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‘Especially in this country, I believe you required me. You weren't aware it but you required me, to remove some of your own guilt.” Katherine Ryan, the forty-two-year-old Canadian comic 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 notice is the remarkable capacity of this woman, who can fully beam motherly affection while articulating coherent ideas in complete phrases, and never get distracted.

The next aspect you observe is what she’s renowned for – a authentic, unapologetic audacity, a rejection of affectation and contradiction. When she emerged in the UK comedy scene in 2008, her challenge was that she was very good-looking and made no attempt not to know it. “Attempting elegant or beautiful was seen as appealing to men,” she recalls 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 glamorous outfit with your little push-up bra and heels, like, ‘I think I’m stunning,’ that would be seen as really alienating, but I did it because that’s what I enjoyed.”

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 feminist and have a boob job and have been a bit of a promiscuous person for a while. You can be imperfect as a parent, as a partner and as a picker of men. You can be someone who is fearful of men, but is confident enough to criticize them; you don’t have to be deferential to them the whole time.’”

‘If you took to the stage in your lingerie and heels, that would be seen as really alienating’

The consistent message 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 jawline of a young person, you’ve most likely undergone procedures; 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 addresses the root of how female emancipation is conceived, which it strikes me has stayed the same in the past 50 years: freedom means looking great but not dwelling about it; being universally desired, but without pursuing the male gaze; having an impermeable 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 thrive under the relentlessness of modern economic conditions. All of which is sustained by the majority of us being dishonest, most of the time.

“For a while people said: ‘What? She just speaks about things?’ But I’m not trying to be provocative all the time. My experiences, choices and errors, they exist in this area between pride and shame. It occurred, I share it, and maybe relief comes out of the humor. I love revealing private thoughts; I want people to share with me their private thoughts. I want to know errors people have made. I don’t know why I’m so thirsty for it, but I view it like a link.”

Ryan spent her childhood in Sarnia, Ontario, a place that was not particularly prosperous or urban and had a vibrant community theater musicals scene. Her dad owned an technical company, her mother was in IT, and they demanded a lot of her because she was sparky, a driven person. She dreamed of leaving from the age of about seven. “It was the kind of town where people are very happy to live close to their parents and stay there for a lifetime and have their friends' children. When I return now, all these kids look really known to me, because I spent my childhood with both their parents.” But isn't it true she partnered with her own first love? She traveled back to Sarnia, reconnected with 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 single mother. “Right,” says Ryan. “Sometimes I think there’s an alternate reality where I avoided that, and it’s still just Violet and me, chic, cosmopolitan, portable. But we can’t fully escape where we started, it appears.”

‘We cannot completely leave behind where we started’

She managed to leave for a bit, aged 18, and moved to Toronto, which she enjoyed. These were the Hooters years, which has been an additional point 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 be unclothed”), but also for a bit in one of her routines where she discussed giving a manager a blowjob in return for being allowed to go home early. It crossed so many red lines – 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 certainly were not meant to joke about it.

Ryan was shocked that her story generated controversy – she was fond of the guy! She also wanted to go home early. But it exposed something wider: a strategic inflexibility around sex, a sense that the cost of the #MeToo movement was demonstrative modesty. “I’ve always found this interesting, in debates about sex, consent and exploitation, the people who fail to grasp the subtlety of it. Therefore if this is abuse, why isn’t that abuse?” She brings up the equating of certain comments to lyrics in popular music. “They said: ‘Well, how’s that different?’ I thought: ‘How is it alike?’”

She would not have come 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 found it difficult, because I was instantly struggling.”

‘I was aware I had material’

She got a job in business, was told she had lupus, which can sometimes make it difficult to get pregnant, and at 23, chose to try to have a baby. “When you’re first diagnosed something – I was quite ill at the time – you go to the worst-case scenario. My logic with my boyfriend was, we’ve had so many problems, if we are still together by now, we never will. Now I see how extended life is, and how many things can transform. But at 23, I didn't realize.” She was able to get pregnant and had Violet.

The following period sounds as nerve-wracking as a chaotic comedy film. While on parental leave, she would look after Violet in the day and try to break into performance in the evening, taking her daughter with her. She was aware from her sales job that she had no problem being convincing, and she had faith in her quickfire wit from her time at Hooters; more than that, she says bluntly, “I knew I had jokes.” The whole industry 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 conceived in the context of a ongoing debate about whether women could be funny