There’s no sense of community any more. We just show off what we’ve got that the next guy hasn’t
Like the title of her bestseller on mindfulness, Ruby Wax should be Frazzled.
She’s just stepped off an overnight flight from South Africa where she has a holiday home and has barely had time to unpack as family arrive for dinner.
But Ruby, 64, is remarkably chilled as she takes time out to reveal Frazzled Cafes – her charity brainchild – are coming to Scotland.
“We’re in Newcastle now and the plan is to keep going and move it up to Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen,” she said. “Frazzled Cafes are for people who are frazzled, we’re not therapists.
“People get together every two weeks, and there’s a facilitator and free coffee and cookies.”
The talk-ins, held in M&S cafes, are free. To attend you sign up in advance through the charity’s website.
They provide a safe, anonymous and non-judgemental environment in which people can share their experiences and know that they are not alone.
There are three in London and others in Brighton, Cambridge, Leeds, Liverpool and Norwich.
But it’s the Glasgow cafe that will be especially close to Ruby’s heart.
The writer, actress and presenter revealed: “I have a really Glaswegian sense of humour.
“Chicago and Glasgow are similar. We get each other. It’s that dark sense of humour. That’s where I feel most at home.”
She recalled her student days: “It was Glasgow before they redecorated it. There would be people on the street passed out from drinking too much and I’d use them as hurdles. That was my work out.
“The Gorbals was my favourite – where the Citizens’ Theatre was. It was the coolest theatre on earth.”
Despite an on-off battle with depression over the years, Ruby admits that when she’s well (which is more often than not) hilarity is never far away. She last laughed uncontrollably with Aberdeen-born singer Annie Lennox.
“It was two days ago,” she grinned. “Annie lives near me in Cape Town, she was on holiday.
“I have these rubber pigs – they’re like dog toys – and we started to play music with them, just honking, and she laughed a lot, we became hysterical. She’s really funny.”
And humour plays an important part in her new book, How To Be Human: The Manual.
“The book is about the human condition, it is not there to cure anything, it is just there for readers to go, ‘Wow, I never knew that’ and then to laugh,” she said.
Written with the help of a neuroscientist and a Buddhist monk, it traces human evolution and asks why we think and act in the way we do, covering everything from thoughts and emotions to relationships.
Ruby added: “We’ve started treating ourselves more like machines and less like humans.
“We’re so used to upgrading things like our iPhones as soon as the new one comes out, we don’t think twice, we dump it.
“Everyone has something about their lives. Either they’re living too fast or they’re not living well or they’re burning out, so it’s a good time to write something like this.
“A lot of the things in my books sort of say, ‘It’s not your condition, it’s the human condition’.
“People used to want feel a sense of community but when we do have that now it’s always shallow. We don’t connect, we just show off what we’ve got that the next guy doesn’t.”
Research and writing took 18 months, and Ruby admitted: “It was really hard but it is stuff I wanted to know. I would read this book if I hadn’t written it.
“I never thought I would be interested in this stuff but then I never thought I’d be an actress.”
She added: “How do we choose relationships, how do you raise your kids, how do you feel compassion? I wanted to know.”
Ruby’s work now is a far cry from her days fronting her ’90s Ruby Wax Meets… chat show, interviewing the likes of Madonna, Pamela Anderson and Imelda Marcos.
“When I was young I had a good time and didn’t ask questions,” she said. “Then when I interviewed celebs I started asking questions but then I ran out of interest.
“I wanted to know how minds work and they are just going to tell me about their lives. They are not going to tell me how evolution works and that became more interesting.”
So is she passing her newfound wisdom on to her children?
“No my kids think I’m an idiot; they think I’m a real moron,” she laughed.
“They are in their 20s. I can’t give advice. There’s no reason for me!”