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‘Especially in this nation, I feel you needed me. You didn’t realise it but you required me, to remove some of your own shame.” The comedian, the forty-two-year-old Canadian humorist who has lived in the UK for almost 20 years, was accompanied by her brand new fourth child. She takes off her breast pumps so they don’t make an irritating sound. The primary observation you observe is the remarkable capacity of this woman, who can fully beam maternal love while forming logical sentences in whole sentences, and never get distracted.

The next aspect you observe is what she’s famous for – a authentic, unapologetic audacity, a refusal of affectation and contradiction. When she sprang on to the UK alternative comedy scene in 2008, her provocation was that she was strikingly attractive and made no attempt not to know it. “Attempting stylish or attractive was seen as appealing to men,” she states of the that period, “which was the antithesis of what a funny person would do. It was a fashion to be self-deprecating. If you appeared in a glamorous outfit with your lingerie and heels, like, ‘I think I’m fabulous,’ that would be seen as really alienating, but I did it because that’s what I wanted.”

Then there was her routines, which she summarises casually: “Women, especially, craved someone to come along and be like: ‘Hey, that’s OK. You can be a advocate for equality and have a boob job and have been a bit of a slag for a while. You can be imperfect as a mother, as a significant other and as a chooser of men. You can be someone who is wary of men, but is bold enough to slag them off; you don’t have to be pleasant 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 emphasis on what’s real: if you have your infant with you, you most likely have your breast pumps; if you have the facial structure of a youngster, you’ve most likely had tweakments; if you want to reduce, well, there are medications for that. “I’m not on any yet, but I’ll consider them when I’ve stopped breastfeeding,” she says. It touches on the root of how female emancipation is viewed, which I believe hasn’t really changed in the past 50 years: liberation means being attractive but without ever thinking about it; being universally desired, but without pursuing the male gaze; having an unshakeable sense of self which God forbid you would ever modify; and allied to all that, women, especially, are expected to never think about money but nevertheless prosper under the pressure of current financial 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 talks about things?’ But I’m not trying to be provocative all the time. My life events, actions and missteps, they live in this realm between satisfaction and shame. It occurred, I discuss it, and maybe relief comes out of the jokes. I love sharing confessions; I want people to share with me their confessions. I want to know missteps people have made. I don’t know why I’m so eager for it, but I view it like a connection.”

Ryan grew up in Sarnia, Ontario, a place that was not particularly wealthy or cosmopolitan and had a active community theater arts scene. Her dad managed an technical company, her mother was in IT, and they expected a lot of her because she was vivacious, a driven person. She longed to get out from the age of about seven. “It was the type of place where people are very happy to live nearby to their parents and remain there for a considerable period and have their friends' children. When I visit now, all these kids look really known to me, because I spent my childhood with both their parents.” But isn't it true she partnered with her own teenage boyfriend? She went back to Sarnia, reconnected with Bobby Kootstra, who she dated 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 solo mom. “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, cosmopolitan, mobile. But we cannot completely leave behind where we came from, it appears.”

‘We can’t fully escape where we came from’

She got away for a bit, aged 18, and moved to Toronto, which she loved. These were the time at the restaurant, which has been another source of discussion, not just that she worked – and enjoyed working – in a establishment (except this is a myth: “You would be dismissed 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 crossed so many red lines – what even was that? Exploitation? Sex work? Unethical action? Unsisterliness (towards whoever it was who had to stay late so she could leave early)? Whatever it was, you definitely were not expected to joke about it.

Ryan was amazed that her fellatio sequence provoked outrage – she was fond of the guy! She also wanted to go home early. But it cracked open something broader: a calculated absolutism around sex, a sense that the cost of the #MeToo movement was performed modesty. “I’ve always found this notable, in debates 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 linking of certain remarks to lyrics in popular music. “Some individuals said: ‘Well, how’s that dissimilar?’ I thought: ‘How is it comparable?’”

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 disliked it, because I was immediately poor.”

‘I felt confident I had jokes’

She got a job in sales, was told she had lupus, which can sometimes make it difficult to get pregnant, and at 23, decided to try to have a baby. “When you’re first informed about something – I was quite sick at the time – you go to the most negative outcome. 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 extended life is, and how many things can transform. But at 23, I couldn’t see it.” She was able to get pregnant and had Violet.

The next bit sounds as white-knuckle as a tense comedy film. While on time off, she would take care of Violet in the day and try to enter performance in the evening, carrying her daughter with her. She was aware 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 simply, “I knew I had material.” 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 created in the context of a ongoing debate about whether women could be funny