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‘Especially in this country, I feel you needed me. You weren't aware it but you craved me, to lift some of your own embarrassment.” Katherine Ryan, the 42-year-old Canadian humorist who has been based in the UK for almost 20 years, brought along her brand new fourth child. She takes off her breast pumps so they won't create an irritating sound. The initial impression you notice is the awesome capability of this woman, who can radiate maternal love while crafting coherent ideas in complete phrases, and without getting distracted.

The following element you observe is what she’s renowned for – a authentic, unapologetic audacity, a rejection of artifice and duplicity. When she sprang on to the UK alternative comedy scene in 2008, her statement was that she was exceptionally beautiful and didn’t pretend not to know it. “Attempting glamorous or pretty was seen as catering to male approval,” she recalls of the start of the decade, “which was the antithesis of what a comedian would do. It was a norm to be modest. If you went on stage in a glamorous outfit with your little push-up bra and heels, like, ‘I think I’m fabulous,’ that would be seen as really alienating, but I did it because that’s what I wanted.”

Then there was her comedy, which she summarises simply: “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 flawed as a mother, as a partner and as a selector 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 all the time.’”

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

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 facial structure of a young person, you’ve most likely undergone procedures; if you want to reduce, well, there are medications for that. “I’m not on any yet, but I’ll look into them when I’ve stopped breastfeeding,” she says. It gets to the core of how women's liberation is conceived, which I believe hasn’t really changed in the past 50 years: freedom means appearing beautiful but not dwelling about it; being constantly sought after, but avoiding the attention of men; having an unshakeable sense of self which perish the thought you would ever alter cosmetically; and allied to 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 discusses things?’ But I’m not trying to be challenging all the time. My life events, actions and mistakes, they exist in this area between confidence and embarrassment. It occurred, I discuss it, and maybe reprieve comes out of the punchlines. I love revealing confessions; I want people to share with me their confessions. I want to know mistakes people have made. I don’t know why I’m so keen for it, but I feel it like a connection.”

Ryan grew up in Sarnia, Ontario, a place that was not especially wealthy or cosmopolitan and had a lively local performance musicals scene. Her dad ran an industrial company, her mother was in IT, and they expected a lot of her because she was sparky, a high achiever. She wanted to escape from the age of about seven. “It was the sort of community where people are very happy to live next door to their parents and live there for a lifetime and have each other’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 went back to Sarnia, met again 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 another life where I haven’t done that, and it’s still just Violet and me, chic, urban, flexible. But we cannot completely leave behind where we originated, it turns out.”

‘We are always connected to where we originated’

She got away for a bit, aged 18, and moved to Toronto, which she loved. These were the Hooters years, which has been another source of controversy, not just that she worked – and enjoyed working – in a topless bar (except this is a inaccuracy: “You would be dismissed for being nude; you’re not allowed to take your shirt off”), but also for a bit in one of her performances where she talked about giving a manager a sexual favor in return for being allowed to go home early. It breached so many boundaries – what even was that? Abuse? Transaction? Predatory behavior? Unsisterliness (towards whoever it was who had to stay late so she could leave early)? Whatever it was, you certainly were not meant to joke about it.

Ryan was amazed that her anecdote generated controversy – she got on with the guy! She also wanted to go home early. But it revealed something broader: a deliberate absolutism around sex, a sense that the consequence of the #MeToo movement was performed chastity. “I’ve always found this notable, in arguments about sex, permission and manipulation, the people who misinterpret 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 dissimilar?’ I thought: ‘How is it alike?’”

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 suddenly struggling.”

‘I was aware I had jokes’

She got a job in sales, was told she had 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 unwell at the time – you go to the most negative outcome. My logic with my boyfriend was, we’ve had so many ups and downs, if we are still together by now, we never will. Now I see how lengthy life is, and how many things can alter. But at 23, I couldn’t see it.” She succeeded in get pregnant and had Violet.

The next bit sounds as high-pressure as a classic comedy film. While on maternity 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 winning people over, and she had confidence in her quickfire wit from her time at Hooters; more than that, she says simply, “I knew I had jokes.” The whole circuit was permeated with bias – she won a prestigious comedy award in 2008, just over a year after she’d started performing, a prize that was created in the context of a persistent debate about whether women could be funny