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‘Especially in this nation, I feel you craved me. You didn't comprehend it but you required me, to remove some of your own embarrassment.” The comedian, the 42-year-old Canadian comic who has lived in the UK for almost 20 years, brought along her recently born fourth child. She removes her breast pumps so they won't create an irritating sound. The initial impression you observe is the incredible ability of this woman, who can radiate motherly affection while articulating coherent ideas in complete phrases, and without getting distracted.

The following element you notice is what she’s famous for – a genuine, inherent fearlessness, a refusal of pretense and hypocrisy. When she emerged in the UK comedy scene in 2008, her provocation was that she was very good-looking and refused to act not to know it. “Aiming for elegant or beautiful was seen as catering to male approval,” she states of the early 2010s, “which was the antithesis of what a comedian would do. It was a fashion to be humble. If you went on stage in a glamorous outfit with your lingerie and heels, like, ‘I think I’m stunning,’ that would be seen as really alienating, but I did it because that’s what I wanted.”

Then there was her comedy, which she describes breezily: “Women, especially, required someone to appear and be like: ‘Hey, that’s OK. You can be a feminist 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 significant other 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 nice to them the whole time.’”

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

The drumbeat to that is an focus on what’s true: if you have your child with you, you most likely have your feeding equipment; if you have the facial structure of a youngster, you’ve most likely undergone procedures; if you want to reduce, well, there are drugs for that. “I’m not on any yet, but I’ll think about them when I’ve stopped nursing,” she says. It addresses the heart of how female emancipation is conceived, which in my view remains largely unchanged in the past 50 years: empowerment means being attractive but without ever thinking about it; being widely admired, but never chasing the male gaze; having an impermeable sense of self which God 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 current financial conditions. All of which is maintained by the majority of us being dishonest, most of the time.

“For a long time people went: ‘What? She just talks about things?’ But I’m not trying to be provocative all the time. My life events, actions and mistakes, they exist in this area between confidence and embarrassment. It took place, I talk about it, and maybe catharsis comes out of the punchlines. I love revealing 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 eager for it, but I sense it like a bond.”

Ryan grew up in Sarnia, Ontario, a place that was not notably wealthy or urban and had a vibrant amateur dramatics musicals scene. Her dad owned an technical company, her mother was in IT, and they anticipated a lot of her because she was sparky, a high achiever. She wanted to escape from the age of about seven. “It was the sort of community where people are very happy to live nearby to their parents and stay there for a lifetime and have their friends' 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, 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 cared for 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, mobile. But we can’t fully escape where we started, it turns out.”

‘We are always connected to where we came from’

She managed to leave 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 fired for being topless; 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 boundaries – what even was that? Exploitation? Sex work? Unethical action? Lack of solidarity (towards whoever it was who had to stay late so she could leave early)? Whatever it was, you definitely weren’t supposed to joke about it.

Ryan was amazed that her fellatio sequence caused anger – she liked the guy! She also wanted to go home early. But it revealed something wider: a strategic rigidity around sex, a sense that the consequence of the #MeToo movement was demonstrative chastity. “I’ve always found this notable, in debates about sex, permission and exploitation, the people who don’t understand 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. “Certain people said: ‘Well, how’s that dissimilar?’ I thought: ‘How is it alike?’”

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 vermin there.’ And I hated it, because I was immediately broke.”

‘I was aware I had material’

She got a job in sales, was told she had lupus, which can sometimes make it challenging 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 issues, if we haven’t split up by now, we never will. Now I see how lengthy life is, and how many things can change. But at 23, I was unaware.” She was able to get pregnant and had Violet.

The following period sounds as nerve-wracking as a tense comedy film. While on time off, she would look after Violet in the day and try to make her way in comedy in the evening, bringing 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 quickfire wit from her time at Hooters; more than that, she says simply, “I knew I had comedy.” 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 established in the context of a persistent debate about whether women could be funny