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‘Especially in this nation, I feel you needed me. You didn't comprehend it but you required me, to lift 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 avoid making an annoying sound. The first thing you notice is the awesome capability of this woman, who can project motherly affection while forming logical sentences in complete phrases, and never get distracted.

The second thing you notice is what she’s known for – a natural, unaffected ballsiness, a dismissal of artifice and hypocrisy. When she burst onto the UK comedy scene in 2008, her provocation was that she was exceptionally beautiful and refused to act not to know it. “Attempting elegant or beautiful was seen as man-pleasing,” she states of the early 2010s, “which was the opposite of what a funny person would do. It was a norm to be self-deprecating. If you performed in a elegant attire 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 liked.”

Then there was her material, which she summarises casually: “Women, especially, required someone to arrive 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 party-goer for a while. You can be human as a parent, as a spouse and as a chooser of men. You can be someone who is wary of men, but is confident enough to mock them; you don’t have to be pleasant to them the all the time.’”

‘If you went on stage in your underwear and heels, that would be seen as really off-putting’

The consistent message to that is an focus on what’s authentic: 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 undergone procedures; if you want to slim down, well, there are drugs for that. “I’m not on any yet, but I’ll look into them when I’ve stopped breastfeeding,” she says. It gets to the core of how women's liberation is viewed, which I believe remains largely unchanged in the past 50 years: liberation means being attractive but never thinking about it; being constantly sought after, but without pursuing the attention of men; having an impermeable 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 thrive under the pressure of modern economic conditions. All of which is maintained by the majority of us pretending, most of the time.

“For a long time people said: ‘What? She just speaks about things?’ But I’m not trying to be challenging all the time. My experiences, choices and errors, they live in this space between confidence and regret. It took place, I discuss it, and maybe relief comes out of the humor. I love sharing secrets; I want people to share with me their secrets. I want to know mistakes people have made. I don’t know why I’m so keen for it, but I view it like a bond.”

Ryan was raised in Sarnia, Ontario, a place that was not notably prosperous or cosmopolitan and had a lively community theater musicals scene. Her dad ran an industrial company, her mother was in IT, and they demanded a lot of her because she was sparky, a perfectionist. She wanted to escape from the age of about seven. “It was the sort of community where people are very content to live close to their parents and stay there for a considerable period and have one another's children. When I go back 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 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 brought up until then as a single mother. “Right,” says Ryan. “Sometimes I think there’s another life where I haven’t done that, and it’s still just Violet and me, chic, cosmopolitan, mobile. But we cannot completely leave behind where we came from, it appears.”

‘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 time at the restaurant, which has been an additional point of discussion, not just that she worked – and enjoyed working – in a venue (except this is a inaccuracy: “You would be let go for being topless; you’re not allowed to remove your top”), but also for a bit in one of her performances where she mentioned giving a manager a sexual favor in return for being allowed to go home early. It violated so many red lines – what even was that? Manipulation? Transaction? Inappropriate conduct? Betrayal (towards whoever it was who had to stay late so she could leave early)? Whatever it was, you absolutely were not expected to joke about it.

Ryan was shocked that her anecdote caused anger – she got on with the guy! She also wanted to go home early. But it revealed something broader: a deliberate absolutism around sex, a sense that the consequence of the #MeToo movement was performed modesty. “I’ve always found this fascinating, in discussions about sex, permission and manipulation, 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 statements 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 pests there.’ And I found it difficult, because I was immediately struggling.”

‘I knew I had material’

She got a job in retail, was told she had lupus, which can sometimes make it hard 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 unwell at the time – you go to the worst-case scenario. My logic 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 transform. But at 23, I was unaware.” She managed to get pregnant and had Violet.

The following period sounds as white-knuckle as a tense comedy film. While on maternity leave, she would look after Violet in the day and try to break into performance in the evening, carrying her daughter with her. She was aware from her sales job that she had no problem winning people over, and she had confidence in her fast thinking from her time at Hooters; more than that, she says plainly, “I knew I had comedy.” The whole circuit was permeated 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 turgid debate about whether women could be funny