Katherine Ryan on Feminism, Success, Negative Reviews and Audacity.

‘Especially in this country, I believe you required me. You weren't aware it but you craved me, to alleviate some of your own embarrassment.” Katherine Ryan, the 42-year-old Canadian humorist who has made her home in the UK for nearly 20 years, brought along her recently born fourth child. She removes her breast pumps so they don’t make an annoying sound. The initial impression you notice is the awesome capability of this woman, who can radiate maternal love while crafting sequential thoughts in full statements, and without getting distracted.

The following element you notice is what she’s famous for – a natural, unaffected ballsiness, a refusal of affectation and duplicity. When she emerged in the UK comedy scene in 2008, her provocation was that she was very good-looking and made no attempt not to know it. “Trying to be elegant or beautiful was seen as catering to male approval,” she remembers of the start of the decade, “which was the antithesis of what a comic would do. It was a fashion to be self-deprecating. If you performed in a stylish dress with your little push-up bra 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 wanted.”

Then there was her routines, which she explains simply: “Women, especially, needed someone to come along and be like: ‘Hey, that’s OK. You can be a feminist and have a enhancement and have been a bit of a slag for a while. You can be imperfect as a parent, as a significant other and as a chooser of men. You can be someone who is fearful of men, but is confident enough to mock them; you don’t have to be pleasant to them the all the time.’”

‘If you went on stage in your underwear and heels, that would be seen as really unappealing’

The drumbeat to that is an focus on what’s authentic: if you have your child with you, you most likely have your breast pumps; if you have the facial structure of a youth, you’ve most likely had tweakments; if you want to slim down, well, there are drugs for that. “I’m not on any yet, but I’ll consider them when I’ve stopped breastfeeding,” she says. It touches on the heart of how female emancipation is viewed, which it strikes me has stayed the same in the past 50 years: liberation means being attractive but not dwelling about it; being universally desired, but without pursuing the male gaze; having an solid sense of self which perish the thought you would ever modify; and in addition to all that, women, especially, are meant to never think about money but nevertheless prosper under the demands of late capitalist 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 speaks about things?’ But I’m not trying to be challenging all the time. My experiences, actions and mistakes, they exist in this realm between pride and shame. It happened, I discuss it, and maybe reprieve comes out of the humor. I love telling people private thoughts; I want people to share with me their confessions. 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 bond.”

Ryan was raised in Sarnia, Ontario, a place that was not especially wealthy or urban and had a lively local performance theater scene. Her dad owned an industrial company, her mother was in IT, and they expected a lot of her because she was bright, a high achiever. She dreamed of leaving from the age of about seven. “It was the type of place where people are very content to live nearby to their parents and stay there for a long time and have their friends' children. When I return now, all these kids look really known to me, because I grew up with both their parents.” But isn't it true she partnered with her own teenage boyfriend? She returned 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 raised until then as a single mother. “Right,” says Ryan. “Sometimes I think there’s another life where I didn't make that, and it’s still just Violet and me, chic, worldly, portable. But we cannot completely leave behind where we came from, it seems.”

‘We cannot completely leave behind where we originated’

She got away 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 found it fun – in a establishment (except this is a misconception: “You would be let go for being undressed; you’re not allowed to remove your top”), but also for a bit in one of her sets where she talked about giving a manager a sexual favor in return for being allowed to go home early. It violated so many boundaries – what even was that? Abuse? Prostitution? Predatory behavior? Unsisterliness (towards whoever it was who had to stay late so she could leave early)? Whatever it was, you absolutely were not expected to joke about it.

Ryan was amazed that her story generated anger – she was fond of the guy! She also wanted to go home early. But it cracked open something larger: a deliberate inflexibility around sex, a sense that the cost of the #MeToo movement was demonstrative purity. “I’ve always found this fascinating, in debates 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 references the equating of certain statements to lyrics in popular music. “They said: ‘Well, how’s that dissimilar?’ I thought: ‘How is it comparable?’”

She would not have come to London in 2008 had it not been for her then boyfriend. “Everyone said: ‘Don’t go to London, they have rats there.’ And I found it difficult, because I was instantly poor.”

‘I felt confident I had material’

She got a job in sales, 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 most negative outcome. 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 lengthy life is, and how many things can change. But at 23, I was unaware.” She was able to get pregnant and had Violet.

The next bit sounds as white-knuckle as a chaotic comedy film. While on time off, she would care for 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 winning people over, and she had faith in her quickfire wit from her time at Hooters; more than that, she says bluntly, “I knew I had comedy.” The whole circuit was permeated with discrimination – she won a notable comedy award in 2008, just over a year after she’d started performing, a prize that was established in the context of a persistent debate about whether women could be funny