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‘Especially in this nation, I feel you required me. You didn't comprehend it but you craved me, to alleviate some of your own guilt.” The comedian, the forty-two-year-old Canadian comic who has lived in the UK for almost 20 years, was accompanied by her recently born fourth child. She takes off her breast pumps so they don’t make an irritating sound. The primary observation you notice is the incredible ability of this woman, who can radiate motherly affection while forming sequential thoughts in full statements, and without getting distracted.

The next aspect you see is what she’s known for – a authentic, unapologetic audacity, a dismissal of pretense and duplicity. When she sprang on to the UK alternative comedy scene in 2008, her provocation was that she was exceptionally beautiful and refused to act not to know it. “Trying to be elegant or pretty was seen as appealing to men,” she recalls of the start of the decade, “which was the antithesis of what a comedian would do. It was a fashion to be modest. If you performed in a glamorous outfit 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 enjoyed.”

Then there was her comedy, which she summarises casually: “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 human as a mother, as a partner and as a selector of men. You can be someone who is afraid of men, but is confident enough to slag them off; you don’t have to be nice to them the all the time.’”

‘If you took to the stage in your underwear and heels, that would be seen as really off-putting’

The drumbeat to that is an emphasis on what’s authentic: if you have your infant with you, you most likely have your breast pumps; if you have the profile of a youngster, you’ve most likely received treatments; 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 feeding,” she says. It touches on the core of how feminism is viewed, which it strikes me remains largely unchanged in the past 50 years: freedom means being attractive but without ever thinking about it; being universally desired, but avoiding the attention of men; having an solid sense of self which perish the thought you would ever alter cosmetically; and allied to all that, women, especially, are expected to never think about money but nevertheless prosper 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 while people went: ‘What? She just discusses things?’ But I’m not trying to be challenging all the time. My experiences, behaviors and mistakes, they live in this realm between confidence and shame. It took place, I share it, and maybe reprieve comes out of the jokes. I love revealing private thoughts; I want people to confide in me their confessions. I want to know mistakes people have made. I don’t know why I’m so thirsty for it, but I feel it like a link.”

Ryan grew up in Sarnia, Ontario, a place that was not particularly wealthy or metropolitan and had a vibrant amateur dramatics musicals scene. Her dad owned an industrial company, her mother was in IT, and they demanded a lot of her because she was bright, a high achiever. She dreamed of leaving from the age of about seven. “It was the kind of town where people are very pleased to live close to their parents and stay there for a considerable period and have each other’s children. When I go back now, all these kids look really familiar to me, because I was raised with both their parents.” But isn't it true she partnered with her own first love? She went back to Sarnia, caught up with an old flame, who she saw 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 another life where I didn't make that, and it’s still just Violet and me, stylish, worldly, portable. But we can’t fully escape where we originated, it appears.”

‘We cannot completely leave behind where we started’

She managed to leave for a bit, aged 18, and moved to Toronto, which she loved. These were the period working there, which has been another source of controversy, not just that she worked – and liked the job – in a establishment (except this is a misconception: “You would be let go for being nude; you’re not allowed to take your shirt off”), but also for a bit in one of her routines where she mentioned giving a manager a blowjob in return for being allowed to go home early. It breached so many red lines – what even was that? Exploitation? Transaction? Predatory behavior? Betrayal (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 amazed that her anecdote caused anger – she liked the guy! She also wanted to go home early. But it cracked open something larger: a calculated inflexibility around sex, a sense that the consequence of the #MeToo movement was demonstrative modesty. “I’ve always found this notable, in arguments about sex, agreement and abuse, the people who don’t understand the nuance of it. Therefore if this is abuse, why isn’t that abuse?” She mentions 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 romantic interest. “Everyone said: ‘Don’t go to London, they have vermin there.’ And I disliked it, because I was immediately broke.”

‘I felt confident I had jokes’

She got a job in retail, was diagnosed 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 unwell at the time – you go to the most negative outcome. My rationale 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 next bit sounds as white-knuckle as a chaotic comedy film. While on time off, she would take care of Violet in the day and try to make her way in standup in the evening, carrying 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 felt sure I had comedy.” The whole circuit was permeated with sexism – she won a prestigious comedy award in 2008, just over a year after she’d started performing, a prize that was conceived in the context of a ongoing debate about whether women could be funny