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‘Especially in this country, I feel you required me. You didn’t realise it but you craved me, to lift some of your own shame.” Katherine Ryan, the forty-two-year-old Canadian comedian who has lived in the UK for close to 20 years, was accompanied by her newly minted fourth child. She takes off her breast pumps so they don’t make an irritating sound. The primary observation you observe is the awesome capability of this woman, who can project parental devotion while articulating coherent ideas in whole sentences, and never get distracted.

The next aspect you see is what she’s renowned for – a authentic, unapologetic audacity, a refusal of affectation and hypocrisy. When she emerged in the UK alternative comedy scene in 2008, her statement was that she was exceptionally beautiful and refused to act not to know it. “Trying to be elegant or beautiful was seen as catering to male approval,” she recalls of the that period, “which was the reverse of what a funny person would do. It was a fashion to be humble. If you appeared in a stylish dress 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 material, which she explains casually: “Women, especially, craved someone to come along 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 slag for a while. You can be human as a mother, as a significant other and as a chooser 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 deferential to them the whole time.’”

‘If you went on stage in your lingerie and heels, that would be seen as really unappealing’

The underlying theme to that is an emphasis on what’s true: if you have your child with you, you most likely have your feeding equipment; if you have the jawline of a young person, you’ve most likely had tweakments; if you want to reduce, well, there are treatments for that. “I’m not on any yet, but I’ll think about them when I’ve stopped feeding,” she says. It touches on the core of how female emancipation is understood, which it strikes me remains largely unchanged in the past 50 years: freedom means looking great but without ever thinking about it; being universally desired, but without pursuing the attention of men; having an solid sense of self which God forbid you would ever alter cosmetically; and allied to all that, women, especially, are expected to never think about money but nevertheless succeed under the pressure of current financial conditions. All of which is kept afloat by the majority of us being dishonest, most of the time.

“For a long time people reacted: ‘What? She just speaks about things?’ But I’m not trying to be controversial all the time. My experiences, actions and errors, they exist in this space between confidence and regret. It took place, I talk about it, and maybe reprieve comes out of the humor. I love revealing secrets; 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 thirsty for it, but I sense it like a bond.”

Ryan grew up in Sarnia, Ontario, a place that was not especially wealthy or cosmopolitan and had a active community theater theater scene. Her dad owned an technical company, her mother was in IT, and they demanded a lot of her because she was sparky, a driven person. She longed to get out from the age of about seven. “It was the kind of town where people are very content to live next door to their parents and live there for a lifetime 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 isn't it true she partnered with her own first love? 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 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 cannot completely leave behind where we originated, it turns out.”

‘We are always connected to where we originated’

She managed to leave for a bit, aged 18, and moved to Toronto, which she enjoyed. These were the period working there, 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 dismissed for being undressed; you’re not allowed to remove your top”), but also for a bit in one of her routines where she discussed giving a manager a sexual favor in return for being allowed to go home early. It breached so many taboos – what even was that? Abuse? Transaction? Predatory behavior? Lack of solidarity (towards whoever it was who had to stay late so she could leave early)? Whatever it was, you certainly were not expected to joke about it.

Ryan was surprised that her anecdote caused controversy – she was fond of the guy! She also wanted to go home early. But it revealed something wider: a calculated rigidity around sex, a sense that the cost of the #MeToo movement was demonstrative chastity. “I’ve always found this interesting, in debates about sex, permission and exploitation, the people who fail to grasp the subtlety of it. Therefore if this is abuse, why isn’t that abuse?” She references the linking of certain remarks to lyrics in popular music. “They said: ‘Well, how’s that distinct?’ I thought: ‘How is it alike?’”

She would not have relocated to London in 2008 had it not been for her then boyfriend. “Everyone said: ‘Don’t go to London, they have vermin there.’ And I disliked it, because I was instantly struggling.”

‘I knew I had material’

She got a job in retail, was diagnosed a chronic illness, which can sometimes make it difficult to get pregnant, and at 23, made the decision to try to have a baby. “When you’re first told you have something – I was quite sick at the time – you go to the darkest possibility. My logic with my boyfriend was, we’ve had so many issues, 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 subsequent chapter sounds as high-pressure as a tense 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, taking her daughter with her. She was aware from her sales job that she had no problem winning people over, and she had faith in her sharp humor from her time at Hooters; more than that, she says plainly, “I felt sure I had material.” The whole industry was shot through with discrimination – 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 turgid debate about whether women could be funny