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‘Especially in this nation, I think you craved me. You weren't aware it but you needed me, to remove some of your own guilt.” Katherine Ryan, the forty-two-year-old Canadian comedian who has been based in the UK for close to 20 years, brought along her brand new fourth child. Ryan whips off her breast pumps so they won't create an irritating sound. The primary observation you notice is the awesome capability of this woman, who can radiate maternal love while forming sequential thoughts in complete phrases, and never get distracted.

The next aspect you see is what she’s known for – a authentic, unapologetic audacity, a refusal of pretense and contradiction. When she burst onto the UK comedy scene in 2008, her statement was that she was strikingly attractive and made no attempt not to know it. “Trying to be elegant or beautiful was seen as appealing to men,” she remembers of the start of the decade, “which was the antithesis of what a funny person would do. It was a fashion to be self-deprecating. If you went on stage in a stylish dress 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 enjoyed.”

Then there was her material, which she explains casually: “Women, especially, needed someone to appear 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 party-goer for a while. You can be imperfect as a parent, as a spouse and as a chooser of men. You can be someone who is fearful of men, but is bold enough to criticize them; you don’t have to be pleasant to them the entire time.’”

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

The consistent message to that is an focus on what’s true: 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 received treatments; if you want to lose weight, well, there are drugs for that. “I’m not on any yet, but I’ll think about them when I’ve stopped feeding,” she says. It addresses the root of how female emancipation is conceived, which in my view hasn’t really changed in the past 50 years: liberation means looking great but without ever thinking about it; being universally desired, but avoiding the attention of men; having an solid sense of self which God forbid you would ever surgically enhance; and allied to all that, women, especially, are supposed 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 pretending, most of the time.

“For a while people reacted: ‘What? She just talks about things?’ But I’m not trying to be challenging all the time. My experiences, actions and mistakes, they live in this realm between satisfaction and regret. It happened, I discuss it, and maybe reprieve comes out of the punchlines. I love revealing confessions; I want people to share with me their secrets. I want to know missteps 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 particularly affluent or urban and had a vibrant community theater arts scene. Her dad owned an industrial company, her mother was in IT, and they demanded a lot of her because she was vivacious, a high achiever. 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 remain there for a lifetime and have one another's children. When I return now, all these kids look really recognizable to me, because I grew up with both their parents.” But didn’t she marry 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 cared for until then as a solo mom. “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, stylish, urban, flexible. But we are always connected to where we came from, it turns out.”

‘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 period working there, which has been a further cause of debate, not just that she worked – and liked the job – in a establishment (except this is a myth: “You would be let go for being undressed; 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 breached so many red lines – what even was that? Manipulation? Transaction? 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 anecdote caused outrage – she got on with the guy! She also wanted to go home early. But it revealed something wider: a calculated inflexibility around sex, a sense that the price of the #MeToo movement was demonstrative purity. “I’ve always found this interesting, in arguments about sex, permission and abuse, the people who don’t understand the nuance of it. Therefore if this is abuse, why isn’t that abuse?” She references the linking of certain remarks to lyrics in popular music. “Some individuals 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 then boyfriend. “Everyone said: ‘Don’t go to London, they have rats there.’ And I found it difficult, because I was instantly struggling.”

‘I was aware I had material’

She got a job in business, was found to have an autoimmune condition, which can sometimes make it hard to get pregnant, and at 23, chose to try to have a baby. “When you’re first informed about something – I was quite ill at the time – you go to the darkest possibility. My rationale with my boyfriend was, we’ve had so many ups and downs, if we haven't separated 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 next bit sounds as nerve-wracking as a chaotic comedy film. While on parental leave, she would care for 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 winning people over, and she had confidence in her fast thinking from her time at Hooters; more than that, she says bluntly, “I felt sure I had comedy.” The whole circuit was permeated with discrimination – she won a notable 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