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‘Especially in this nation, I believe you craved me. You didn’t realise it but you needed me, to alleviate some of your own guilt.” The comedian, the 42-year-old Canadian comedian who has made her home in the UK for almost 20 years, has brought her brand new fourth child. She takes off her breast pumps so they avoid making an distracting sound. The initial impression you notice is the awesome capability of this woman, who can radiate motherly affection while articulating coherent ideas in full statements, and remaining distracted.

The second thing you notice is what she’s renowned for – a authentic, unapologetic audacity, a dismissal of artifice and duplicity. When she burst onto the UK stand-up scene in 2008, her challenge was that she was strikingly attractive and made no attempt not to know it. “Aiming for glamorous or beautiful was seen as man-pleasing,” she recalls of the start of the decade, “which was the reverse of what a comic would do. It was a trend to be self-deprecating. If you went on stage in a stylish dress with your underwear and heels, like, ‘I think I’m stunning,’ that would be seen as really off-putting, but I did it because that’s what I liked.”

Then there was her comedy, which she summarises casually: “Women, especially, required someone to appear and be like: ‘Hey, that’s OK. You can be a feminist and have a boob job and have been a bit of a promiscuous person for a while. You can be human as a parent, as a spouse and as a selector of men. You can be someone who is wary of men, but is bold enough to criticize them; you don’t have to be deferential to them the whole time.’”

‘If you went on stage in your lingerie and heels, that would be seen as really unappealing’

The underlying theme to that is an emphasis on what’s authentic: if you have your baby with you, you most likely have your breast pumps; if you have the jawline of a youth, you’ve most likely undergone procedures; if you want to reduce, well, there are medications for that. “I’m not on any yet, but I’ll think about them when I’ve stopped breastfeeding,” she says. It touches on the heart of how women's liberation is understood, which in my view hasn’t really changed in the past 50 years: liberation means looking great but not dwelling about it; being universally desired, but never chasing the male gaze; having an solid sense of self which heaven forbid you would ever surgically enhance; and in addition to all that, women, especially, are meant to never think about money but nevertheless prosper under the relentlessness of modern economic conditions. All of which is kept afloat by the majority of us pretending, most of the time.

“For a long time people went: ‘What? She just discusses things?’ But I’m not trying to be provocative all the time. My life events, actions and missteps, they reside in this space between pride and shame. It took place, I discuss it, and maybe reprieve comes out of the punchlines. I love sharing secrets; I want people to tell me their secrets. I want to know mistakes people have made. I don’t know why I’m so eager for it, but I view it like a link.”

Ryan spent her childhood in Sarnia, Ontario, a place that was not particularly wealthy or urban and had a vibrant local performance musicals scene. Her dad managed an industrial company, her mother was in IT, and they demanded a lot of her because she was bright, a perfectionist. She longed to get out from the age of about seven. “It was the sort of community where people are very happy to live next door to their parents and live there for a lifetime and have each other’s children. When I visit now, all these kids look really recognizable 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 her former partner, 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 raised until then as a lone parent. “Right,” says Ryan. “Sometimes I think there’s a different path where I haven’t done that, and it’s still just Violet and me, sophisticated, worldly, portable. But we are always connected to where we originated, it turns out.”

‘We are always connected to where we started’

She got away for a bit, aged 18, and moved to Toronto, which she enjoyed. These were the time at the restaurant, which has been a further cause of controversy, not just that she worked – and liked the job – in a venue (except this is a inaccuracy: “You would be fired for being nude; you’re not allowed to take your shirt off”), but also for a bit in one of her performances where she mentioned 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 certainly weren’t supposed to joke about it.

Ryan was shocked that her anecdote caused outrage – she was fond of the guy! She also wanted to go home early. But it cracked open something larger: a strategic inflexibility around sex, a sense that the price of the #MeToo movement was performed modesty. “I’ve always found this interesting, in discussions about sex, permission and exploitation, the people who fail to grasp the complexity of it. Therefore if this is abuse, why isn’t that abuse?” She brings up the comparison of certain remarks to lyrics in popular music. “Some individuals said: ‘Well, how’s that distinct?’ I thought: ‘How is it comparable?’”

She would never have moved to London in 2008 had it not been for her partner at the time. “Everyone said: ‘Don’t go to London, they have vermin there.’ And I found it difficult, because I was instantly struggling.”

‘I knew I had jokes’

She got a job in business, was found to have lupus, which can sometimes make it hard to get pregnant, and at 23, chose to try to have a baby. “When you’re first told you have something – I was quite ill at the time – you go to the most negative outcome. My logic with my boyfriend was, we’ve had so many problems, if we haven't separated by now, we never will. Now I see how extended life is, and how many things can alter. But at 23, I was unaware.” She succeeded in get pregnant and had Violet.

The following period sounds as high-pressure as a classic comedy film. While on maternity leave, she would take care of Violet in the day and try to break into comedy in the evening, carrying her daughter with her. She was aware from her sales job that she had no problem winning people over, and she had belief in her sharp humor from her time at Hooters; more than that, she says simply, “I felt sure I had jokes.” The whole scene was permeated with discrimination – she won a notable 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