A Look at Katherine Ryan's Take on Feminism, Success, Negative Reviews and Audacity.

‘Especially in this nation, I feel you needed me. You weren't aware it but you craved me, to lift some of your own guilt.” The comedian, the 42-year-old Canadian comedian who has lived in the UK for close to 20 years, has brought her newly minted fourth child. She takes off her breast pumps so they won't create an annoying sound. The first thing you see is the awesome capability of this woman, who can radiate motherly affection while crafting logical sentences in full statements, and remaining distracted.

The second thing you see is what she’s famous for – a authentic, unapologetic audacity, a rejection of pretense and hypocrisy. When she burst onto the UK comedy scene in 2008, her challenge was that she was exceptionally beautiful and didn’t pretend not to know it. “Trying to be elegant or pretty was seen as catering to male approval,” she recalls of the start of the decade, “which was the reverse of what a comedian would do. It was a norm to be humble. 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 unappealing, but I did it because that’s what I liked.”

Then there was her material, which she describes simply: “Women, especially, craved someone to appear 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 human as a parent, as a spouse and as a chooser of men. You can be someone who is wary of men, but is self-assured enough to slag them off; you don’t have to be deferential to them the entire time.’”

‘If you performed in your underwear 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 facial structure of a young person, you’ve most likely received treatments; 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 nursing,” she says. It addresses the core of how feminism is understood, which it strikes me has stayed the same in the past 50 years: liberation means appearing beautiful but not dwelling about it; being constantly sought after, but without pursuing the male gaze; having an impermeable sense of self which God forbid you would ever alter cosmetically; and coupled with all that, women, especially, are meant to never think about money but nevertheless prosper under the pressure of modern economic conditions. All of which is kept afloat by the majority of us pretending, most of the time.

“For a long time people reacted: ‘What? She just talks about things?’ But I’m not trying to be challenging all the time. My life events, actions and missteps, they reside in this realm between satisfaction and embarrassment. It took place, I discuss it, and maybe catharsis comes out of the jokes. I love telling people private thoughts; I want people to confide in me their secrets. I want to know errors people have made. I don’t know why I’m so eager for it, but I sense it like a link.”

Ryan was raised in Sarnia, Ontario, a place that was not particularly affluent or cosmopolitan and had a vibrant local performance arts scene. Her dad ran an technical company, her mother was in IT, and they expected a lot of her because she was sparky, a perfectionist. She longed to get out from the age of about seven. “It was the type of place where people are very content to live close to their parents and remain there for a considerable period and have one another's children. When I return now, all these kids look really known to me, because I was raised with both their parents.” But isn't it true she partnered with her own teenage boyfriend? She went back to Sarnia, reconnected 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 brought up until then as a solo mom. “Right,” says Ryan. “Sometimes I think there’s a different path where I haven’t done that, and it’s still just Violet and me, stylish, worldly, flexible. But we cannot completely leave behind where we started, it seems.”

‘We cannot completely leave behind where we originated’

She did escape for a bit, aged 18, and moved to Toronto, which she loved. These were the period working there, which has been an additional point of discussion, not just that she worked – and found it fun – in a venue (except this is a misconception: “You would be let go for being nude; you’re not allowed to take your shirt off”), but also for a bit in one of her sets where she talked about giving a manager a blowjob in return for being allowed to go home early. It violated so many red lines – what even was that? Abuse? Transaction? Predatory behavior? 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 surprised that her anecdote generated anger – she got on with the guy! She also wanted to go home early. But it exposed something wider: a calculated absolutism around sex, a sense that the cost of the #MeToo movement was outward purity. “I’ve always found this notable, in debates about sex, consent 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. “Certain people said: ‘Well, how’s that different?’ I thought: ‘How is it alike?’”

She would never have moved to London in 2008 had it not been for her partner at the time. “Everyone said: ‘Don’t go to London, they have pests there.’ And I found it difficult, because I was immediately broke.”

‘I knew I had comedy’

She got a job in sales, was found to have lupus, which can sometimes make it hard to get pregnant, and at 23, decided to try to have a baby. “When you’re first informed about something – I was quite ill at the time – you go to the darkest possibility. My logic with my boyfriend was, we’ve had so many problems, if we haven’t split up by now, we never will. Now I see how long life is, and how many things can change. But at 23, I didn't realize.” She managed to get pregnant and had Violet.

The following period sounds as high-pressure as a chaotic comedy film. While on parental leave, she would take care of Violet in the day and try to enter standup 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 sharp humor from her time at Hooters; more than that, she says plainly, “I knew I had comedy.” The whole circuit was permeated 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 turgid debate about whether women could be funny