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‘Especially in this nation, I think you craved me. You didn't comprehend it but you required me, to alleviate some of your own shame.” The comedian, the forty-two-year-old Canadian comedian who has made her home in the UK for close to 20 years, has brought her brand new fourth child. She removes her breast pumps so they avoid making an distracting sound. The first thing you see is the incredible ability of this woman, who can project maternal love while articulating sequential thoughts in complete phrases, and remaining distracted.

The following element you notice is what she’s renowned for – a natural, unaffected ballsiness, a rejection of affectation and hypocrisy. When she burst onto the UK comedy scene in 2008, her challenge was that she was exceptionally beautiful and refused to act not to know it. “Attempting elegant or pretty was seen as man-pleasing,” she states of the start of the decade, “which was the reverse of what a funny person would do. It was a trend to be self-deprecating. If you performed in a stylish dress with your little push-up bra and heels, like, ‘I think I’m stunning,’ that would be seen as really alienating, but I did it because that’s what I wanted.”

Then there was her comedy, which she explains breezily: “Women, especially, craved someone to arrive and be like: ‘Hey, that’s OK. You can be a advocate for equality and have a enhancement and have been a bit of a slag for a while. You can be imperfect as a mother, as a partner and as a chooser 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 all the time.’”

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

The underlying theme to that is an focus on what’s true: if you have your infant with you, you most likely have your breast pumps; if you have the jawline of a youth, you’ve most likely received treatments; if you want to lose weight, well, there are treatments 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 heart of how women's liberation is viewed, which in my view remains largely unchanged in the past 50 years: freedom means looking great but never thinking about it; being constantly sought after, but never chasing the attention of men; having an unshakeable sense of self which heaven forbid you would ever alter cosmetically; and coupled with all that, women, especially, are expected to never think about money but nevertheless succeed under the pressure of current financial 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 speaks about things?’ But I’m not trying to be provocative all the time. My personal stories, actions and mistakes, they live in this realm between pride and regret. It took place, I talk about it, and maybe reprieve comes out of the jokes. I love sharing confessions; 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 eager for it, but I sense it like a link.”

Ryan was raised in Sarnia, Ontario, a place that was not notably wealthy or urban and had a active community theater arts scene. Her dad managed an engineering company, her mother was in IT, and they demanded a lot of her because she was bright, a high achiever. She wanted to escape from the age of about seven. “It was the type of place where people are very content to live close to their parents and remain there for a lifetime 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 returned to Sarnia, caught up with Bobby Kootstra, 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 cared for until then as a lone parent. “Right,” says Ryan. “Sometimes I think there’s a different path where I avoided that, and it’s still just Violet and me, stylish, cosmopolitan, mobile. But we can’t fully escape where we started, it seems.”

‘We cannot completely leave behind where we came from’

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 a further cause of discussion, not just that she worked – and enjoyed working – in a venue (except this is a misconception: “You would be let go for being topless; you’re not allowed to take your shirt off”), 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 crossed so many red lines – 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 definitely were not meant to joke about it.

Ryan was surprised that her anecdote provoked outrage – she liked the guy! She also wanted to go home early. But it exposed something broader: a strategic absolutism around sex, a sense that the cost of the #MeToo movement was outward modesty. “I’ve always found this notable, in discussions about sex, consent and manipulation, the people who misinterpret the subtlety of it. Therefore if this is abuse, why isn’t that abuse?” She references the equating of certain statements to lyrics in popular music. “Certain people said: ‘Well, how’s that distinct?’ I thought: ‘How is it similar?’”

She would not have relocated to London in 2008 had it not been for her then boyfriend. “Everyone said: ‘Don’t go to London, they have pests there.’ And I found it difficult, because I was immediately poor.”

‘I was aware 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, decided to try to have a baby. “When you’re first diagnosed 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 issues, if we haven't separated by now, we never will. Now I see how lengthy life is, and how many things can transform. But at 23, I was unaware.” She succeeded in get pregnant and had Violet.

The next bit sounds as nerve-wracking as a classic comedy film. While on maternity leave, she would take care of Violet in the day and try to break into performance in the evening, taking her daughter with her. She knew from her sales job that she had no problem being convincing, and she had faith in her fast thinking from her time at Hooters; more than that, she says plainly, “I felt sure I had material.” The whole circuit 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 conceived in the context of a turgid debate about whether women could be funny