breast pumps so they won't create an annoying sound. The first thing you observe is the awesome capability of this woman, who can radiate motherly affection while articulating logical sentences in complete phrases, and never get distracted.

The next aspect you see is what she’s renowned for – a authentic, unapologetic audacity, a dismissal of artifice and contradiction. When she burst onto the UK alternative comedy scene in 2008, her challenge was that she was strikingly attractive and refused to act not to know it. “Aiming for stylish or attractive was seen as appealing to men,” she remembers of the start of the decade, “which was the reverse of what a comedian would do. It was a trend to be self-deprecating. If you performed in a elegant attire with your lingerie and heels, like, ‘I think I’m gorgeous,’ that would be seen as really unappealing, but I did it because that’s what I liked.”

Then there was her routines, which she describes casually: “Women, especially, needed someone to appear and be like: ‘Hey, that’s OK. You can be a advocate for equality and have a boob job and have been a bit of a party-goer for a while. You can be imperfect as a parent, as a spouse and as a chooser of men. You can be someone who is afraid of men, but is confident enough to mock them; you don’t have to be pleasant to them the all the time.’”

‘If you took to the stage in your underwear and heels, that would be seen as really off-putting’

The consistent message to that is an focus on what’s authentic: if you have your infant with you, you most likely have your breast pumps; if you have the facial structure of a young person, you’ve most likely undergone procedures; if you want to slim down, well, there are medications for that. “I’m not on any yet, but I’ll consider them when I’ve stopped feeding,” she says. It addresses the heart of how female emancipation is conceived, which it strikes me has stayed the same in the past 50 years: liberation means looking great but never thinking about it; being constantly sought after, but never chasing the attention of men; having an solid sense of self which God forbid you would ever surgically enhance; and in addition to all that, women, especially, are supposed to never think about money but nevertheless thrive under the demands of late capitalist conditions. All of which is maintained by the majority of us pretending, most of the time.

“For a long time people went: ‘What? She just speaks about things?’ But I’m not trying to be challenging all the time. My life events, behaviors and errors, they reside in this space between satisfaction and regret. It took place, I share it, and maybe relief comes out of the humor. I love sharing confessions; I want people to confide in me their secrets. I want to know errors people have made. I don’t know why I’m so keen for it, but I feel it like a bond.”

Ryan grew up in Sarnia, Ontario, a place that was not particularly wealthy or cosmopolitan and had a vibrant local performance musicals scene. Her dad managed an technical company, her mother was in IT, and they demanded a lot of her because she was sparky, a high achiever. She longed to get out from the age of about seven. “It was the kind of town where people are very pleased to live next door to their parents and remain there for a lifetime and have each other’s children. When I visit now, all these kids look really known to me, because I spent my childhood with both their parents.” But isn't it true she partnered with her own teenage boyfriend? She went back to Sarnia, reconnected with an old flame, who she saw as a teenager, and now – six years later – they have three children together, plus Violet, now 16, who Ryan had brought up until then as a lone parent. “Right,” says Ryan. “Sometimes I think there’s an alternate reality where I didn't make that, and it’s still just Violet and me, sophisticated, cosmopolitan, portable. But we can’t fully escape where we came from, it seems.”

‘We can’t fully escape where we originated’

She got away for a bit, aged 18, and moved to Toronto, which she adored. These were the period working there, which has been a further cause of debate, not just that she worked – and liked the job – in a topless bar (except this is a misconception: “You would be fired for being undressed; you’re not allowed to remove your top”), but also for a bit in one of her routines where she mentioned giving a manager a blowjob in return for being allowed to go home early. It crossed so many red lines – what even was that? Abuse? Prostitution? Inappropriate conduct? Lack of solidarity (towards whoever it was who had to stay late so she could leave early)? Whatever it was, you definitely weren’t supposed to joke about it.

Ryan was surprised that her story caused outrage – she was fond of the guy! She also wanted to go home early. But it revealed something wider: a deliberate inflexibility around sex, a sense that the price of the #MeToo movement was performed modesty. “I’ve always found this notable, in arguments about sex, agreement and abuse, the people who don’t understand the complexity of it. Therefore if this is abuse, why isn’t that abuse?” She brings up the comparison of certain remarks to lyrics in popular music. “They said: ‘Well, how’s that distinct?’ I thought: ‘How is it alike?’”

She would not have come to London in 2008 had it not been for her partner at the time. “Everyone said: ‘Don’t go to London, they have vermin there.’ And I disliked it, because I was suddenly struggling.”

‘I felt confident I had jokes’

She got a job in business, was found to have a chronic illness, which can sometimes make it hard to get pregnant, and at 23, decided to try to have a baby. “When you’re first informed about something – I was quite ill at the time – you go to the worst-case scenario. My reasoning with my boyfriend was, we’ve had so many ups and downs, if we haven't separated by now, we never will. Now I see how long life is, and how many things can alter. But at 23, I couldn’t see it.” She was able to get pregnant and had Violet.

The next bit sounds as high-pressure as a tense comedy film. While on parental leave, she would look after Violet in the day and try to enter standup in the evening, carrying her daughter with her. She felt from her sales job that she had no problem persuading others, and she had belief in her fast thinking from her time at Hooters; more than that, she says simply, “I felt sure I had material.” The whole industry was permeated with sexism – she won a prestigious comedy award in 2008, just over a year after she’d started performing, a prize that was established in the context of a ongoing debate about whether women could be funny