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‘Especially in this nation, I believe you needed me. You weren't aware it but you craved me, to alleviate some of your own guilt.” The performer, the forty-two-year-old Canadian comedian who has lived in the UK for close to 20 years, brought along her brand new fourth child. She takes off her breast pumps so they avoid making an distracting sound. The initial impression you notice is the incredible ability of this woman, who can radiate maternal love while articulating coherent ideas in full statements, and remaining distracted.

The following element you see is what she’s renowned for – a authentic, unapologetic audacity, a refusal of affectation and hypocrisy. When she sprang on to the UK comedy scene in 2008, her provocation was that she was very good-looking and refused to act not to know it. “Attempting glamorous or attractive was seen as man-pleasing,” she remembers of the start of the decade, “which was the reverse of what a comedian would do. It was a norm to be self-deprecating. If you performed in a stylish dress with your lingerie and heels, like, ‘I think I’m gorgeous,’ 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 summarises casually: “Women, especially, required someone to appear 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 human as a mother, as a spouse and as a picker of men. You can be someone who is fearful of men, but is confident enough to criticize them; you don’t have to be pleasant to them the all the time.’”

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

The consistent message to that is an emphasis on what’s authentic: if you have your infant with you, you most likely have your feeding equipment; if you have the profile of a youth, 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 look into them when I’ve stopped nursing,” she says. It touches on the heart of how feminism is viewed, which in my view hasn’t really changed in the past 50 years: empowerment means appearing beautiful but not dwelling about it; being widely admired, but without pursuing the male gaze; having an solid sense of self which perish the thought you would ever modify; and allied to all that, women, especially, are meant to never think about money but nevertheless thrive under the demands of modern economic conditions. All of which is maintained by the majority of us pretending, most of the time.

“For a considerable period people went: ‘What? She just discusses things?’ But I’m not trying to be challenging all the time. My experiences, behaviors and errors, they reside in this realm between pride and regret. It occurred, I talk about it, and maybe relief comes out of the punchlines. I love telling people secrets; I want people to share with me their secrets. I want to know errors people have made. I don’t know why I’m so eager for it, but I feel it like a bond.”

Ryan was raised in Sarnia, Ontario, a place that was not particularly prosperous or metropolitan and had a vibrant community theater musicals scene. Her dad managed an industrial company, her mother was in IT, and they anticipated a lot of her because she was vivacious, a driven person. She longed to get out from the age of about seven. “It was the sort of community where people are very content to live next door to their parents and remain there for a long time and have their friends' children. When I go back 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 high school sweetheart? She traveled back to Sarnia, caught up with her former partner, 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 haven’t done that, and it’s still just Violet and me, sophisticated, urban, portable. But we are always connected to where we came from, it seems.”

‘We can’t fully escape where we came from’

She got away for a bit, aged 18, and moved to Toronto, which she enjoyed. These were the Hooters years, which has been an additional point 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 topless; 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 blowjob in return for being allowed to go home early. It breached so many boundaries – what even was that? Abuse? Transaction? Predatory behavior? Unsisterliness (towards whoever it was who had to stay late so she could leave early)? Whatever it was, you definitely were not expected to joke about it.

Ryan was surprised that her fellatio sequence caused anger – she liked the guy! She also wanted to go home early. But it revealed something larger: a strategic rigidity around sex, a sense that the price of the #MeToo movement was performed chastity. “I’ve always found this interesting, in arguments about sex, agreement and manipulation, the people who don’t understand the nuance of it. Therefore if this is abuse, why isn’t that abuse?” She references the equating of certain statements to lyrics in popular music. “Some individuals said: ‘Well, how’s that different?’ I thought: ‘How is it similar?’”

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

‘I was aware I had comedy’

She got a job in business, was diagnosed 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 informed about something – I was quite unwell at the time – you go to the darkest possibility. My logic with my boyfriend was, we’ve had so many problems, if we haven't separated by now, we never will. Now I see how lengthy life is, and how many things can alter. But at 23, I didn't realize.” She managed to get pregnant and had Violet.

The subsequent chapter sounds as nerve-wracking as a tense comedy film. While on time off, she would care for Violet in the day and try to make her way in performance in the evening, bringing her daughter with her. She knew 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 comedy.” The whole industry was riddled 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 turgid debate about whether women could be funny