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‘Especially in this country, I feel you needed me. You didn't comprehend it but you needed me, to remove some of your own embarrassment.” The comedian, the forty-two-year-old Canadian humorist who has been based in the UK for almost 20 years, brought along her newly minted fourth child. She removes her breast pumps so they don’t make an irritating sound. The primary observation you notice is the remarkable capacity of this woman, who can project motherly affection while crafting coherent ideas in complete phrases, and remaining distracted.

The second thing you see is what she’s famous for – a genuine, inherent fearlessness, a rejection of pretense and contradiction. When she emerged in the UK comedy scene in 2008, her challenge was that she was exceptionally beautiful and refused to act not to know it. “Trying to be stylish or beautiful was seen as catering to male approval,” she remembers of the start of the decade, “which was the antithesis of what a comic would do. It was a fashion to be modest. If you went on stage in a stylish dress with your underwear 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 comedy, which she describes simply: “Women, especially, craved someone to come along and be like: ‘Hey, that’s OK. You can be a feminist and have a boob job and have been a bit of a slag for a while. You can be flawed as a mother, as a significant other and as a chooser of men. You can be someone who is fearful of men, but is bold enough to criticize them; you don’t have to be nice to them the whole time.’”

‘If you performed in your little push-up bra and heels, that would be seen as really unappealing’

The consistent message to that is an focus on what’s real: if you have your infant with you, you most likely have your breast pumps; if you have the profile of a youth, you’ve most likely undergone procedures; if you want to lose weight, well, there are medications for that. “I’m not on any yet, but I’ll look into them when I’ve stopped breastfeeding,” she says. It touches on the root of how feminism is viewed, which in my view hasn’t really changed in the past 50 years: freedom means being attractive but without ever thinking about it; being universally desired, but never chasing 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 expected to never think about money but nevertheless succeed under the pressure of modern economic conditions. All of which is kept afloat by the majority of us bullshitting, most of the time.

“For a while people went: ‘What? She just speaks about things?’ But I’m not trying to be provocative all the time. My life events, behaviors and missteps, they live in this realm between confidence and shame. It occurred, I discuss it, and maybe relief comes out of the humor. I love revealing secrets; I want people to confide in me their private thoughts. I want to know missteps people have made. I don’t know why I’m so eager for it, but I view it like a connection.”

Ryan was raised in Sarnia, Ontario, a place that was not notably wealthy or metropolitan and had a vibrant community theater theater scene. Her dad owned an technical company, her mother was in IT, and they demanded a lot of her because she was vivacious, a perfectionist. She dreamed of leaving from the age of about seven. “It was the sort of community where people are very pleased to live close to their parents and stay there for a lifetime and have their friends' children. When I return now, all these kids look really recognizable to me, because I grew up with both their parents.” But she later reunited with her own first love? She returned to Sarnia, caught up with her former partner, who she saw 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 lone parent. “Right,” says Ryan. “Sometimes I think there’s another life where I avoided that, and it’s still just Violet and me, sophisticated, urban, portable. But we are always connected to where we originated, it seems.”

‘We cannot completely leave behind where we started’

She did escape for a bit, aged 18, and moved to Toronto, which she loved. These were the period working there, which has been a further cause of discussion, not just that she worked – and found it fun – in a venue (except this is a misconception: “You would be dismissed for being undressed; 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 violated 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 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 broader: a calculated inflexibility around sex, a sense that the cost of the #MeToo movement was performed modesty. “I’ve always found this notable, in debates about sex, consent and abuse, the people who don’t understand the subtlety 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. “Some individuals 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 then boyfriend. “Everyone said: ‘Don’t go to London, they have pests there.’ And I found it difficult, because I was suddenly broke.”

‘I felt confident I had material’

She got a job in retail, was found to have a chronic illness, which can sometimes make it challenging to get pregnant, and at 23, decided 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 darkest possibility. My logic with my boyfriend was, we’ve had so many issues, if we are still together by now, we never will. Now I see how extended life is, and how many things can change. But at 23, I didn't realize.” She succeeded in get pregnant and had Violet.

The following period sounds as white-knuckle as a classic comedy film. While on maternity leave, she would care for Violet in the day and try to break into performance in the evening, carrying her daughter with her. She was aware from her sales job that she had no problem being convincing, and she had belief in her quickfire wit from her time at Hooters; more than that, she says plainly, “I was confident 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 established in the context of a ongoing debate about whether women could be funny