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‘Especially in this nation, I believe you needed me. You didn’t realise it but you needed me, to remove some of your own shame.” The performer, the 42-year-old Canadian comedian who has been based in the UK for almost 20 years, brought along her newly minted fourth child. She removes her breast pumps so they don’t make an annoying sound. The primary observation you observe is the awesome capability of this woman, who can radiate parental devotion while forming logical sentences in full statements, and remaining distracted.

The second thing you see is what she’s known for – a authentic, unapologetic audacity, a dismissal of affectation and duplicity. When she burst onto the UK stand-up scene in 2008, her challenge was that she was exceptionally beautiful and made no attempt not to know it. “Aiming for stylish or attractive was seen as catering to male approval,” she recalls of the that period, “which was the antithesis of what a comic would do. It was a fashion to be humble. 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 wanted.”

Then there was her routines, which she explains casually: “Women, especially, craved someone to appear and be like: ‘Hey, that’s OK. You can be a advocate for equality and have a cosmetic surgery and have been a bit of a promiscuous person for a while. You can be flawed as a mother, as a spouse and as a chooser 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 entire time.’”

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

The consistent message to that is an focus on what’s real: if you have your child with you, you most likely have your breast pumps; if you have the profile of a young person, you’ve most likely had tweakments; if you want to slim down, well, there are drugs 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 root of how feminism is understood, which in my view hasn’t really changed in the past 50 years: freedom means appearing beautiful but not dwelling about it; being widely admired, but without pursuing the attention of men; 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 succeed under the demands of current financial conditions. All of which is maintained by the majority of us being dishonest, most of the time.

“For a while people said: ‘What? She just discusses things?’ But I’m not trying to be controversial all the time. My experiences, actions and errors, they exist in this space between pride and shame. It occurred, I talk about it, and maybe catharsis comes out of the punchlines. I love telling people private thoughts; I want people to share with me their secrets. I want to know missteps people have made. I don’t know why I’m so eager for it, but I feel it like a bond.”

Ryan spent her childhood in Sarnia, Ontario, a place that was not notably affluent or metropolitan and had a vibrant amateur dramatics musicals scene. Her dad managed an technical company, her mother was in IT, and they demanded a lot of her because she was vivacious, a perfectionist. She dreamed of leaving from the age of about seven. “It was the type of place where people are very content to live next door to their parents and live there for a considerable period and have each other’s children. When I visit now, all these kids look really familiar to me, because I grew up with both their parents.” But isn't it true she partnered with her own high school sweetheart? She traveled back to Sarnia, reconnected with her former partner, 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 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, sophisticated, worldly, flexible. But we cannot completely leave behind where we came from, it appears.”

‘We are always connected to where we originated’

She managed to leave 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 found it fun – in a establishment (except this is a inaccuracy: “You would be dismissed for being topless; you’re not allowed to be unclothed”), but also for a bit in one of her performances where she discussed giving a manager a sexual favor in return for being allowed to go home early. It violated so many taboos – what even was that? Abuse? Transaction? Inappropriate conduct? Unsisterliness (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 fellatio sequence provoked controversy – she liked the guy! She also wanted to go home early. But it revealed something larger: a deliberate rigidity around sex, a sense that the price of the #MeToo movement was performed modesty. “I’ve always found this fascinating, in arguments about sex, consent and exploitation, the people who don’t understand the nuance 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. “Certain people said: ‘Well, how’s that distinct?’ 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 found it difficult, because I was suddenly poor.”

‘I was aware I had jokes’

She got a job in sales, was told she had a chronic illness, 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 told you have something – I was quite ill at the time – you go to the most negative outcome. My rationale with my boyfriend was, we’ve had so many problems, if we haven't separated by now, we never will. Now I see how long life is, and how many things can alter. But at 23, I was unaware.” She managed to get pregnant and had Violet.

The subsequent chapter sounds as high-pressure as a tense comedy film. While on parental leave, she would care for Violet in the day and try to enter performance in the evening, bringing her daughter with her. She was aware from her sales job that she had no problem being convincing, and she had faith in her quickfire wit from her time at Hooters; more than that, she says plainly, “I knew I had comedy.” The whole industry was riddled with discrimination – 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