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‘Especially in this country, I believe you craved me. You didn't comprehend it but you required me, to alleviate some of your own embarrassment.” Katherine Ryan, the 42-year-old Canadian comic who has made her home in the UK for almost 20 years, brought along her recently born fourth child. Ryan whips off her breast pumps so they won't create an distracting sound. The first thing you notice is the awesome capability of this woman, who can fully beam motherly affection while articulating logical sentences in complete phrases, and remaining distracted.

The next aspect you notice is what she’s famous for – a genuine, inherent fearlessness, a rejection of pretense and contradiction. When she emerged in the UK comedy scene in 2008, her provocation was that she was exceptionally beautiful and refused to act not to know it. “Attempting stylish or pretty was seen as man-pleasing,” she remembers of the early 2010s, “which was the opposite of what a comic would do. It was a trend to be self-deprecating. If you performed in a elegant attire with your little push-up bra and heels, like, ‘I think I’m stunning,’ that would be seen as really off-putting, but I did it because that’s what I liked.”

Then there was her routines, which she describes 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 enhancement and have been a bit of a slag for a while. You can be imperfect as a parent, as a partner and as a picker of men. You can be someone who is wary of men, but is self-assured enough to slag them off; you don’t have to be nice to them the whole time.’”

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

The drumbeat to that is an focus on what’s real: 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 undergone procedures; if you want to lose weight, well, there are treatments for that. “I’m not on any yet, but I’ll consider them when I’ve stopped nursing,” she says. It addresses the root of how feminism is viewed, which I believe has stayed the same in the past 50 years: freedom means appearing beautiful but not dwelling about it; being constantly sought after, but without pursuing the male gaze; having an unshakeable sense of self which God forbid you would ever surgically enhance; and coupled with all that, women, especially, are supposed to never think about money but nevertheless thrive under the pressure of modern economic conditions. All of which is sustained by the majority of us being dishonest, most of the time.

“For a while people said: ‘What? She just speaks about things?’ But I’m not trying to be controversial all the time. My personal stories, choices and errors, they live in this realm between satisfaction and regret. It took place, I share it, and maybe reprieve comes out of the humor. I love revealing private thoughts; I want people to share with me their private thoughts. I want to know mistakes people have made. I don’t know why I’m so keen for it, but I sense it like a link.”

Ryan grew up in Sarnia, Ontario, a place that was not notably wealthy or urban and had a vibrant community theater arts scene. Her dad ran an technical company, her mother was in IT, and they anticipated a lot of her because she was bright, a perfectionist. She dreamed of leaving from the age of about seven. “It was the kind of town where people are very pleased to live next door to their parents and stay there for a considerable period and have each other’s children. When I return now, all these kids look really recognizable to me, because I spent my childhood with both their parents.” But isn't it true she partnered with her own teenage boyfriend? She went back to Sarnia, caught up with an old flame, 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 lone parent. “Right,” says Ryan. “Sometimes I think there’s a different path where I haven’t done that, and it’s still just Violet and me, sophisticated, cosmopolitan, mobile. But we cannot completely leave behind where we came from, it turns out.”

‘We can’t fully escape where we started’

She managed to leave for a bit, aged 18, and moved to Toronto, which she adored. These were the time at the restaurant, which has been another source of controversy, not just that she worked – and found it fun – in a establishment (except this is a inaccuracy: “You would be dismissed for being undressed; 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 blowjob in return for being allowed to go home early. It crossed so many boundaries – what even was that? Exploitation? Prostitution? Predatory behavior? Betrayal (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 surprised that her fellatio sequence provoked outrage – she was fond of the guy! She also wanted to go home early. But it revealed something larger: a strategic rigidity around sex, a sense that the price of the #MeToo movement was demonstrative chastity. “I’ve always found this interesting, in arguments about sex, consent and abuse, the people who don’t understand the complexity of it. Therefore if this is abuse, why isn’t that abuse?” She brings up the comparison of certain statements to lyrics in popular music. “Certain people 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 romantic interest. “Everyone said: ‘Don’t go to London, they have rats there.’ And I disliked it, because I was instantly struggling.”

‘I knew I had jokes’

She got a job in sales, was told she had lupus, 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 worst-case scenario. My logic with my boyfriend was, we’ve had so many problems, if we haven't separated 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 was able to get pregnant and had Violet.

The subsequent chapter sounds as high-pressure as a tense comedy film. While on maternity leave, she would look after Violet in the day and try to break into standup in the evening, taking her daughter with her. She knew from her sales job that she had no problem being convincing, and she had confidence in her fast thinking from her time at Hooters; more than that, she says plainly, “I was confident I had jokes.” The whole circuit 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 created in the context of a turgid debate about whether women could be funny