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‘Especially in this place, I feel you required me. You weren't aware it but you craved me, to lift some of your own guilt.” The performer, the 42-year-old Canadian comic who has lived in the UK for almost 20 years, has brought her recently born fourth child. She takes off her breast pumps so they won't create an annoying sound. The primary observation you observe is the remarkable capacity of this woman, who can radiate parental devotion while articulating sequential thoughts in complete phrases, and without getting distracted.

The following element you see is what she’s famous for – a authentic, unapologetic audacity, a dismissal of affectation and contradiction. When she burst onto the UK alternative comedy scene in 2008, her provocation was that she was strikingly attractive and refused to act not to know it. “Trying to be stylish or pretty was seen as catering to male approval,” she states of the that period, “which was the antithesis of what a comedian would do. It was a norm to be humble. If you appeared in a glamorous outfit with your little push-up bra and heels, like, ‘I think I’m gorgeous,’ that would be seen as really unappealing, but I did it because that’s what I liked.”

Then there was her comedy, which she summarises breezily: “Women, especially, needed someone to come along 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 flawed as a parent, as a spouse and as a chooser of men. You can be someone who is afraid of men, but is confident enough to mock them; you don’t have to be deferential to them the whole time.’”

‘If you performed in your little push-up bra and heels, that would be seen as really alienating’

The underlying theme to that is an insistence on what’s true: if you have your baby with you, you most likely have your breast pumps; if you have the jawline of a young person, you’ve most likely received treatments; 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 gets to the heart of how feminism is understood, which it strikes me has stayed the same in the past 50 years: freedom means appearing beautiful but not dwelling about it; being constantly sought after, but without pursuing the male gaze; having an solid sense of self which perish the thought you would ever surgically enhance; and coupled with 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 went: ‘What? She just talks about things?’ But I’m not trying to be challenging all the time. My experiences, choices and mistakes, they reside in this area between pride and embarrassment. It took place, I discuss it, and maybe reprieve comes out of the punchlines. I love telling people private thoughts; I want people to tell me their confessions. I want to know missteps people have made. I don’t know why I’m so keen for it, but I feel it like a connection.”

Ryan grew up in Sarnia, Ontario, a place that was not particularly wealthy or cosmopolitan and had a lively local performance theater scene. Her dad ran an technical company, her mother was in IT, and they anticipated a lot of her because she was bright, a driven person. She longed to get out from the age of about seven. “It was the kind of town where people are very content to live close to their parents and remain there for a lifetime and have one another's children. When I return now, all these kids look really known to me, because I spent my childhood with both their parents.” But didn’t she marry 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 cared for until then as a solo mom. “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, urban, portable. But we can’t fully escape where we originated, it appears.”

‘We cannot completely leave behind where we came from’

She did escape 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 debate, not just that she worked – and liked the job – in a venue (except this is a myth: “You would be fired for being undressed; you’re not allowed to take your shirt off”), 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 boundaries – what even was that? Abuse? Sex work? Predatory behavior? Lack of solidarity (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 surprised that her story generated anger – she got on with the guy! She also wanted to go home early. But it exposed something wider: a deliberate rigidity around sex, a sense that the consequence of the #MeToo movement was demonstrative modesty. “I’ve always found this notable, in debates about sex, permission and manipulation, the people who don’t understand 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. “Some individuals said: ‘Well, how’s that different?’ 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 pests there.’ And I hated it, because I was instantly struggling.”

‘I felt confident I had material’

She got a job in business, was told she had an autoimmune condition, which can sometimes make it challenging to get pregnant, and at 23, chose to try to have a baby. “When you’re first told you have something – I was quite sick at the time – you go to the worst-case scenario. My rationale with my boyfriend was, we’ve had so many ups and downs, if we are still together 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 succeeded in get pregnant and had Violet.

The subsequent chapter 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 performance in the evening, carrying her daughter with her. She felt 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 knew I had material.” The whole industry was riddled with sexism – she won a prestigious comedy award in 2008, just over a year after she’d started performing, a prize that was established in the context of a ongoing debate about whether women could be funny