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‘Especially in this country, I feel you required me. You didn't comprehend it but you needed me, to lift some of your own shame.” Katherine Ryan, the 42-year-old Canadian comedian who has lived in the UK for nearly 20 years, was accompanied by her newly minted fourth child. She takes off her breast pumps so they avoid making an irritating sound. The primary observation you see is the awesome capability of this woman, who can radiate maternal love while articulating logical sentences in full statements, and remaining distracted.

The next aspect you observe is what she’s renowned for – a genuine, inherent fearlessness, a refusal of pretense and contradiction. When she burst onto the UK alternative comedy scene in 2008, her challenge was that she was exceptionally beautiful and made no attempt not to know it. “Attempting stylish or attractive was seen as catering to male approval,” 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 self-deprecating. If you performed in a stylish dress with your underwear and heels, like, ‘I think I’m gorgeous,’ that would be seen as really off-putting, but I did it because that’s what I wanted.”

Then there was her routines, which she explains casually: “Women, especially, needed someone to arrive and be like: ‘Hey, that’s OK. You can be a feminist and have a cosmetic surgery and have been a bit of a slag for a while. You can be flawed as a parent, as a spouse and as a picker of men. You can be someone who is fearful of men, but is self-assured enough to criticize them; you don’t have to be pleasant to them the all the time.’”

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

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 youth, you’ve most likely undergone procedures; if you want to lose weight, well, there are drugs for that. “I’m not on any yet, but I’ll think about them when I’ve stopped feeding,” she says. It gets to the root of how female emancipation is conceived, which I believe hasn’t really changed in the past 50 years: liberation means being attractive but without ever thinking about it; being constantly sought after, but without pursuing the attention of men; having an solid sense of self which heaven forbid you would ever modify; and allied to all that, women, especially, are expected to never think about money but nevertheless succeed under the demands 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 said: ‘What? She just discusses things?’ But I’m not trying to be controversial all the time. My life events, actions and errors, they reside in this space between pride and embarrassment. It took place, I share it, and maybe relief comes out of the jokes. I love telling people private thoughts; I want people to confide in me their secrets. I want to know missteps people have made. I don’t know why I’m so keen for it, but I view it like a connection.”

Ryan grew up in Sarnia, Ontario, a place that was not notably wealthy or cosmopolitan and had a active amateur dramatics theater scene. Her dad ran an technical company, her mother was in IT, and they expected a lot of her because she was sparky, a perfectionist. She dreamed of leaving from the age of about seven. “It was the type of place where people are very happy to live close to their parents and remain there for a long time and have their friends' children. When I visit now, all these kids look really recognizable to me, because I was raised with both their parents.” But isn't it true she partnered with her own teenage boyfriend? She went back to Sarnia, caught up with Bobby Kootstra, who she went out with as a teenager, and now – six years later – they have three children together, plus Violet, now 16, who Ryan had raised until then as a lone parent. “Right,” says Ryan. “Sometimes I think there’s a different path where I didn't make that, and it’s still just Violet and me, sophisticated, worldly, flexible. But we cannot completely leave behind where we originated, it appears.”

‘We are always connected to where we originated’

She got away for a bit, aged 18, and moved to Toronto, which she enjoyed. These were the time at the restaurant, which has been an additional point of debate, not just that she worked – and liked the job – in a venue (except this is a misconception: “You would be let go for being nude; you’re not allowed to be unclothed”), but also for a bit in one of her sets where she discussed giving a manager a blowjob in return for being allowed to go home early. It violated so many boundaries – what even was that? Exploitation? Prostitution? Inappropriate conduct? Betrayal (towards whoever it was who had to stay late so she could leave early)? Whatever it was, you definitely weren’t supposed to joke about it.

Ryan was shocked that her anecdote provoked outrage – she got on with 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 notable, in arguments about sex, consent and abuse, the people who don’t understand the subtlety of it. Therefore if this is abuse, why isn’t that abuse?” She brings up the linking of certain comments to lyrics in popular music. “Certain people said: ‘Well, how’s that distinct?’ I thought: ‘How is it comparable?’”

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

‘I knew 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, 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 worst-case scenario. My rationale with my boyfriend was, we’ve had so many problems, 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 didn't realize.” She was able to get pregnant and had Violet.

The next bit sounds as nerve-wracking as a tense comedy film. While on time off, she would care for 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 bluntly, “I knew 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 persistent debate about whether women could be funny