Exploring Katherine Ryan's Views on Feminism, Success, Negative Reviews and Audacity.

‘Especially in this place, I believe you needed me. You didn’t realise it but you craved me, to lift some of your own embarrassment.” The comedian, the 42-year-old Canadian humorist who has lived in the UK for nearly 20 years, was accompanied by her brand new fourth child. She takes off her breast pumps so they avoid making an annoying sound. The initial impression you see is the remarkable capacity of this woman, who can project parental devotion while articulating logical sentences in complete phrases, and without getting distracted.

The second thing you observe is what she’s famous for – a natural, unaffected ballsiness, a rejection of pretense and hypocrisy. When she burst onto the UK stand-up scene in 2008, her statement was that she was exceptionally beautiful and made no attempt not to know it. “Attempting elegant or beautiful was seen as appealing to men,” she states of the early 2010s, “which was the reverse of what a comedian would do. It was a norm to be self-deprecating. If you appeared in a elegant attire with your little push-up bra and heels, like, ‘I think I’m gorgeous,’ that would be seen as really off-putting, but I did it because that’s what I liked.”

Then there was her comedy, which she describes breezily: “Women, especially, required 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 slag for a while. You can be imperfect as a mother, as a significant other and as a selector of men. You can be someone who is afraid of men, but is confident enough to mock them; you don’t have to be nice to them the whole time.’”

‘If you performed in your underwear and heels, that would be seen as really alienating’

The underlying theme to that is an emphasis on what’s true: if you have your child with you, you most likely have your feeding equipment; if you have the jawline of a young person, you’ve most likely had tweakments; if you want to reduce, well, there are treatments for that. “I’m not on any yet, but I’ll look into them when I’ve stopped nursing,” she says. It touches on the root of how women's liberation is conceived, which in my view remains largely unchanged in the past 50 years: freedom means being attractive 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 modify; and in addition to all that, women, especially, are meant to never think about money but nevertheless thrive under the relentlessness of current financial conditions. All of which is maintained by the majority of us pretending, most of the time.

“For a considerable period people reacted: ‘What? She just speaks about things?’ But I’m not trying to be provocative all the time. My experiences, choices and missteps, they live in this space between satisfaction and regret. It took place, I talk about it, and maybe reprieve comes out of the humor. I love revealing secrets; 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 eager for it, but I sense it like a connection.”

Ryan spent her childhood in Sarnia, Ontario, a place that was not especially prosperous or urban and had a lively local performance 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 high achiever. She dreamed of leaving from the age of about seven. “It was the kind of town where people are very pleased to live next door to their parents and remain there for a long time and have their friends' children. When I go back 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 first love? She returned to Sarnia, caught up 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 another life where I didn't make that, and it’s still just Violet and me, sophisticated, urban, flexible. But we can’t fully escape where we originated, it seems.”

‘We are always connected to where we came from’

She got away for a bit, aged 18, and moved to Toronto, which she adored. These were the period working there, which has been a further cause of discussion, not just that she worked – and liked the job – in a establishment (except this is a misconception: “You would be fired for being topless; you’re not allowed to take your shirt off”), but also for a bit in one of her routines where she mentioned giving a manager a blowjob in return for being allowed to go home early. It breached so many boundaries – what even was that? Exploitation? Sex work? Inappropriate conduct? 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 caused anger – she was fond of the guy! She also wanted to go home early. But it revealed something broader: a calculated inflexibility around sex, a sense that the consequence of the #MeToo movement was outward modesty. “I’ve always found this notable, in discussions about sex, permission and abuse, the people who misinterpret the nuance of it. Therefore if this is abuse, why isn’t that abuse?” She brings up the linking of certain comments 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 romantic interest. “Everyone said: ‘Don’t go to London, they have rats there.’ And I hated it, because I was immediately struggling.”

‘I was aware 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, made the decision to try to have a baby. “When you’re first informed about something – I was quite unwell 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 extended life is, and how many things can alter. But at 23, I didn't realize.” She managed to get pregnant and had Violet.

The next bit sounds as high-pressure as a classic comedy film. While on maternity leave, she would care for Violet in the day and try to make her way in comedy in the evening, taking her daughter with her. She knew from her sales job that she had no problem persuading others, and she had confidence in her quickfire wit from her time at Hooters; more than that, she says simply, “I was confident I had comedy.” The whole scene was riddled with sexism – 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 ongoing debate about whether women could be funny