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‘Especially in this nation, I believe you needed me. You weren't aware it but you needed me, to remove some of your own shame.” The comedian, the forty-two-year-old Canadian comic who has been based in the UK for nearly 20 years, brought along her brand new fourth child. She takes off her breast pumps so they avoid making an annoying sound. The initial impression you observe is the incredible ability of this woman, who can radiate motherly affection while crafting coherent ideas in complete phrases, and without getting distracted.

The following element you notice is what she’s famous for – a genuine, inherent fearlessness, a refusal of pretense and duplicity. When she sprang on to the UK stand-up scene in 2008, her provocation was that she was exceptionally beautiful and didn’t pretend not to know it. “Aiming for stylish or pretty was seen as appealing to men,” she recalls of the start of the decade, “which was the antithesis of what a comedian would do. It was a trend to be modest. If you went on stage in a elegant attire with your underwear and heels, like, ‘I think I’m stunning,’ that would be seen as really off-putting, but I did it because that’s what I liked.”

Then there was her comedy, which she describes casually: “Women, especially, needed someone to come along and be like: ‘Hey, that’s OK. You can be a feminist and have a cosmetic surgery and have been a bit of a slag for a while. You can be imperfect as a mother, as a partner and as a picker of men. You can be someone who is afraid of men, but is bold enough to mock them; you don’t have to be pleasant to them the entire time.’”

‘If you took to the stage in your lingerie and heels, that would be seen as really alienating’

The underlying theme to that is an emphasis on what’s real: if you have your child with you, you most likely have your feeding equipment; if you have the jawline of a youngster, you’ve most likely undergone procedures; if you want to lose weight, well, there are drugs for that. “I’m not on any yet, but I’ll look into them when I’ve stopped nursing,” she says. It touches on the core of how female emancipation is understood, which I believe has stayed the same in the past 50 years: freedom means looking great but without ever thinking about it; being constantly sought after, but avoiding the male gaze; having an solid sense of self which heaven forbid you would ever alter cosmetically; and allied to all that, women, especially, are meant to never think about money but nevertheless succeed under the pressure of late capitalist conditions. All of which is maintained by the majority of us bullshitting, most of the time.

“For a while people reacted: ‘What? She just discusses things?’ But I’m not trying to be provocative all the time. My experiences, behaviors and mistakes, they live in this realm between pride and regret. It occurred, I discuss it, and maybe catharsis comes out of the jokes. I love telling people secrets; I want people to confide in me their confessions. I want to know errors people have made. I don’t know why I’m so keen for it, but I sense it like a bond.”

Ryan grew up in Sarnia, Ontario, a place that was not notably prosperous or urban and had a active community theater arts scene. Her dad owned an technical company, her mother was in IT, and they anticipated a lot of her because she was bright, a high achiever. She dreamed of leaving from the age of about seven. “It was the kind of town where people are very pleased to live nearby to their parents and stay there for a considerable period and have their friends' children. When I visit now, all these kids look really familiar to me, because I was raised with both their parents.” But she later reunited with her own first love? She traveled back to Sarnia, reconnected with Bobby Kootstra, who she saw 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 single mother. “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, urban, flexible. But we cannot completely leave behind where we originated, it seems.”

‘We cannot completely leave behind where we came from’

She did escape for a bit, aged 18, and moved to Toronto, which she enjoyed. These were the period working there, which has been a further cause of controversy, not just that she worked – and found it fun – in a venue (except this is a misconception: “You would be let go for being topless; you’re not allowed to be unclothed”), but also for a bit in one of her sets where she discussed giving a manager a blowjob in return for being allowed to go home early. It crossed so many boundaries – what even was that? Exploitation? Sex work? Inappropriate conduct? Lack of solidarity (towards whoever it was who had to stay late so she could leave early)? Whatever it was, you certainly were not meant to joke about it.

Ryan was surprised that her story caused anger – she got on with the guy! She also wanted to go home early. But it revealed something larger: a calculated absolutism around sex, a sense that the cost of the #MeToo movement was outward purity. “I’ve always found this notable, in arguments about sex, permission and exploitation, the people who misinterpret the nuance of it. Therefore if this is abuse, why isn’t that abuse?” She brings up the equating of certain comments to lyrics in popular music. “They said: ‘Well, how’s that distinct?’ I thought: ‘How is it similar?’”

She would not have relocated to London in 2008 had it not been for her partner at the time. “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 comedy’

She got a job in sales, was diagnosed an autoimmune condition, which can sometimes make it difficult to get pregnant, and at 23, chose to try to have a baby. “When you’re first told you have something – I was quite unwell at the time – you go to the worst-case scenario. My reasoning with my boyfriend was, we’ve had so many issues, if we haven’t split up by now, we never will. Now I see how lengthy life is, and how many things can transform. But at 23, I didn't realize.” She managed to get pregnant and had Violet.

The following period sounds as white-knuckle as a classic comedy film. While on parental leave, she would care for Violet in the day and try to make her way in comedy in the evening, taking her daughter with her. She felt from her sales job that she had no problem winning people over, and she had faith in her sharp humor from her time at Hooters; more than that, she says plainly, “I felt sure I had comedy.” 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 created in the context of a persistent debate about whether women could be funny