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‘Especially in this place, I feel you needed me. You didn't comprehend it but you required me, to alleviate some of your own guilt.” Katherine Ryan, the 42-year-old Canadian comedian who has been based in the UK for nearly 20 years, was accompanied by her recently born fourth child. She takes off her breast pumps so they don’t make an distracting sound. The primary observation you see is the remarkable capacity of this woman, who can fully beam maternal love while articulating sequential thoughts in complete phrases, and without getting distracted.

The second thing you observe is what she’s famous for – a genuine, inherent fearlessness, a dismissal of pretense and hypocrisy. When she emerged in the UK alternative comedy scene in 2008, her provocation was that she was strikingly attractive and made no attempt not to know it. “Attempting elegant or attractive was seen as man-pleasing,” she states of the start of the decade, “which was the opposite of what a comedian would do. It was a trend to be humble. If you appeared in a elegant attire with your lingerie 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 enjoyed.”

Then there was her routines, which she summarises breezily: “Women, especially, required someone to come along and be like: ‘Hey, that’s OK. You can be a advocate for equality and have a cosmetic surgery and have been a bit of a promiscuous person for a while. You can be imperfect as a mother, as a spouse and as a chooser of men. You can be someone who is wary of men, but is confident enough to slag them off; you don’t have to be deferential to them the all the time.’”

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

The drumbeat to that is an focus on what’s true: if you have your baby with you, you most likely have your breast pumps; if you have the facial structure of a youngster, you’ve most likely undergone procedures; if you want to slim down, well, there are medications for that. “I’m not on any yet, but I’ll think about them when I’ve stopped feeding,” she says. It addresses the root of how female emancipation is conceived, which in my view remains largely unchanged in the past 50 years: empowerment means looking great but never thinking about it; being universally desired, but never chasing the attention of men; having an unshakeable sense of self which perish the thought you would ever surgically enhance; and in addition to all that, women, especially, are expected to never think about money but nevertheless thrive under the demands of modern economic conditions. All of which is maintained by the majority of us pretending, most of the time.

“For a considerable period people went: ‘What? She just discusses things?’ But I’m not trying to be controversial all the time. My personal stories, choices and missteps, they reside in this area between confidence and regret. It occurred, I discuss it, and maybe relief comes out of the punchlines. I love sharing secrets; I want people to confide in me their secrets. I want to know errors people have made. I don’t know why I’m so eager for it, but I sense it like a connection.”

Ryan spent her childhood in Sarnia, Ontario, a place that was not notably affluent or cosmopolitan and had a lively community theater theater scene. Her dad managed an technical company, her mother was in IT, and they demanded a lot of her because she was bright, a perfectionist. She wanted to escape from the age of about seven. “It was the sort of community where people are very happy to live nearby 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 spent my childhood with both their parents.” But didn’t she marry her own first love? She returned to Sarnia, caught up with Bobby Kootstra, who she saw 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 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, sophisticated, urban, portable. But we are always connected to where we started, it seems.”

‘We are always connected to where we came from’

She did escape for a bit, aged 18, and moved to Toronto, which she adored. 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 inaccuracy: “You would be fired for being nude; you’re not allowed to remove your top”), but also for a bit in one of her performances where she mentioned giving a manager a sexual favor in return for being allowed to go home early. It crossed so many taboos – 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 definitely were not meant to joke about it.

Ryan was amazed that her fellatio sequence generated outrage – she got on with the guy! She also wanted to go home early. But it exposed something wider: a deliberate absolutism around sex, a sense that the price of the #MeToo movement was outward chastity. “I’ve always found this interesting, in arguments about sex, consent and exploitation, the people who don’t understand the nuance of it. Therefore if this is abuse, why isn’t that abuse?” She references the comparison of certain statements to lyrics in popular music. “Certain people said: ‘Well, how’s that distinct?’ I thought: ‘How is it similar?’”

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 found it difficult, because I was immediately struggling.”

‘I was aware I had material’

She got a job in business, was diagnosed 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 sick at the time – you go to the worst-case scenario. My rationale 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 transform. But at 23, I didn't realize.” She managed to get pregnant and had Violet.

The following period sounds as nerve-wracking as a classic comedy film. While on time off, she would look after Violet in the day and try to enter standup in the evening, bringing her daughter with her. She knew from her sales job that she had no problem persuading others, and she had confidence in her sharp humor from her time at Hooters; more than that, she says bluntly, “I was confident I had material.” The whole scene was riddled with sexism – she won a prestigious comedy award in 2008, just over a year after she’d started performing, a prize that was conceived in the context of a persistent debate about whether women could be funny