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‘Especially in this country, I feel you required me. You didn’t realise it but you required me, to remove some of your own embarrassment.” The performer, the 42-year-old Canadian comic who has lived in the UK for nearly 20 years, has brought her newly minted fourth child. She takes off her breast pumps so they avoid making an distracting sound. The initial impression you notice is the incredible ability of this woman, who can radiate parental devotion while crafting coherent ideas in full statements, and remaining distracted.

The following element you see is what she’s famous for – a authentic, unapologetic audacity, a refusal of artifice and duplicity. When she sprang on to the UK stand-up scene in 2008, her statement was that she was strikingly attractive and made no attempt not to know it. “Trying to be elegant or pretty was seen as man-pleasing,” she states of the start of the decade, “which was the reverse of what a comic 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 unappealing, but I did it because that’s what I liked.”

Then there was her material, which she summarises simply: “Women, especially, craved someone to arrive and be like: ‘Hey, that’s OK. You can be a feminist and have a enhancement and have been a bit of a party-goer for a while. You can be imperfect as a mother, as a spouse and as a selector of men. You can be someone who is wary of men, but is bold enough to criticize them; you don’t have to be nice to them the all the time.’”

‘If you performed in your little push-up bra and heels, that would be seen as really unappealing’

The underlying theme to that is an emphasis on what’s real: if you have your infant with you, you most likely have your feeding equipment; if you have the profile 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 think about them when I’ve stopped breastfeeding,” she says. It gets to the heart of how women's liberation is understood, which it strikes me remains largely unchanged in the past 50 years: freedom means appearing beautiful but not dwelling about it; being universally desired, but without pursuing the male gaze; having an unshakeable sense of self which perish the thought you would ever alter cosmetically; and allied to all that, women, especially, are expected to never think about money but nevertheless thrive under the relentlessness of modern economic conditions. All of which is maintained by the majority of us bullshitting, most of the time.

“For a considerable period people said: ‘What? She just discusses things?’ But I’m not trying to be challenging all the time. My personal stories, actions and mistakes, they live in this space between confidence and shame. It took place, I share it, and maybe reprieve comes out of the humor. I love telling people private thoughts; I want people to share with me their confessions. I want to know errors people have made. I don’t know why I’m so keen for it, but I feel it like a connection.”

Ryan grew up in Sarnia, Ontario, a place that was not particularly prosperous or cosmopolitan and had a vibrant amateur dramatics arts scene. Her dad ran an engineering company, her mother was in IT, and they demanded 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 sort of community where people are very pleased to live close to their parents and remain there for a lifetime and have their friends' children. When I return 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 traveled back to Sarnia, caught up with Bobby Kootstra, 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 lone parent. “Right,” says Ryan. “Sometimes I think there’s another life where I didn't make that, and it’s still just Violet and me, stylish, worldly, flexible. But we cannot completely leave behind where we came from, it turns out.”

‘We cannot completely leave behind where we originated’

She got away for a bit, aged 18, and moved to Toronto, which she enjoyed. These were the time at the restaurant, which has been an additional point of controversy, not just that she worked – and liked the job – in a venue (except this is a myth: “You would be let go for being nude; you’re not allowed to remove your top”), 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 breached so many red lines – what even was that? Manipulation? Prostitution? Unethical action? Unsisterliness (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 anecdote provoked anger – she was fond of the guy! She also wanted to go home early. But it revealed something larger: a calculated rigidity around sex, a sense that the consequence of the #MeToo movement was performed purity. “I’ve always found this fascinating, in discussions about sex, consent and exploitation, the people who misinterpret the subtlety of it. Therefore if this is abuse, why isn’t that abuse?” She references the equating of certain statements to lyrics in popular music. “Certain people said: ‘Well, how’s that different?’ I thought: ‘How is it alike?’”

She would not have come to London in 2008 had it not been for her then boyfriend. “Everyone said: ‘Don’t go to London, they have rats there.’ And I found it difficult, because I was suddenly broke.”

‘I was aware I had material’

She got a job in retail, was told she had an autoimmune condition, 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 worst-case scenario. My logic with my boyfriend was, we’ve had so many issues, if we are still together by now, we never will. Now I see how lengthy life is, and how many things can transform. But at 23, I was unaware.” She managed to get pregnant and had Violet.

The subsequent chapter sounds as high-pressure as a chaotic comedy film. While on time off, she would look after Violet in the day and try to make her way in standup in the evening, bringing her daughter with her. She was aware from her sales job that she had no problem being convincing, and she had belief in her sharp humor from her time at Hooters; more than that, she says simply, “I felt sure I had comedy.” The whole scene 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 created in the context of a persistent debate about whether women could be funny