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‘Especially in this nation, I feel you needed me. You didn't comprehend it but you needed me, to remove some of your own embarrassment.” The performer, the forty-two-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 first thing you see is the awesome capability of this woman, who can fully beam motherly affection while forming coherent ideas in complete phrases, and never get distracted.

The following element you observe is what she’s known for – a genuine, inherent fearlessness, a dismissal of affectation and contradiction. When she emerged in the UK alternative comedy scene in 2008, her challenge was that she was strikingly attractive and refused to act not to know it. “Aiming for stylish or pretty was seen as man-pleasing,” she remembers of the start of the decade, “which was the reverse of what a funny person would do. It was a trend to be self-deprecating. If you went on stage in a glamorous outfit with your little push-up bra and heels, like, ‘I think I’m stunning,’ that would be seen as really off-putting, but I did it because that’s what I enjoyed.”

Then there was her comedy, which she summarises simply: “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 promiscuous person 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 fearful of men, but is bold enough to mock them; you don’t have to be deferential to them the entire time.’”

‘If you took to the stage in your underwear and heels, that would be seen as really alienating’

The consistent message to that is an emphasis on what’s true: if you have your baby with you, you most likely have your breast pumps; if you have the profile of a youngster, you’ve most likely received treatments; if you want to reduce, well, there are treatments for that. “I’m not on any yet, but I’ll think about them when I’ve stopped nursing,” she says. It touches on the root of how female emancipation is conceived, which in my view hasn’t really changed in the past 50 years: freedom means being attractive but never thinking about it; being universally desired, but avoiding the attention of men; having an impermeable sense of self which heaven forbid you would ever alter cosmetically; and in addition to all that, women, especially, are meant to never think about money but nevertheless succeed under the pressure of late capitalist 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 speaks about things?’ But I’m not trying to be challenging all the time. My life events, actions and missteps, they exist in this space between satisfaction and regret. It occurred, I discuss it, and maybe reprieve comes out of the jokes. I love sharing private thoughts; 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 thirsty for it, but I feel it like a connection.”

Ryan grew up in Sarnia, Ontario, a place that was not especially prosperous or cosmopolitan and had a vibrant community theater theater scene. Her dad ran an industrial company, her mother was in IT, and they demanded 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 pleased to live nearby to their parents and live there for a long time and have each other’s children. When I return 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 first love? She returned to Sarnia, caught up with her former partner, 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 single mother. “Right,” says Ryan. “Sometimes I think there’s another life where I didn't make that, and it’s still just Violet and me, chic, worldly, mobile. But we can’t fully escape where we started, it appears.”

‘We are always connected to where we started’

She did escape for a bit, aged 18, and moved to Toronto, which she loved. These were the Hooters years, which has been another source of discussion, not just that she worked – and enjoyed working – in a venue (except this is a inaccuracy: “You would be dismissed for being undressed; you’re not allowed to be unclothed”), but also for a bit in one of her performances where she talked about giving a manager a blowjob in return for being allowed to go home early. It crossed so many taboos – what even was that? Manipulation? Sex work? Unethical action? Unsisterliness (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 provoked outrage – she liked the guy! She also wanted to go home early. But it cracked open something wider: a deliberate inflexibility around sex, a sense that the price of the #MeToo movement was demonstrative purity. “I’ve always found this notable, in arguments about sex, permission and exploitation, the people who misinterpret the nuance of it. Therefore if this is abuse, why isn’t that abuse?” She mentions the comparison of certain statements to lyrics in popular music. “Some individuals said: ‘Well, how’s that distinct?’ I thought: ‘How is it similar?’”

She would never have moved to London in 2008 had it not been for her partner at the time. “Everyone said: ‘Don’t go to London, they have vermin there.’ And I found it difficult, because I was suddenly struggling.”

‘I was aware I had jokes’

She got a job in sales, was found to have lupus, which can sometimes make it hard to get pregnant, and at 23, chose 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 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 couldn’t see it.” She succeeded in get pregnant and had Violet.

The next bit sounds as white-knuckle as a chaotic comedy film. While on time off, she would care for Violet in the day and try to break into comedy in the evening, taking her daughter with her. She was aware from her sales job that she had no problem persuading others, and she had faith in her sharp humor from her time at Hooters; more than that, she says bluntly, “I was confident I had material.” The whole scene was riddled with bias – she won a major comedy award in 2008, just over a year after she’d started performing, a prize that was conceived in the context of a persistent debate about whether women could be funny