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‘Especially in this nation, I feel you needed me. You weren't aware it but you craved me, to lift some of your own shame.” The performer, the 42-year-old Canadian comedian who has made her home in the UK for close to 20 years, has brought her brand new fourth child. She takes off her breast pumps so they won't create an irritating sound. The initial impression you see is the incredible ability of this woman, who can project motherly affection while articulating logical sentences in complete phrases, and without getting distracted.

The second thing you observe is what she’s renowned for – a genuine, inherent fearlessness, a rejection of artifice and duplicity. When she burst onto the UK comedy scene in 2008, her statement was that she was strikingly attractive and didn’t pretend not to know it. “Attempting stylish or beautiful was seen as man-pleasing,” she recalls of the that period, “which was the opposite of what a comedian would do. It was a trend to be self-deprecating. If you went on stage in a stylish dress with your little push-up bra and heels, like, ‘I think I’m fabulous,’ that would be seen as really unappealing, but I did it because that’s what I liked.”

Then there was her material, which she describes simply: “Women, especially, needed someone to appear 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 imperfect as a mother, as a partner and as a picker of men. You can be someone who is afraid of men, but is confident enough to criticize them; you don’t have to be pleasant to them the all the time.’”

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

The drumbeat to that is an insistence on what’s true: if you have your baby with you, you most likely have your feeding equipment; if you have the facial structure of a youngster, you’ve most likely received treatments; if you want to reduce, well, there are drugs for that. “I’m not on any yet, but I’ll consider them when I’ve stopped feeding,” she says. It gets to the heart of how female emancipation is conceived, which it strikes me remains largely unchanged in the past 50 years: empowerment means appearing beautiful but never thinking about it; being constantly sought after, but never chasing the attention of men; having an unshakeable sense of self which perish the thought you would ever modify; and in addition to all that, women, especially, are expected to never think about money but nevertheless thrive under the relentlessness of late capitalist conditions. All of which is maintained by the majority of us pretending, most of the time.

“For a while people said: ‘What? She just talks about things?’ But I’m not trying to be controversial all the time. My experiences, actions and errors, they live in this realm between satisfaction and embarrassment. It occurred, I share it, and maybe relief comes out of the humor. I love telling people secrets; I want people to confide in me their confessions. I want to know mistakes people have made. I don’t know why I’m so eager for it, but I sense it like a connection.”

Ryan spent her childhood in Sarnia, Ontario, a place that was not notably wealthy or urban and had a lively amateur dramatics arts scene. Her dad managed an industrial company, her mother was in IT, and they expected 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 pleased to live close to their parents and live there for a long time and have one another's children. When I go back now, all these kids look really known to me, because I grew up 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 saw 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 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, stylish, urban, flexible. But we can’t fully escape where we originated, it appears.”

‘We cannot completely leave behind where we originated’

She did escape for a bit, aged 18, and moved to Toronto, which she adored. These were the time at the restaurant, which has been a further cause of debate, not just that she worked – and enjoyed working – in a topless bar (except this is a misconception: “You would be let go for being topless; you’re not allowed to be unclothed”), but also for a bit in one of her sets where she talked about giving a manager a sexual favor in return for being allowed to go home early. It breached so many boundaries – what even was that? Exploitation? Transaction? Inappropriate conduct? Unsisterliness (towards whoever it was who had to stay late so she could leave early)? Whatever it was, you certainly were not meant to joke about it.

Ryan was shocked that her story provoked anger – she was fond of the guy! She also wanted to go home early. But it revealed something broader: a strategic rigidity around sex, a sense that the cost of the #MeToo movement was demonstrative chastity. “I’ve always found this fascinating, in discussions about sex, consent and exploitation, the people who don’t understand the subtlety of it. Therefore if this is abuse, why isn’t that abuse?” She references the comparison of certain statements to lyrics in popular music. “They said: ‘Well, how’s that different?’ I thought: ‘How is it alike?’”

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 rats there.’ And I found it difficult, because I was instantly broke.”

‘I knew I had comedy’

She got a job in sales, was found to have a chronic illness, which can sometimes make it challenging to get pregnant, and at 23, made the decision to try to have a baby. “When you’re first diagnosed something – I was quite ill at the time – you go to the darkest possibility. My reasoning with my boyfriend was, we’ve had so many ups and downs, if we haven’t split up by now, we never will. Now I see how extended life is, and how many things can change. But at 23, I didn't realize.” She succeeded in get pregnant and had Violet.

The next bit sounds as white-knuckle as a chaotic comedy film. While on parental leave, she would look after Violet in the day and try to break into standup in the evening, taking her daughter with her. She was aware from her sales job that she had no problem being convincing, and she had faith in her quickfire wit from her time at Hooters; more than that, she says simply, “I was confident I had comedy.” The whole industry was riddled with sexism – 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 turgid debate about whether women could be funny