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‘Especially in this place, I think you needed me. You didn't comprehend it but you required me, to lift some of your own embarrassment.” The comedian, the 42-year-old Canadian humorist 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 don’t make an irritating sound. The first thing you observe is the remarkable capacity of this woman, who can fully beam motherly affection while crafting sequential thoughts in whole sentences, and never get distracted.

The following element you observe is what she’s famous for – a natural, unaffected ballsiness, a dismissal of artifice and duplicity. When she sprang on to the UK comedy scene in 2008, her statement was that she was very good-looking and refused to act not to know it. “Attempting elegant or pretty was seen as catering to male approval,” she states of the start of the decade, “which was the opposite of what a comedian would do. It was a trend to be self-deprecating. If you went on stage in a elegant attire with your underwear and heels, like, ‘I think I’m gorgeous,’ that would be seen as really unappealing, but I did it because that’s what I wanted.”

Then there was her routines, 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 party-goer for a while. You can be human as a parent, as a partner and as a picker of men. You can be someone who is afraid of men, but is bold enough to slag them off; you don’t have to be pleasant to them the whole time.’”

‘If you went on stage in your lingerie and heels, that would be seen as really off-putting’

The consistent message to that is an insistence on what’s true: 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 reduce, well, there are drugs for that. “I’m not on any yet, but I’ll consider them when I’ve stopped breastfeeding,” she says. It addresses the core of how feminism is understood, which in my view remains largely unchanged in the past 50 years: liberation means looking great but not dwelling about it; being widely admired, but never chasing the attention of men; having an unshakeable sense of self which perish the thought you would ever modify; and in addition 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 being dishonest, most of the time.

“For a considerable period people went: ‘What? She just discusses things?’ But I’m not trying to be controversial all the time. My life events, actions and missteps, they live in this area between satisfaction and shame. It occurred, I talk about it, and maybe reprieve comes out of the punchlines. I love telling people confessions; I want people to tell me their secrets. 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 connection.”

Ryan grew up in Sarnia, Ontario, a place that was not particularly affluent or urban and had a vibrant local performance theater scene. Her dad ran 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 type of place where people are very happy to live close to their parents and stay there for a long time and have each other’s children. When I return now, all these kids look really familiar to me, because I grew up with both their parents.” But didn’t she marry her own first love? She traveled back to Sarnia, caught up 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 brought up until then as a solo mom. “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, stylish, worldly, mobile. But we are always connected to where we originated, it turns out.”

‘We can’t fully escape where we originated’

She got away for a bit, aged 18, and moved to Toronto, which she enjoyed. These were the period working there, which has been an additional point of controversy, not just that she worked – and enjoyed working – in a topless bar (except this is a misconception: “You would be fired for being topless; you’re not allowed to be unclothed”), 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 violated so many taboos – what even was that? Manipulation? Sex work? Unethical action? 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 story caused controversy – she liked the guy! She also wanted to go home early. But it revealed something broader: a strategic absolutism around sex, a sense that the consequence of the #MeToo movement was outward chastity. “I’ve always found this interesting, in discussions about sex, consent and manipulation, the people who misinterpret the subtlety of it. Therefore if this is abuse, why isn’t that abuse?” She mentions the comparison of certain comments to lyrics in popular music. “They said: ‘Well, how’s that different?’ I thought: ‘How is it similar?’”

She would never have moved to London in 2008 had it not been for her then boyfriend. “Everyone said: ‘Don’t go to London, they have rats there.’ And I hated it, because I was instantly poor.”

‘I knew I had material’

She got a job in business, was told she had an autoimmune condition, which can sometimes make it challenging to get pregnant, and at 23, decided to try to have a baby. “When you’re first diagnosed something – I was quite sick at the time – you go to the worst-case scenario. My logic with my boyfriend was, we’ve had so many ups and downs, if we haven't separated by now, we never will. Now I see how long 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 high-pressure as a chaotic comedy film. While on maternity leave, she would take care of Violet in the day and try to make her way in standup in the evening, taking her daughter with her. She was aware from her sales job that she had no problem persuading others, 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 notable comedy award in 2008, just over a year after she’d started performing, a prize that was established in the context of a persistent debate about whether women could be funny