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‘Especially in this country, I think you needed me. You didn't comprehend it but you needed me, to lift some of your own shame.” The performer, the forty-two-year-old Canadian comedian who has been based in the UK for almost 20 years, has brought her brand new fourth child. She takes off her breast pumps so they don’t make an annoying sound. The primary observation you see is the incredible ability of this woman, who can project motherly affection while articulating coherent ideas in full statements, and without getting distracted.

The next aspect you observe is what she’s known for – a natural, unaffected ballsiness, a refusal of pretense and duplicity. When she sprang on to the UK stand-up scene in 2008, her challenge was that she was strikingly attractive and refused to act not to know it. “Aiming for elegant or attractive was seen as appealing to men,” she states of the that period, “which was the opposite of what a comedian would do. It was a norm to be modest. If you appeared in a elegant attire with your little push-up bra 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 enjoyed.”

Then there was her routines, which she summarises simply: “Women, especially, craved someone to appear and be like: ‘Hey, that’s OK. You can be a feminist and have a cosmetic surgery and have been a bit of a promiscuous person for a while. You can be human as a parent, as a partner and as a chooser 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 deferential to them the whole time.’”

‘If you performed in your underwear and heels, that would be seen as really alienating’

The underlying theme to that is an insistence on what’s true: if you have your child with you, you most likely have your breast pumps; if you have the facial structure of a youngster, you’ve most likely had tweakments; if you want to slim down, well, there are treatments for that. “I’m not on any yet, but I’ll look into them when I’ve stopped feeding,” she says. It addresses the root of how feminism is understood, which I believe remains largely unchanged in the past 50 years: empowerment means being attractive but without ever thinking about it; being constantly sought after, but without pursuing the male gaze; having an unshakeable sense of self which perish the thought you would ever modify; and in addition to all that, women, especially, are expected to never think about money but nevertheless thrive under the pressure of current financial conditions. All of which is sustained by the majority of us being dishonest, most of the time.

“For a long time people said: ‘What? She just talks about things?’ But I’m not trying to be challenging all the time. My life events, actions and mistakes, they live in this area between pride and regret. It occurred, I talk about it, and maybe catharsis comes out of the jokes. I love telling people confessions; 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 especially affluent or cosmopolitan and had a active community theater musicals scene. Her dad owned 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 type of place where people are very pleased to live nearby to their parents and stay there for a considerable period and have one another's children. When I visit 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 teenage boyfriend? She returned to Sarnia, met again an old flame, 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 lone parent. “Right,” says Ryan. “Sometimes I think there’s a different path where I avoided that, and it’s still just Violet and me, chic, cosmopolitan, portable. But we can’t fully escape where we started, it turns out.”

‘We are always connected to where we originated’

She did escape for a bit, aged 18, and moved to Toronto, which she enjoyed. These were the time at the restaurant, which has been another source of debate, not just that she worked – and found it fun – in a venue (except this is a myth: “You would be fired for being nude; 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 breached so many taboos – what even was that? Manipulation? Prostitution? Predatory behavior? Lack of solidarity (towards whoever it was who had to stay late so she could leave early)? Whatever it was, you definitely weren’t supposed to joke about it.

Ryan was surprised that her story caused anger – she was fond of the guy! She also wanted to go home early. But it revealed something broader: a strategic inflexibility around sex, a sense that the consequence of the #MeToo movement was demonstrative chastity. “I’ve always found this interesting, in arguments about sex, consent and exploitation, the people who don’t understand the complexity 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. “Certain people said: ‘Well, how’s that different?’ I thought: ‘How is it comparable?’”

She would not have come to London in 2008 had it not been for her then boyfriend. “Everyone said: ‘Don’t go to London, they have vermin there.’ And I hated it, because I was suddenly poor.”

‘I knew I had material’

She got a job in sales, was told she had an autoimmune condition, which can sometimes make it difficult to get pregnant, and at 23, decided to try to have a baby. “When you’re first informed about 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 problems, if we haven't separated by now, we never will. Now I see how lengthy life is, and how many things can transform. But at 23, I was unaware.” She succeeded in get pregnant and had Violet.

The following period sounds as high-pressure as a tense comedy film. While on time off, she would look after Violet in the day and try to make her way in comedy in the evening, bringing her daughter with her. She was aware from her sales job that she had no problem persuading others, and she had faith in her fast thinking from her time at Hooters; more than that, she says bluntly, “I knew I had comedy.” The whole industry was shot through with sexism – 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