Katherine Ryan on Feminism, Achievement, Criticism and Fearlessness.

‘Especially in this country, I think you craved me. You didn’t realise it but you craved me, to lift some of your own guilt.” Katherine Ryan, the 42-year-old Canadian humorist who has been based in the UK for almost 20 years, brought along her newly minted fourth child. Ryan whips off her breast pumps so they won't create an irritating sound. The primary observation you notice is the incredible ability of this woman, who can radiate motherly affection while articulating logical sentences in complete phrases, and without getting distracted.

The following element you observe is what she’s known for – a natural, unaffected ballsiness, a refusal of affectation and duplicity. When she burst onto the UK stand-up scene in 2008, her challenge was that she was exceptionally beautiful and didn’t pretend not to know it. “Attempting elegant or beautiful was seen as man-pleasing,” she remembers of the early 2010s, “which was the opposite of what a comedian would do. It was a norm to be modest. If you went on stage in a glamorous outfit with your underwear 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 comedy, which she describes 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 promiscuous person for a while. You can be imperfect as a mother, as a partner and as a picker of men. You can be someone who is afraid of men, but is confident enough to criticize them; you don’t have to be nice 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 unappealing’

The underlying theme to that is an insistence on what’s authentic: if you have your baby with you, you most likely have your breast pumps; if you have the profile of a youngster, you’ve most likely received treatments; if you want to slim down, well, there are medications for that. “I’m not on any yet, but I’ll consider them when I’ve stopped nursing,” she says. It addresses the root of how feminism is conceived, which it strikes me remains largely unchanged in the past 50 years: freedom means appearing beautiful but without ever thinking about it; being universally desired, but without pursuing the male gaze; having an solid sense of self which God forbid you would ever surgically enhance; and allied to all that, women, especially, are supposed to never think about money but nevertheless thrive under the pressure of modern economic conditions. All of which is maintained by the majority of us being dishonest, most of the time.

“For a while people said: ‘What? She just discusses things?’ But I’m not trying to be provocative all the time. My personal stories, behaviors and missteps, they live in this realm between pride and embarrassment. It occurred, I talk about it, and maybe reprieve comes out of the jokes. I love sharing confessions; I want people to confide in me their confessions. I want to know mistakes people have made. I don’t know why I’m so eager for it, but I view it like a link.”

Ryan spent her childhood in Sarnia, Ontario, a place that was not notably prosperous or urban and had a active community theater theater scene. Her dad ran an technical company, her mother was in IT, and they anticipated a lot of her because she was vivacious, a driven person. She longed to get out from the age of about seven. “It was the type of place where people are very pleased to live nearby to their parents and stay there for a lifetime and have their friends' children. When I visit now, all these kids look really familiar to me, because I grew up with both their parents.” But she later reunited with her own high school sweetheart? 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 brought up until then as a solo mom. “Right,” says Ryan. “Sometimes I think there’s another life where I avoided that, and it’s still just Violet and me, stylish, worldly, mobile. But we cannot completely leave behind where we came from, it seems.”

‘We are always connected to where we originated’

She managed to leave for a bit, aged 18, and moved to Toronto, which she adored. These were the Hooters years, which has been a further cause of controversy, 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 discussed giving a manager a sexual favor in return for being allowed to go home early. It violated so many taboos – what even was that? Abuse? Transaction? 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 fellatio sequence provoked controversy – she got on with the guy! She also wanted to go home early. But it exposed something broader: a calculated inflexibility around sex, a sense that the cost of the #MeToo movement was demonstrative chastity. “I’ve always found this notable, in debates about sex, permission and manipulation, the people who don’t understand the complexity of it. Therefore if this is abuse, why isn’t that abuse?” She brings up the linking of certain remarks to lyrics in popular music. “Certain people said: ‘Well, how’s that distinct?’ I thought: ‘How is it comparable?’”

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 vermin there.’ And I hated it, because I was instantly broke.”

‘I felt confident I had material’

She got a job in sales, was told she had an autoimmune condition, which can sometimes make it difficult 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 long life is, and how many things can transform. But at 23, I couldn’t see it.” She was able to get pregnant and had Violet.

The subsequent chapter sounds as high-pressure as a chaotic comedy film. While on maternity leave, she would take care of Violet in the day and try to break into comedy in the evening, bringing 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 was confident I had comedy.” The whole industry was shot through 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 persistent debate about whether women could be funny