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‘Especially in this place, I think you craved me. You didn't comprehend it but you craved me, to alleviate some of your own guilt.” Katherine Ryan, the forty-two-year-old Canadian comedian who has been based in the UK for almost 20 years, has brought her newly minted fourth child. She removes her breast pumps so they won't create an annoying sound. The primary observation you notice is the incredible ability of this woman, who can radiate motherly affection while articulating sequential thoughts in complete phrases, and never get distracted.

The second thing you notice is what she’s famous for – a natural, unaffected ballsiness, a refusal of affectation and contradiction. When she burst onto the UK alternative comedy scene in 2008, her challenge was that she was exceptionally beautiful and refused to act not to know it. “Aiming for glamorous or attractive was seen as catering to male approval,” she states of the early 2010s, “which was the reverse of what a comic would do. It was a fashion to be self-deprecating. If you performed in a glamorous outfit 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 wanted.”

Then there was her material, which she explains casually: “Women, especially, required someone to appear and be like: ‘Hey, that’s OK. You can be a feminist and have a boob job and have been a bit of a party-goer for a while. You can be human as a mother, as a partner 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 nice to them the entire time.’”

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

The drumbeat to that is an emphasis on what’s real: if you have your baby with you, you most likely have your feeding equipment; if you have the jawline of a youth, you’ve most likely received treatments; if you want to slim down, well, there are drugs for that. “I’m not on any yet, but I’ll think about them when I’ve stopped breastfeeding,” she says. It addresses the root of how feminism is understood, which it strikes me hasn’t really changed in the past 50 years: empowerment means being attractive but not dwelling about it; being universally desired, but avoiding the attention of men; having an impermeable sense of self which perish the thought you would ever modify; and coupled with all that, women, especially, are supposed to never think about money but nevertheless thrive under the demands of current financial conditions. All of which is kept afloat by the majority of us being dishonest, most of the time.

“For a while people reacted: ‘What? She just discusses things?’ But I’m not trying to be challenging all the time. My experiences, choices and mistakes, they exist in this realm between confidence and embarrassment. It took place, I share it, and maybe reprieve comes out of the humor. I love telling people confessions; I want people to share with 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 bond.”

Ryan was raised in Sarnia, Ontario, a place that was not notably prosperous or urban and had a vibrant amateur dramatics arts scene. Her dad ran an industrial company, her mother was in IT, and they demanded a lot of her because she was vivacious, a high achiever. She longed to get out from the age of about seven. “It was the type of place where people are very happy to live close to their parents and stay there for a considerable period and have their friends' children. When I go back 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, met again 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 lone parent. “Right,” says Ryan. “Sometimes I think there’s an alternate reality where I avoided that, and it’s still just Violet and me, stylish, worldly, portable. But we are always connected to where we started, it seems.”

‘We can’t fully escape where we started’

She did escape for a bit, aged 18, and moved to Toronto, which she enjoyed. These were the time at the restaurant, which has been a further cause of controversy, not just that she worked – and liked the job – in a venue (except this is a inaccuracy: “You would be dismissed for being undressed; you’re not allowed to take your shirt off”), 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 crossed so many boundaries – what even was that? Exploitation? Prostitution? Unethical action? Lack of solidarity (towards whoever it was who had to stay late so she could leave early)? Whatever it was, you absolutely were not expected to joke about it.

Ryan was amazed that her anecdote provoked anger – she got on with the guy! She also wanted to go home early. But it cracked open something broader: a calculated rigidity around sex, a sense that the cost of the #MeToo movement was performed purity. “I’ve always found this fascinating, in arguments about sex, agreement and manipulation, the people who don’t understand the complexity of it. Therefore if this is abuse, why isn’t that abuse?” She references the comparison of certain statements to lyrics in popular music. “Some individuals said: ‘Well, how’s that distinct?’ I thought: ‘How is it similar?’”

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 pests there.’ And I hated it, because I was immediately struggling.”

‘I felt confident I had jokes’

She got a job in retail, was diagnosed a chronic illness, which can sometimes make it challenging to get pregnant, and at 23, decided to try to have a baby. “When you’re first diagnosed something – I was quite unwell at the time – you go to the worst-case scenario. My logic with my boyfriend was, we’ve had so many ups and downs, if we haven’t split up by now, we never will. Now I see how lengthy life is, and how many things can alter. But at 23, I was unaware.” She was able to get pregnant and had Violet.

The following period sounds as high-pressure as a tense comedy film. While on parental leave, she would take care of Violet in the day and try to make her way in standup in the evening, carrying her daughter with her. She knew from her sales job that she had no problem persuading others, and she had faith in her fast thinking from her time at Hooters; more than that, she says simply, “I knew I had comedy.” The whole circuit 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 established in the context of a ongoing debate about whether women could be funny