Living life to the Wax
Ruby Wax, back on TV on Sunday, has also written a workbook to surviving in the postpandemic world
WHILE long Covid is a ticking timebomb for our health service, so is mental health.
Trauma has already affected lots of people. Many have stayed indoors for months and studies have found young people have been especially hit with months of disrupted education and ability to work. Ruby Wax has become an ardent mental health campaigner after suffering from her own depression, and earlier this month published her fifth book, A Mindfulness Guide for Survival. The 66-year-old American said: “I wanted the book out by August because I thought by December, people would be so traumatised, or they’d try to pretend nothing ever happened. “I ran these (online) nightly meetings called Frazzled Cafe (where people can speak openly about their stresses) every night during lockdown; that’s how I got the idea for the book. I still do it once a week and, believe me, people are still pretty panicked.” The mother-ofthree wrote her new book during the pandemic and described it as a workbook. It has questionnaires, you can draw in it and write in it. She explained: “It’s like a journal on how to survive a world that’s pretty rocky and be happy.”
While many of us are struggling with our mental health behind doors, Ruby faced it very publicly. In the 80s she was the super-confident, loudmouth who burst onto our TV screens during the flood of alternative comedians. She starred in sitcom Girls on Top with Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders and Tracey Ullman before becoming an interviewer in the 90s presenting her own shows, most notably Ruby Wax Meets.
But in 2007 she was hospitalised with depression and has become a mental health campaigner as well as gaining a master’s degree in mindfulness-based cognitive therapy.
She said: “I had depression, but I didn’t have it all the time. I luckily, wasn’t working when I was ill.”
The telly fame left her in the noughties but the Illinois native is returning to our screen on Sunday in a new BBC Two series, When Ruby Wax Met...
Across three episodes she will reflect on her TV career, her refreshing interviewing style, and the most memorable encounters including interviews with former American president Donald Trump, Star Wars actress Carrie Fisher and Hollywood star Tom Hanks.
Ruby, who has been married to producer and director Ed Bye since 1988, admitted she was startled watching some of the interviews back. She added: “Carrie Fisher and I became best friends. Staying overnight at her house, and her making me laugh and reading me bits of her book... what a joy.”
Not all the interviews went well. She revealed her most difficult interviewee was Donald Trump.
“That was a car crash,” she admitted. “Bad interviews still make good TV, but I just think it’s appalling, and it’s what not to do. He threw me off his plane. I thought he was joking when he said he wanted to be the president. I thought he was being funny - and he wasn’t.” ●When Ruby Wax Met... starts on Sunday, BBC Two at 9pm.
I thought Donald Trump was joking when he said he wanted to be president