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‘Especially in this place, I think you required me. You didn't comprehend it but you needed me, to lift some of your own shame.” The performer, the forty-two-year-old Canadian comic who has lived in the UK for nearly 20 years, was accompanied by her brand new fourth child. She removes her breast pumps so they avoid making an irritating sound. The initial impression you notice is the remarkable capacity of this woman, who can fully beam motherly affection while articulating coherent ideas in complete phrases, and remaining distracted.

The following element you observe is what she’s famous for – a genuine, inherent fearlessness, a dismissal of affectation and contradiction. When she burst onto the UK comedy scene in 2008, her statement was that she was exceptionally beautiful and made no attempt not to know it. “Aiming for glamorous or pretty was seen as appealing to men,” she states of the that period, “which was the reverse of what a comic would do. It was a trend to be modest. If you appeared in a stylish dress with your underwear 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 enjoyed.”

Then there was her routines, which she describes breezily: “Women, especially, required someone to come along and be like: ‘Hey, that’s OK. You can be a feminist and have a enhancement and have been a bit of a party-goer for a while. You can be imperfect as a mother, as a partner 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 performed in your lingerie and heels, that would be seen as really alienating’

The drumbeat to that is an focus on what’s authentic: if you have your child with you, you most likely have your feeding equipment; if you have the jawline of a youth, you’ve most likely undergone procedures; if you want to lose weight, well, there are medications for that. “I’m not on any yet, but I’ll think about them when I’ve stopped nursing,” she says. It gets to the root of how women's liberation is viewed, which in my view hasn’t really changed in the past 50 years: freedom 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 heaven forbid you would ever modify; and in addition to all that, women, especially, are expected to never think about money but nevertheless prosper under the relentlessness of late capitalist conditions. All of which is sustained by the majority of us pretending, most of the time.

“For a long time people reacted: ‘What? She just talks about things?’ But I’m not trying to be controversial all the time. My life events, actions and errors, they live in this realm between pride and shame. It occurred, I discuss it, and maybe reprieve comes out of the jokes. I love telling people confessions; 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 eager for it, but I view it like a link.”

Ryan was raised in Sarnia, Ontario, a place that was not notably wealthy or urban and had a lively community theater theater scene. Her dad managed an industrial company, her mother was in IT, and they expected a lot of her because she was vivacious, a driven person. She wanted to escape 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 stay there for a long time and have their friends' children. When I go back now, all these kids look really known to me, because I grew up with both their parents.” But didn’t she marry her own teenage boyfriend? She traveled back to Sarnia, caught up with 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 raised 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, chic, cosmopolitan, portable. But we cannot completely leave behind where we came from, it appears.”

‘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 period working there, which has been an additional point of controversy, not just that she worked – and enjoyed working – in a topless bar (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 taboos – what even was that? Abuse? Sex work? Inappropriate conduct? Lack of solidarity (towards whoever it was who had to stay late so she could leave early)? Whatever it was, you certainly were not meant to joke about it.

Ryan was shocked that her fellatio sequence caused controversy – she liked the guy! She also wanted to go home early. But it exposed something broader: a strategic rigidity around sex, a sense that the price of the #MeToo movement was performed modesty. “I’ve always found this fascinating, in debates about sex, agreement and exploitation, the people who misinterpret the complexity of it. Therefore if this is abuse, why isn’t that abuse?” She references the equating 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 disliked it, because I was suddenly broke.”

‘I knew I had material’

She got a job in business, was found to have a chronic illness, which can sometimes make it difficult to get pregnant, and at 23, made the decision to try to have a baby. “When you’re first diagnosed something – I was quite unwell at the time – you go to the most negative outcome. My logic with my boyfriend was, we’ve had so many issues, if we are still together 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 succeeded in get pregnant and had Violet.

The following period sounds as nerve-wracking as a chaotic comedy film. While on time off, she would care for Violet in the day and try to break into performance in the evening, carrying her daughter with her. She knew from her sales job that she had no problem persuading others, and she had confidence in her quickfire wit from her time at Hooters; more than that, she says simply, “I knew I had comedy.” The whole circuit was shot through with sexism – she won a prestigious 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