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‘Especially in this nation, I believe you needed me. You didn’t realise it but you needed me, to alleviate some of your own guilt.” The comedian, the forty-two-year-old Canadian comedian who has lived in the UK for nearly 20 years, was accompanied by her recently born fourth child. She removes her breast pumps so they won't create an distracting sound. The initial impression you observe is the awesome capability of this woman, who can project parental devotion while articulating sequential thoughts in full statements, and without getting distracted.

The following element you see is what she’s famous for – a genuine, inherent fearlessness, a rejection of artifice and hypocrisy. When she emerged in the UK alternative comedy scene in 2008, her challenge was that she was very good-looking and made no attempt not to know it. “Aiming for stylish or pretty was seen as catering to male approval,” she recalls of the start of the decade, “which was the antithesis of what a comic would do. It was a norm to be self-deprecating. If you appeared in a elegant attire 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 wanted.”

Then there was her material, which she summarises breezily: “Women, especially, required someone to come along 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 slag for a while. You can be imperfect as a parent, as a spouse and as a selector of men. You can be someone who is afraid of men, but is confident enough to criticize them; you don’t have to be deferential to them the all the 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 focus on what’s real: if you have your baby 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 think about them when I’ve stopped nursing,” she says. It gets to the root of how feminism is understood, which in my view has stayed the same in the past 50 years: liberation means appearing beautiful but not dwelling about it; being constantly sought after, but without pursuing the attention of men; having an solid sense of self which God forbid you would ever surgically enhance; and coupled with all that, women, especially, are supposed to never think about money but nevertheless thrive under the relentlessness of current financial 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 talks about things?’ But I’m not trying to be controversial all the time. My personal stories, actions and missteps, they live in this area between satisfaction and regret. It occurred, I share it, and maybe relief comes out of the jokes. I love sharing secrets; I want people to tell me their private thoughts. I want to know errors people have made. I don’t know why I’m so eager for it, but I view it like a connection.”

Ryan grew up in Sarnia, Ontario, a place that was not particularly affluent or cosmopolitan and had a vibrant local performance arts scene. Her dad managed an engineering company, her mother was in IT, and they demanded a lot of her because she was sparky, a perfectionist. She wanted to escape from the age of about seven. “It was the kind of town where people are very happy to live close to their parents and live there for a lifetime and have their friends' children. When I return 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 high school sweetheart? She traveled back to Sarnia, caught up with her former partner, 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 cared for 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, sophisticated, urban, portable. But we cannot completely leave behind where we came from, it turns out.”

‘We cannot completely leave behind where we came from’

She did escape for a bit, aged 18, and moved to Toronto, which she loved. These were the time at the restaurant, which has been an additional point of discussion, not just that she worked – and liked the job – in a venue (except this is a inaccuracy: “You would be let go for being undressed; you’re not allowed to remove your top”), but also for a bit in one of her performances 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? Manipulation? Sex work? Unethical action? Unsisterliness (towards whoever it was who had to stay late so she could leave early)? Whatever it was, you absolutely were not meant to joke about it.

Ryan was shocked that her fellatio sequence provoked controversy – she liked the guy! She also wanted to go home early. But it revealed something wider: a strategic absolutism around sex, a sense that the cost of the #MeToo movement was performed chastity. “I’ve always found this interesting, in debates 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 linking of certain remarks to lyrics in popular music. “Some individuals said: ‘Well, how’s that dissimilar?’ I thought: ‘How is it comparable?’”

She would never have moved to London in 2008 had it not been for her romantic interest. “Everyone said: ‘Don’t go to London, they have vermin there.’ And I found it difficult, because I was immediately broke.”

‘I knew I had comedy’

She got a job in retail, was found to have a chronic illness, 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 sick at the time – you go to the most negative outcome. My logic with my boyfriend was, we’ve had so many problems, if we are still together by now, we never will. Now I see how extended 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 subsequent chapter sounds as nerve-wracking as a chaotic comedy film. While on maternity leave, she would care for Violet in the day and try to make her way in comedy in the evening, carrying her daughter with her. She felt from her sales job that she had no problem winning people over, and she had belief in her fast thinking from her time at Hooters; more than that, she says simply, “I knew I had comedy.” The whole scene was shot through with bias – she won a major comedy award in 2008, just over a year after she’d started performing, a prize that was conceived in the context of a persistent debate about whether women could be funny