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‘Especially in this nation, I think you required me. You didn't comprehend it but you craved me, to lift some of your own embarrassment.” The comedian, the 42-year-old Canadian comedian who has lived in the UK for almost 20 years, was accompanied by her recently born fourth child. She takes off her breast pumps so they won't create an annoying sound. The initial impression you observe is the awesome capability of this woman, who can project parental devotion while articulating sequential thoughts in complete phrases, and never get distracted.

The second thing you see is what she’s known for – a authentic, unapologetic audacity, a dismissal of pretense and hypocrisy. When she emerged in the UK stand-up scene in 2008, her challenge was that she was exceptionally beautiful and didn’t pretend 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 trend to be modest. If you performed in a elegant attire with your lingerie and heels, like, ‘I think I’m gorgeous,’ that would be seen as really unappealing, but I did it because that’s what I enjoyed.”

Then there was her comedy, which she explains casually: “Women, especially, needed someone to come along 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 slag for a while. You can be imperfect as a parent, 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 whole time.’”

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

The drumbeat to that is an insistence on what’s real: if you have your baby with you, you most likely have your breast pumps; if you have the jawline of a youth, you’ve most likely received treatments; if you want to lose weight, well, there are medications for that. “I’m not on any yet, but I’ll consider them when I’ve stopped breastfeeding,” she says. It touches on the core of how women's liberation is understood, which I believe hasn’t really changed in the past 50 years: liberation means appearing beautiful but not dwelling about it; being universally desired, but never chasing the male gaze; having an solid sense of self which God forbid you would ever surgically enhance; and coupled with all that, women, especially, are meant to never think about money but nevertheless succeed under the pressure of current financial conditions. All of which is sustained by the majority of us pretending, most of the time.

“For a while people reacted: ‘What? She just discusses things?’ But I’m not trying to be provocative all the time. My experiences, actions and errors, they reside in this realm between pride and embarrassment. It happened, I talk about it, and maybe relief comes out of the jokes. I love telling people private thoughts; I want people to confide in me their confessions. I want to know errors people have made. I don’t know why I’m so keen for it, but I view it like a connection.”

Ryan was raised in Sarnia, Ontario, a place that was not especially wealthy or metropolitan and had a active amateur dramatics musicals scene. Her dad ran an technical company, her mother was in IT, and they anticipated a lot of her because she was vivacious, a driven person. She dreamed of leaving from the age of about seven. “It was the type of place where people are very content to live close to their parents and live there for a lifetime and have their friends' children. When I go back now, all these kids look really familiar 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, met again an old flame, 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 an alternate reality where I didn't make that, and it’s still just Violet and me, sophisticated, worldly, flexible. But we are always connected to where we started, it turns out.”

‘We can’t fully escape where we came from’

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 another source of debate, not just that she worked – and found it fun – in a establishment (except this is a misconception: “You would be fired for being topless; you’re not allowed to be unclothed”), but also for a bit in one of her routines 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? Abuse? Prostitution? Unethical action? Unsisterliness (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 amazed that her fellatio sequence caused controversy – she got on with the guy! She also wanted to go home early. But it revealed something larger: a calculated rigidity around sex, a sense that the price of the #MeToo movement was demonstrative purity. “I’ve always found this fascinating, in discussions about sex, consent and exploitation, the people who misinterpret the nuance of it. Therefore if this is abuse, why isn’t that abuse?” She mentions the linking of certain remarks to lyrics in popular music. “Certain people said: ‘Well, how’s that distinct?’ I thought: ‘How is it similar?’”

She would not have come to London in 2008 had it not been for her romantic interest. “Everyone said: ‘Don’t go to London, they have rats there.’ And I hated it, because I was suddenly poor.”

‘I was aware I had jokes’

She got a job in sales, was diagnosed lupus, which can sometimes make it difficult to get pregnant, and at 23, decided 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 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 transform. But at 23, I couldn’t see it.” She was able to get pregnant and had Violet.

The subsequent chapter sounds as nerve-wracking as a classic comedy film. While on maternity leave, she would care for Violet in the day and try to enter comedy in the evening, taking her daughter with her. She was aware from her sales job that she had no problem winning people over, and she had belief in her fast thinking from her time at Hooters; more than that, she says bluntly, “I knew I had jokes.” The whole industry was shot through 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 ongoing debate about whether women could be funny