Katherine Ryan on Feminism, Achievement, Criticism and Fearlessness.

‘Especially in this place, I think you needed me. You weren't aware it but you needed me, to alleviate some of your own guilt.” The performer, the forty-two-year-old Canadian comic who has made her home in the UK for close to 20 years, brought along her brand new fourth child. Ryan whips off her breast pumps so they won't create an irritating sound. The first thing you observe is the awesome capability of this woman, who can radiate maternal love while forming coherent ideas in complete phrases, and without getting distracted.

The next aspect you see is what she’s famous for – a natural, unaffected ballsiness, a rejection of affectation and hypocrisy. When she emerged in the UK stand-up scene in 2008, her statement was that she was very good-looking and made no attempt not to know it. “Attempting stylish or beautiful was seen as catering to male approval,” she states of the start of the decade, “which was the antithesis of what a funny person would do. It was a trend to be self-deprecating. If you performed in a glamorous outfit with your underwear and heels, like, ‘I think I’m stunning,’ that would be seen as really alienating, but I did it because that’s what I enjoyed.”

Then there was her comedy, which she summarises simply: “Women, especially, required someone to appear and be like: ‘Hey, that’s OK. You can be a advocate for equality and have a cosmetic surgery and have been a bit of a slag for a while. You can be flawed as a parent, as a partner and as a chooser of men. You can be someone who is afraid of men, but is self-assured enough to slag them off; you don’t have to be nice 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 authentic: if you have your infant with you, you most likely have your feeding equipment; if you have the profile of a youngster, you’ve most likely received treatments; if you want to slim down, well, there are treatments 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 heart of how feminism is viewed, which it strikes me hasn’t really changed in the past 50 years: liberation means being attractive but without ever thinking about it; being widely admired, but without pursuing the attention of men; having an unshakeable 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 relentlessness of late capitalist conditions. All of which is maintained by the majority of us being dishonest, 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, behaviors and mistakes, they exist in this space between confidence and shame. It occurred, I share it, and maybe relief comes out of the jokes. I love revealing private thoughts; I want people to share with me their secrets. I want to know errors people have made. I don’t know why I’m so keen for it, but I view it like a bond.”

Ryan spent her childhood in Sarnia, Ontario, a place that was not notably wealthy or urban and had a vibrant amateur dramatics theater scene. Her dad managed an industrial company, her mother was in IT, and they anticipated a lot of her because she was sparky, a perfectionist. She dreamed of leaving from the age of about seven. “It was the sort of community where people are very content 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 recognizable to me, because I grew up with both their parents.” But she later reunited with her own teenage boyfriend? She returned to Sarnia, reconnected with an old flame, who she dated 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 lone parent. “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, chic, worldly, portable. But we cannot completely leave behind where we started, it seems.”

‘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 time at the restaurant, which has been another source of controversy, not just that she worked – and enjoyed working – in a topless bar (except this is a misconception: “You would be dismissed for being nude; you’re not allowed to remove your top”), 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 crossed so many red lines – what even was that? Manipulation? Sex work? Inappropriate conduct? Lack of solidarity (towards whoever it was who had to stay late so she could leave early)? Whatever it was, you certainly were not expected to joke about it.

Ryan was shocked that her anecdote generated outrage – she liked the guy! She also wanted to go home early. But it exposed something broader: a strategic rigidity around sex, a sense that the consequence of the #MeToo movement was demonstrative chastity. “I’ve always found this fascinating, in discussions about sex, permission and abuse, the people who don’t understand the nuance of it. Therefore if this is abuse, why isn’t that abuse?” She brings up the comparison of certain remarks to lyrics in popular music. “They said: ‘Well, how’s that different?’ I thought: ‘How is it comparable?’”

She would not have relocated 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 hated it, because I was immediately struggling.”

‘I felt confident I had material’

She got a job in retail, was diagnosed an autoimmune condition, which can sometimes make it difficult to get pregnant, and at 23, chose to try to have a baby. “When you’re first informed about something – I was quite unwell at the time – you go to the darkest possibility. My reasoning with my boyfriend was, we’ve had so many problems, if we are still together by now, we never will. Now I see how long life is, and how many things can alter. But at 23, I didn't realize.” She succeeded in get pregnant and had Violet.

The subsequent chapter sounds as nerve-wracking as a chaotic comedy film. While on maternity leave, she would take care of Violet in the day and try to enter performance in the evening, carrying 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 felt sure I had comedy.” The whole circuit was shot through with sexism – she won a notable comedy award in 2008, just over a year after she’d started performing, a prize that was created in the context of a persistent debate about whether women could be funny