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‘Especially in this nation, I believe you required me. You didn’t realise it but you craved me, to lift some of your own embarrassment.” The comedian, the forty-two-year-old Canadian comic who has lived in the UK for close to 20 years, brought along her newly minted fourth child. Ryan whips off her breast pumps so they don’t make an annoying sound. The primary observation you see is the awesome capability of this woman, who can fully beam maternal love while articulating logical sentences in full statements, and never get distracted.

The second thing you notice is what she’s renowned for – a authentic, unapologetic audacity, a refusal of affectation and hypocrisy. When she sprang on to the UK stand-up scene in 2008, her challenge was that she was exceptionally beautiful and refused to act not to know it. “Attempting stylish or pretty was seen as catering to male approval,” she recalls of the that period, “which was the antithesis of what a comic would do. It was a norm to be humble. If you appeared in a glamorous outfit with your underwear and heels, like, ‘I think I’m gorgeous,’ that would be seen as really alienating, but I did it because that’s what I enjoyed.”

Then there was her routines, which she summarises breezily: “Women, especially, craved someone to arrive and be like: ‘Hey, that’s OK. You can be a advocate for equality and have a enhancement and have been a bit of a slag for a while. You can be imperfect as a mother, as a significant other and as a chooser of men. You can be someone who is afraid of men, but is bold enough to criticize them; you don’t have to be nice to them the entire time.’”

‘If you went on stage in your little push-up bra and heels, that would be seen as really alienating’

The drumbeat to that is an emphasis on what’s true: if you have your baby with you, you most likely have your breast pumps; if you have the profile of a young person, you’ve most likely received treatments; if you want to reduce, well, there are medications for that. “I’m not on any yet, but I’ll think about them when I’ve stopped nursing,” she says. It gets to the root of how feminism is conceived, which it strikes me hasn’t really changed in the past 50 years: liberation means being attractive but not dwelling about it; being universally desired, but never chasing the male gaze; having an impermeable sense of self which perish the thought you would ever modify; and coupled with all that, women, especially, are supposed to never think about money but nevertheless prosper under the relentlessness of modern economic conditions. All of which is maintained by the majority of us pretending, most of the time.

“For a while people said: ‘What? She just speaks about things?’ But I’m not trying to be challenging all the time. My life events, actions and errors, they exist in this area between confidence and shame. It took place, I talk about it, and maybe reprieve comes out of the punchlines. I love revealing confessions; I want people to confide in me their confessions. I want to know mistakes people have made. I don’t know why I’m so keen for it, but I view it like a bond.”

Ryan grew up in Sarnia, Ontario, a place that was not especially wealthy or urban and had a lively amateur dramatics musicals scene. Her dad owned an technical company, her mother was in IT, and they expected a lot of her because she was vivacious, a perfectionist. 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 live there for a considerable period and have each other’s children. When I visit now, all these kids look really recognizable to me, because I was raised with both their parents.” But isn't it true she partnered with her own first love? She traveled back to Sarnia, met again Bobby Kootstra, who she went out with 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 solo mom. “Right,” says Ryan. “Sometimes I think there’s a different path where I didn't make that, and it’s still just Violet and me, chic, urban, flexible. But we are always connected to where we came from, it appears.”

‘We are always connected to where we started’

She managed to leave for a bit, aged 18, and moved to Toronto, which she loved. These were the Hooters years, which has been another source of debate, not just that she worked – and found it fun – in a venue (except this is a inaccuracy: “You would be let go for being undressed; you’re not allowed to take your shirt off”), but also for a bit in one of her sets where she mentioned giving a manager a sexual favor in return for being allowed to go home early. It breached so many boundaries – what even was that? Manipulation? Transaction? Inappropriate conduct? Betrayal (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 amazed that her story generated anger – she was fond of the guy! She also wanted to go home early. But it revealed something wider: a calculated rigidity around sex, a sense that the consequence of the #MeToo movement was demonstrative chastity. “I’ve always found this notable, in arguments about sex, permission and exploitation, the people who don’t understand the complexity of it. Therefore if this is abuse, why isn’t that abuse?” She mentions the linking of certain statements to lyrics in popular music. “Certain people 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 then boyfriend. “Everyone said: ‘Don’t go to London, they have vermin there.’ And I hated it, because I was suddenly struggling.”

‘I felt confident I had jokes’

She got a job in retail, was found to have an autoimmune condition, which can sometimes make it challenging to get pregnant, and at 23, made the decision to try to have a baby. “When you’re first diagnosed something – I was quite ill at the time – you go to the most negative outcome. My rationale with my boyfriend was, we’ve had so many issues, if we are still together by now, we never will. Now I see how extended life is, and how many things can change. But at 23, I couldn’t see it.” She was able to get pregnant and had Violet.

The subsequent chapter sounds as nerve-wracking as a chaotic comedy film. While on maternity leave, she would take care of Violet in the day and try to break into performance in the evening, taking her daughter with her. She was aware from her sales job that she had no problem being convincing, and she had confidence in her sharp humor from her time at Hooters; more than that, she says bluntly, “I knew I had jokes.” The whole scene was permeated with bias – she won a notable 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