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‘Especially in this nation, I think you needed me. You didn't comprehend it but you required me, to lift some of your own shame.” The performer, the forty-two-year-old Canadian comic who has lived in the UK for close to 20 years, brought along her brand new fourth child. She removes her breast pumps so they won't create an annoying sound. The initial impression you observe is the awesome capability of this woman, who can radiate motherly affection while forming logical sentences in full statements, and never get distracted.

The following element you notice is what she’s renowned for – a natural, unaffected ballsiness, a dismissal of artifice and duplicity. When she emerged in the UK stand-up scene in 2008, her provocation was that she was strikingly attractive 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 early 2010s, “which was the antithesis of what a funny person would do. It was a fashion to be modest. If you went on stage in a elegant attire with your little push-up bra and heels, like, ‘I think I’m gorgeous,’ that would be seen as really unappealing, but I did it because that’s what I liked.”

Then there was her material, which she describes simply: “Women, especially, craved someone to appear and be like: ‘Hey, that’s OK. You can be a feminist and have a enhancement and have been a bit of a slag for a while. You can be flawed as a parent, as a spouse 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 deferential to them the all the time.’”

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

The drumbeat to that is an emphasis 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 treatments for that. “I’m not on any yet, but I’ll look into them when I’ve stopped feeding,” she says. It touches on the heart of how female emancipation is conceived, which I believe hasn’t really changed in the past 50 years: empowerment means looking great but not dwelling about it; being universally desired, but avoiding the male gaze; having an solid sense of self which heaven forbid you would ever alter cosmetically; and in addition to all that, women, especially, are expected to never think about money but nevertheless succeed 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 said: ‘What? She just discusses things?’ But I’m not trying to be challenging all the time. My personal stories, choices and mistakes, they reside in this space between satisfaction and shame. It took place, I talk about it, and maybe reprieve comes out of the punchlines. I love revealing private thoughts; I want people to confide in me their private thoughts. I want to know mistakes people have made. I don’t know why I’m so thirsty for it, but I view it like a link.”

Ryan grew up in Sarnia, Ontario, a place that was not especially wealthy or metropolitan and had a active local performance theater scene. Her dad managed an industrial company, her mother was in IT, and they expected a lot of her because she was sparky, a driven person. She wanted to escape from the age of about seven. “It was the sort of community where people are very happy to live nearby 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 known to me, because I was raised with both their parents.” But isn't it true she partnered with her own teenage boyfriend? She traveled back to Sarnia, reconnected 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 brought up until then as a single mother. “Right,” says Ryan. “Sometimes I think there’s an alternate reality where I haven’t done that, and it’s still just Violet and me, sophisticated, cosmopolitan, flexible. But we cannot completely leave behind where we came from, it seems.”

‘We cannot completely leave behind where we originated’

She got away for a bit, aged 18, and moved to Toronto, which she adored. These were the Hooters years, which has been a further cause of discussion, not just that she worked – and enjoyed working – in a venue (except this is a misconception: “You would be dismissed for being nude; you’re not allowed to remove your top”), but also for a bit in one of her routines where she discussed giving a manager a sexual favor in return for being allowed to go home early. It breached so many taboos – what even was that? Exploitation? Prostitution? Unethical action? Lack of solidarity (towards whoever it was who had to stay late so she could leave early)? Whatever it was, you certainly were not expected to joke about it.

Ryan was amazed that her story provoked outrage – she got on with the guy! She also wanted to go home early. But it revealed something larger: a deliberate rigidity around sex, a sense that the cost of the #MeToo movement was performed purity. “I’ve always found this notable, in arguments about sex, permission and exploitation, the people who fail to grasp the subtlety of it. Therefore if this is abuse, why isn’t that abuse?” She mentions the comparison of certain remarks to lyrics in popular music. “Some individuals 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 romantic interest. “Everyone said: ‘Don’t go to London, they have rats there.’ And I hated it, because I was immediately poor.”

‘I was aware I had material’

She got a job in business, was diagnosed an autoimmune condition, which can sometimes make it difficult to get pregnant, and at 23, chose to try to have a baby. “When you’re first informed about something – I was quite ill 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 split up by now, we never will. Now I see how lengthy life is, and how many things can transform. But at 23, I couldn’t see it.” She managed to get pregnant and had Violet.

The next bit sounds as white-knuckle as a tense comedy film. While on parental leave, she would care for Violet in the day and try to enter standup in the evening, taking her daughter with her. She felt from her sales job that she had no problem being convincing, and she had confidence in her quickfire wit from her time at Hooters; more than that, she says plainly, “I knew I had material.” The whole scene was riddled with bias – 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 turgid debate about whether women could be funny