🔗 Share this article

‘Especially in this nation, I feel you required me. You weren't aware it but you craved me, to alleviate some of your own shame.” Katherine Ryan, the 42-year-old Canadian comic who has been based in the UK for almost 20 years, has brought her brand new fourth child. She takes off her breast pumps so they avoid making an irritating sound. The initial impression you observe is the awesome capability of this woman, who can project motherly affection while forming logical sentences in complete phrases, and without getting distracted.

The second thing you notice is what she’s famous for – a genuine, inherent fearlessness, a rejection of pretense and contradiction. When she emerged in the UK stand-up scene in 2008, her challenge was that she was very good-looking and refused to act not to know it. “Trying to be glamorous or attractive was seen as appealing to men,” she recalls of the early 2010s, “which was the reverse of what a comedian would do. It was a trend to be self-deprecating. If you performed in a elegant attire with your little push-up bra and heels, like, ‘I think I’m stunning,’ that would be seen as really unappealing, but I did it because that’s what I enjoyed.”

Then there was her comedy, which she explains casually: “Women, especially, needed someone to come along 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 mother, as a spouse and as a picker of men. You can be someone who is wary of men, but is confident enough to criticize them; you don’t have to be deferential 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 alienating’

The underlying theme to that is an insistence on what’s real: if you have your child with you, you most likely have your breast pumps; if you have the profile of a young person, you’ve most likely undergone procedures; if you want to slim down, well, there are medications for that. “I’m not on any yet, but I’ll look into them when I’ve stopped feeding,” she says. It addresses the root of how female emancipation is conceived, which it strikes me hasn’t really changed in the past 50 years: empowerment means appearing beautiful but without ever thinking about it; being constantly sought after, but avoiding the attention of men; having an unshakeable sense of self which heaven forbid you would ever alter cosmetically; and in addition to all that, women, especially, are expected to never think about money but nevertheless prosper under the pressure of modern economic conditions. All of which is maintained by the majority of us pretending, most of the time.

“For a long time people said: ‘What? She just speaks about things?’ But I’m not trying to be provocative all the time. My experiences, actions and errors, they exist in this realm between confidence and embarrassment. It occurred, I discuss it, and maybe relief comes out of the punchlines. I love revealing private thoughts; I want people to confide in me their confessions. I want to know missteps people have made. I don’t know why I’m so eager for it, but I view it like a connection.”

Ryan grew up in Sarnia, Ontario, a place that was not notably prosperous or urban and had a vibrant community theater musicals scene. Her dad managed an industrial company, her mother was in IT, and they anticipated a lot of her because she was vivacious, a perfectionist. She wanted to escape from the age of about seven. “It was the sort of community where people are very happy to live nearby to their parents and live there for a lifetime and have one another's children. When I go back now, all these kids look really familiar to me, because I grew up with both their parents.” But didn’t she marry her own first love? She traveled back to Sarnia, reconnected 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 raised until then as a solo mom. “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, cosmopolitan, flexible. But we can’t fully escape where we originated, it appears.”

‘We cannot completely leave behind where we started’

She did escape for a bit, aged 18, and moved to Toronto, which she enjoyed. These were the time at the restaurant, which has been a further cause of discussion, not just that she worked – and found it fun – in a establishment (except this is a myth: “You would be dismissed for being nude; you’re not allowed to take your shirt off”), but also for a bit in one of her sets where she mentioned giving a manager a sexual favor in return for being allowed to go home early. It violated so many red lines – what even was that? Manipulation? Prostitution? Inappropriate conduct? Betrayal (towards whoever it was who had to stay late so she could leave early)? Whatever it was, you definitely were not expected to joke about it.

Ryan was surprised that her fellatio sequence caused anger – she got on with the guy! She also wanted to go home early. But it cracked open something broader: a deliberate inflexibility around sex, a sense that the price of the #MeToo movement was demonstrative purity. “I’ve always found this interesting, in debates about sex, permission and manipulation, the people who don’t understand the subtlety of it. Therefore if this is abuse, why isn’t that abuse?” She references the comparison of certain statements to lyrics in popular music. “Some individuals said: ‘Well, how’s that dissimilar?’ 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 rats there.’ And I hated it, because I was instantly poor.”

‘I knew I had material’

She got a job in retail, was told she had 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 diagnosed something – I was quite unwell at the time – you go to the worst-case scenario. My rationale with my boyfriend was, we’ve had so many ups and downs, if we haven’t split up by now, we never will. Now I see how extended life is, and how many things can transform. But at 23, I couldn’t see it.” She succeeded in get pregnant and had Violet.

The next bit sounds as nerve-wracking as a chaotic comedy film. While on parental leave, she would care for Violet in the day and try to break into standup in the evening, carrying her daughter with her. She knew from her sales job that she had no problem persuading others, and she had confidence in her fast thinking from her time at Hooters; more than that, she says simply, “I knew I had comedy.” The whole industry 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 turgid debate about whether women could be funny