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‘Especially in this country, I believe you craved me. You didn't comprehend it but you needed me, to remove some of your own embarrassment.” Katherine Ryan, the forty-two-year-old Canadian comedian who has made her home in the UK for almost 20 years, was accompanied by her recently born fourth child. She removes her breast pumps so they won't create an annoying sound. The first thing you observe is the incredible ability of this woman, who can project motherly affection while forming logical sentences in full statements, and never get distracted.

The second thing you see is what she’s famous for – a authentic, unapologetic audacity, a refusal of artifice and hypocrisy. When she sprang on to the UK stand-up scene in 2008, her provocation was that she was exceptionally beautiful and refused to act not to know it. “Aiming for elegant or pretty was seen as appealing to men,” she recalls of the start of the decade, “which was the opposite of what a funny person would do. It was a norm to be modest. If you appeared in a glamorous outfit with your little push-up bra and heels, like, ‘I think I’m fabulous,’ that would be seen as really off-putting, but I did it because that’s what I enjoyed.”

Then there was her comedy, which she summarises breezily: “Women, especially, required someone to come along and be like: ‘Hey, that’s OK. You can be a feminist and have a cosmetic surgery and have been a bit of a party-goer for a while. You can be flawed as a mother, as a spouse and as a picker of men. You can be someone who is afraid of men, but is bold enough to criticize them; you don’t have to be nice to them the whole time.’”

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

The consistent message to that is an emphasis on what’s authentic: if you have your child with you, you most likely have your breast pumps; if you have the profile of a youngster, you’ve most likely received treatments; if you want to lose weight, well, there are treatments 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 feminism is conceived, which I believe hasn’t really changed in the past 50 years: liberation means being attractive but not dwelling about it; being constantly sought after, but never chasing the male gaze; having an unshakeable sense of self which heaven forbid you would ever modify; and coupled with all that, women, especially, are meant to never think about money but nevertheless thrive under the pressure of modern economic conditions. All of which is kept afloat by the majority of us pretending, most of the time.

“For a considerable period people reacted: ‘What? She just talks about things?’ But I’m not trying to be controversial all the time. My experiences, behaviors and missteps, they live in this space between pride and embarrassment. It happened, I talk about it, and maybe catharsis comes out of the punchlines. I love telling people confessions; I want people to confide in me their confessions. I want to know missteps people have made. I don’t know why I’m so eager for it, but I feel it like a link.”

Ryan spent her childhood in Sarnia, Ontario, a place that was not especially wealthy or cosmopolitan and had a vibrant local performance musicals 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 longed to get out from the age of about seven. “It was the kind of town where people are very happy to live next door to their parents and stay there for a lifetime 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 first love? She went back to Sarnia, met again 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 cared for until then as a single mother. “Right,” says Ryan. “Sometimes I think there’s another life where I haven’t done 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 can’t fully escape where we originated’

She got away 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 discussion, not just that she worked – and liked the job – in a venue (except this is a misconception: “You would be fired for being undressed; you’re not allowed to remove your top”), 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 red lines – what even was that? Abuse? Sex work? Predatory behavior? Unsisterliness (towards whoever it was who had to stay late so she could leave early)? Whatever it was, you absolutely were not meant to joke about it.

Ryan was surprised that her anecdote generated 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 cost of the #MeToo movement was outward modesty. “I’ve always found this fascinating, in discussions about sex, permission and manipulation, the people who don’t understand the nuance of it. Therefore if this is abuse, why isn’t that abuse?” She brings up the linking of certain remarks to lyrics in popular music. “Some individuals said: ‘Well, how’s that different?’ I thought: ‘How is it alike?’”

She would not have relocated to London in 2008 had it not been for her partner at the time. “Everyone said: ‘Don’t go to London, they have pests there.’ And I found it difficult, because I was suddenly struggling.”

‘I knew I had comedy’

She got a job in sales, was found to have a chronic illness, which can sometimes make it challenging 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 unwell at the time – you go to the most negative outcome. 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 extended life is, and how many things can transform. But at 23, I was unaware.” She succeeded in get pregnant and had Violet.

The following period sounds as high-pressure as a chaotic comedy film. While on maternity leave, she would take care of Violet in the day and try to break into comedy in the evening, carrying her daughter with her. She was aware from her sales job that she had no problem persuading others, and she had belief in her sharp humor from her time at Hooters; more than that, she says simply, “I felt sure I had jokes.” The whole circuit 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 created in the context of a ongoing debate about whether women could be funny