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‘Especially in this place, I believe you needed me. You didn't comprehend it but you required me, to alleviate some of your own shame.” The comedian, the 42-year-old Canadian comedian who has made her home in the UK for nearly 20 years, brought along her brand new fourth child. She takes off her breast pumps so they don’t make an annoying sound. The first thing you observe is the incredible ability of this woman, who can project motherly affection while articulating logical sentences in whole sentences, and without getting distracted.

The second thing you notice is what she’s famous for – a genuine, inherent fearlessness, a rejection of affectation and contradiction. When she sprang on to the UK alternative comedy scene in 2008, her provocation was that she was exceptionally beautiful and didn’t pretend not to know it. “Aiming for elegant or attractive was seen as catering to male approval,” 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 modest. 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 liked.”

Then there was her comedy, which she explains simply: “Women, especially, required someone to arrive and be like: ‘Hey, that’s OK. You can be a feminist and have a cosmetic surgery and have been a bit of a party-goer for a while. You can be flawed as a mother, as a partner 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 pleasant to them the whole time.’”

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

The drumbeat to that is an focus 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 nursing,” she says. It addresses the root of how female emancipation is understood, which in my view hasn’t really changed in the past 50 years: liberation means looking great but never thinking about it; being universally desired, but avoiding the male gaze; having an unshakeable sense of self which perish the thought you would ever alter cosmetically; and coupled with all that, women, especially, are expected to never think about money but nevertheless thrive under the demands of current financial conditions. All of which is sustained by the majority of us bullshitting, most of the time.

“For a long time people said: ‘What? She just speaks about things?’ But I’m not trying to be provocative all the time. My experiences, choices and mistakes, they exist in this space between confidence and shame. It occurred, I talk about it, and maybe catharsis comes out of the humor. I love sharing secrets; I want people to confide in me their secrets. I want to know mistakes people have made. I don’t know why I’m so thirsty for it, but I feel it like a bond.”

Ryan spent her childhood in Sarnia, Ontario, a place that was not especially affluent or urban and had a active community theater musicals scene. Her dad owned an engineering company, her mother was in IT, and they demanded a lot of her because she was bright, a high achiever. 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 considerable period and have their friends' children. When I go back now, all these kids look really recognizable to me, because I spent my childhood with both their parents.” But she later reunited with her own first love? She returned 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 another life where I haven’t done that, and it’s still just Violet and me, stylish, worldly, portable. But we can’t fully escape where we came from, it seems.”

‘We cannot completely leave behind where we came from’

She got away for a bit, aged 18, and moved to Toronto, which she adored. These were the Hooters years, which has been a further cause of debate, not just that she worked – and found it fun – in a establishment (except this is a inaccuracy: “You would be dismissed for being undressed; 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 blowjob in return for being allowed to go home early. It crossed so many taboos – what even was that? Manipulation? Prostitution? Predatory behavior? Lack of solidarity (towards whoever it was who had to stay late so she could leave early)? Whatever it was, you certainly were not expected to joke about it.

Ryan was surprised that her fellatio sequence caused anger – she was fond of the guy! She also wanted to go home early. But it revealed something larger: a calculated inflexibility around sex, a sense that the consequence of the #MeToo movement was performed purity. “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 remarks to lyrics in popular music. “They 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 partner at the time. “Everyone said: ‘Don’t go to London, they have pests there.’ And I found it difficult, because I was instantly broke.”

‘I knew I had material’

She got a job in business, was diagnosed lupus, which can sometimes make it challenging to get pregnant, and at 23, chose to try to have a baby. “When you’re first diagnosed something – I was quite sick at the time – you go to the darkest possibility. 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 change. But at 23, I didn't realize.” She was able to get pregnant and had Violet.

The following period sounds as white-knuckle as a tense comedy film. While on maternity leave, she would take care of Violet in the day and try to break into standup in the evening, bringing her daughter with her. She was aware from her sales job that she had no problem persuading others, and she had faith in her quickfire wit from her time at Hooters; more than that, she says bluntly, “I knew I had comedy.” The whole circuit was riddled with bias – she won a notable 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