Katherine Ryan on Feminism, Achievement, Criticism and Fearlessness.

‘Especially in this country, I feel you needed me. You didn’t realise it but you craved me, to lift some of your own guilt.” The performer, the 42-year-old Canadian comedian who has been based in the UK for close to 20 years, has brought her recently born fourth child. Ryan whips off her breast pumps so they don’t make an annoying sound. The primary observation you observe is the awesome capability of this woman, who can radiate parental devotion while articulating logical sentences in complete phrases, and remaining distracted.

The next aspect you see is what she’s known for – a authentic, unapologetic audacity, a dismissal of pretense and duplicity. When she emerged in the UK comedy scene in 2008, her statement was that she was exceptionally beautiful and didn’t pretend not to know it. “Trying to be glamorous or beautiful was seen as man-pleasing,” she recalls of the early 2010s, “which was the antithesis of what a comedian 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 fabulous,’ that would be seen as really alienating, but I did it because that’s what I enjoyed.”

Then there was her material, which she explains breezily: “Women, especially, craved someone to come along and be like: ‘Hey, that’s OK. You can be a feminist and have a cosmetic surgery and have been a bit of a party-goer for a while. You can be imperfect as a mother, as a significant other and as a picker 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 pleasant to them the entire time.’”

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

The underlying theme to that is an emphasis on what’s real: if you have your infant with you, you most likely have your breast pumps; if you have the profile of a young person, you’ve most likely had tweakments; 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 feeding,” she says. It touches on the root of how female emancipation is understood, which it strikes me hasn’t really changed in the past 50 years: liberation means appearing beautiful but never thinking 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 modify; and coupled with all that, women, especially, are expected to never think about money but nevertheless prosper under the relentlessness of late capitalist conditions. All of which is sustained by the majority of us pretending, most of the time.

“For a long time people said: ‘What? She just discusses things?’ But I’m not trying to be controversial all the time. My life events, actions and missteps, they live in this space between pride and embarrassment. It occurred, I share it, and maybe relief comes out of the jokes. I love telling people private thoughts; I want people to tell me their private thoughts. I want to know missteps people have made. I don’t know why I’m so keen for it, but I feel it like a link.”

Ryan was raised in Sarnia, Ontario, a place that was not especially wealthy or cosmopolitan and had a active community theater arts scene. Her dad managed an industrial company, her mother was in IT, and they expected a lot of her because she was sparky, a driven person. She dreamed of leaving 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 considerable period and have one another's children. When I go back now, all these kids look really familiar to me, because I grew up with both their parents.” But didn’t she marry her own first love? She returned to Sarnia, caught up with 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 raised until then as a lone parent. “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, stylish, worldly, flexible. But we cannot completely leave behind where we originated, it turns out.”

‘We cannot completely leave behind where we came from’

She did escape for a bit, aged 18, and moved to Toronto, which she loved. These were the period working there, which has been another source of controversy, not just that she worked – and liked the job – in a topless bar (except this is a inaccuracy: “You would be let go for being undressed; you’re not allowed to take your shirt off”), but also for a bit in one of her sets where she mentioned giving a manager a sexual favor in return for being allowed to go home early. It breached so many boundaries – what even was that? Exploitation? Prostitution? Unethical action? Betrayal (towards whoever it was who had to stay late so she could leave early)? Whatever it was, you certainly 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 cracked open something larger: a deliberate rigidity around sex, a sense that the consequence of the #MeToo movement was outward modesty. “I’ve always found this notable, in discussions about sex, consent and manipulation, 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 remarks to lyrics in popular music. “Some individuals said: ‘Well, how’s that distinct?’ I thought: ‘How is it alike?’”

She would not have come to London in 2008 had it not been for her partner at the time. “Everyone said: ‘Don’t go to London, they have rats there.’ And I found it difficult, because I was suddenly broke.”

‘I knew I had comedy’

She got a job in business, was diagnosed an autoimmune condition, which can sometimes make it hard to get pregnant, and at 23, decided 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 darkest possibility. My reasoning with my boyfriend was, we’ve had so many ups and downs, if we haven't separated by now, we never will. Now I see how extended life is, and how many things can change. But at 23, I didn't realize.” She succeeded in get pregnant and had Violet.

The following period sounds as high-pressure as a classic comedy film. While on time off, she would take care of 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 persuading others, and she had confidence in her sharp humor from her time at Hooters; more than that, she says simply, “I knew I had material.” The whole circuit was riddled with discrimination – she won a notable 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