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‘Especially in this nation, I feel you needed me. You weren't aware it but you required me, to remove some of your own embarrassment.” The comedian, the forty-two-year-old Canadian comedian who has lived in the UK for almost 20 years, was accompanied by her newly minted fourth child. Ryan whips off her breast pumps so they avoid making an distracting sound. The initial impression you see is the remarkable capacity of this woman, who can project maternal love while forming logical sentences in whole sentences, and never get distracted.

The second thing you notice is what she’s known for – a authentic, unapologetic audacity, a rejection of artifice and contradiction. When she emerged in the UK alternative comedy scene in 2008, her provocation was that she was very good-looking and refused to act not to know it. “Trying to be stylish or pretty was seen as appealing to men,” she recalls of the early 2010s, “which was the opposite of what a funny person would do. It was a norm to be self-deprecating. If you performed in a glamorous outfit with your little push-up bra and heels, like, ‘I think I’m fabulous,’ that would be seen as really alienating, but I did it because that’s what I liked.”

Then there was her comedy, which she describes simply: “Women, especially, required someone to come along 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 party-goer for a while. You can be human as a parent, as a significant other and as a chooser of men. You can be someone who is fearful of men, but is bold enough to mock them; you don’t have to be pleasant to them the entire time.’”

‘If you went on stage in your underwear and heels, that would be seen as really alienating’

The consistent message to that is an focus on what’s authentic: if you have your child with you, you most likely have your feeding equipment; if you have the jawline of a young person, you’ve most likely undergone procedures; if you want to slim down, well, there are drugs for that. “I’m not on any yet, but I’ll think about them when I’ve stopped feeding,” she says. It addresses the heart of how feminism is understood, which in my view hasn’t really changed in the past 50 years: empowerment means being attractive but never thinking about it; being constantly sought after, but never chasing the attention of men; having an solid sense of self which perish the thought you would ever alter cosmetically; and coupled with all that, women, especially, are supposed to never think about money but nevertheless prosper under the pressure of current financial conditions. All of which is sustained by the majority of us pretending, most of the time.

“For a long time people reacted: ‘What? She just discusses things?’ But I’m not trying to be controversial all the time. My experiences, behaviors and mistakes, they live in this space between confidence and regret. It took place, I discuss it, and maybe relief comes out of the humor. I love revealing private thoughts; I want people to confide in me their private thoughts. I want to know mistakes people have made. I don’t know why I’m so thirsty for it, but I view it like a connection.”

Ryan grew up in Sarnia, Ontario, a place that was not particularly prosperous or metropolitan and had a lively local performance musicals scene. Her dad managed an technical company, her mother was in IT, and they anticipated a lot of her because she was bright, a driven person. She dreamed of leaving from the age of about seven. “It was the sort of community where people are very pleased to live next door to their parents and remain there for a long time and have each other’s children. When I return now, all these kids look really known to me, because I grew up with both their parents.” But didn’t she marry her own teenage boyfriend? She went back to Sarnia, reconnected with Bobby Kootstra, who she dated as a teenager, and now – six years later – they have three children together, plus Violet, now 16, who Ryan had raised until then as a lone parent. “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, stylish, cosmopolitan, mobile. But we cannot completely leave behind where we originated, it turns out.”

‘We are always connected to where we started’

She managed to leave for a bit, aged 18, and moved to Toronto, which she adored. These were the Hooters years, which has been a further cause of debate, not just that she worked – and found it fun – in a venue (except this is a myth: “You would be dismissed for being topless; you’re not allowed to be unclothed”), but also for a bit in one of her performances where she discussed giving a manager a sexual favor in return for being allowed to go home early. It crossed so many boundaries – what even was that? Exploitation? Transaction? Inappropriate conduct? Lack of solidarity (towards whoever it was who had to stay late so she could leave early)? Whatever it was, you absolutely weren’t supposed to joke about it.

Ryan was surprised that her anecdote provoked anger – she was fond of the guy! She also wanted to go home early. But it cracked open something broader: a deliberate inflexibility around sex, a sense that the price of the #MeToo movement was demonstrative modesty. “I’ve always found this notable, in debates about sex, permission and manipulation, the people who fail to grasp the complexity of it. Therefore if this is abuse, why isn’t that abuse?” She brings up the equating of certain remarks to lyrics in popular music. “Certain people said: ‘Well, how’s that different?’ I thought: ‘How is it similar?’”

She would not have relocated to London in 2008 had it not been for her romantic interest. “Everyone said: ‘Don’t go to London, they have pests there.’ And I found it difficult, because I was instantly struggling.”

‘I was aware I had material’

She got a job in business, was found to have a chronic illness, 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 informed about something – I was quite unwell at the time – you go to the darkest possibility. My reasoning with my boyfriend was, we’ve had so many ups and downs, if we haven’t split up 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 succeeded in get pregnant and had Violet.

The following period sounds as white-knuckle as a chaotic comedy film. While on maternity leave, she would care for Violet in the day and try to break into comedy in the evening, bringing her daughter with her. She knew from her sales job that she had no problem winning people over, and she had confidence in her quickfire wit from her time at Hooters; more than that, she says simply, “I knew I had jokes.” The whole scene was permeated with sexism – she won a major 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