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‘Especially in this country, I think you needed me. You weren't aware it but you craved me, to alleviate some of your own shame.” The comedian, the 42-year-old Canadian humorist who has made her home in the UK for nearly 20 years, has brought her recently born fourth child. Ryan whips off her breast pumps so they avoid making an annoying sound. The first thing you notice is the awesome capability of this woman, who can radiate maternal love while articulating coherent ideas in complete phrases, and remaining distracted.

The following element you see is what she’s known for – a authentic, unapologetic audacity, a dismissal of artifice and contradiction. When she sprang on to the UK comedy scene in 2008, her statement was that she was very good-looking and made no attempt not to know it. “Aiming for glamorous or beautiful was seen as appealing to men,” she states of the early 2010s, “which was the opposite of what a comic would do. It was a fashion to be humble. If you went on stage in a glamorous outfit with your lingerie and heels, like, ‘I think I’m fabulous,’ that would be seen as really off-putting, but I did it because that’s what I liked.”

Then there was her routines, which she explains breezily: “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 party-goer for a while. You can be imperfect as a parent, as a spouse and as a chooser of men. You can be someone who is fearful of men, but is bold enough to mock them; you don’t have to be nice 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 alienating’

The consistent message to that is an focus on what’s true: if you have your baby with you, you most likely have your feeding equipment; if you have the facial structure of a youngster, you’ve most likely had tweakments; if you want to reduce, well, there are drugs for that. “I’m not on any yet, but I’ll think about them when I’ve stopped feeding,” she says. It touches on the core of how feminism is conceived, which it strikes me hasn’t really changed in the past 50 years: empowerment means looking great but without ever thinking about it; being widely admired, but never chasing the male gaze; having an solid sense of self which heaven forbid you would ever surgically enhance; and allied to all that, women, especially, are supposed to never think about money but nevertheless thrive under the relentlessness of modern economic conditions. All of which is maintained by the majority of us bullshitting, most of the time.

“For a considerable period people said: ‘What? She just speaks about things?’ But I’m not trying to be provocative all the time. My experiences, behaviors and missteps, they reside in this area between pride and shame. It took place, I discuss it, and maybe reprieve comes out of the punchlines. I love telling people secrets; I want people to confide in me their secrets. I want to know errors people have made. I don’t know why I’m so thirsty for it, but I sense it like a connection.”

Ryan grew up in Sarnia, Ontario, a place that was not particularly affluent or cosmopolitan and had a lively local performance musicals scene. Her dad ran an industrial company, her mother was in IT, and they anticipated a lot of her because she was bright, a driven person. She wanted to escape from the age of about seven. “It was the kind of town where people are very pleased to live close to their parents and live there for a considerable period and have each other’s children. When I go back now, all these kids look really recognizable to me, because I spent my childhood with both their parents.” But isn't it true she partnered with her own high school sweetheart? She traveled back to Sarnia, met again an old flame, who she dated 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 single mother. “Right,” says Ryan. “Sometimes I think there’s a different path 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 seems.”

‘We cannot completely leave behind where we originated’

She managed to leave for a bit, aged 18, and moved to Toronto, which she enjoyed. These were the Hooters years, which has been another source of discussion, not just that she worked – and enjoyed working – in a venue (except this is a inaccuracy: “You would be let go for being undressed; 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 blowjob in return for being allowed to go home early. It breached so many taboos – what even was that? Abuse? Prostitution? Predatory behavior? Lack of solidarity (towards whoever it was who had to stay late so she could leave early)? Whatever it was, you absolutely were not expected to joke about it.

Ryan was shocked that her anecdote provoked outrage – she was fond of the guy! She also wanted to go home early. But it exposed something larger: a calculated inflexibility around sex, a sense that the cost of the #MeToo movement was performed chastity. “I’ve always found this notable, in arguments about sex, agreement and exploitation, the people who misinterpret the subtlety of it. Therefore if this is abuse, why isn’t that abuse?” She mentions the comparison of certain statements to lyrics in popular music. “Some individuals said: ‘Well, how’s that dissimilar?’ 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 rats there.’ And I found it difficult, because I was immediately poor.”

‘I knew I had material’

She got a job in retail, was told she had lupus, which can sometimes make it challenging to get pregnant, and at 23, made the decision to try to have a baby. “When you’re first diagnosed 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 issues, if we haven't separated by now, we never will. Now I see how lengthy life is, and how many things can change. But at 23, I didn't realize.” She managed to get pregnant and had Violet.

The following period sounds as nerve-wracking 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 comedy in the evening, carrying her daughter with her. She felt from her sales job that she had no problem winning people over, and she had confidence in her sharp humor from her time at Hooters; more than that, she says bluntly, “I was confident I had material.” The whole scene was permeated with sexism – she won a major comedy award in 2008, just over a year after she’d started performing, a prize that was conceived in the context of a turgid debate about whether women could be funny