Ruby Wax | Extraordinary Life Stories

0:01Hi. I've been so looking forward to this. Like, shouldn't say it because... No, don't put pressure on me. Just a tiny bit. Okay. Been a countdown, I think. And now we're here. Really? And now we're here. Who is Ruby Wax? Who is Ruby Wax? Well, it depends what stage of life. Doesn't it? I mean, I was a great camper. I was a great canoeist at eight. But then... And then at 21, I turned into this yapping television personality. And I just saw it because I'm doing a show where I'm showing old clips. And she's just got, I mean, I don't, she's on helium. She's just talking like this. And I think, who the hell was that?

0:38Because that's not me either. But, you know, I guess you want attention, you want success. So you mold yourself into this thing that would get attention. Chameleon. A chameleon. Because at 16, I had no personality. And then suddenly I turned from an ugly duckling into Joan Rivers one night. And I got all the guys suddenly. Most of them were gay, but I got them. Your wit and humour is off the scale. Thank you. I mean, has that been perfected over time? Did you always have that? Because I never know what you're going to say next, but it's so quick, it's so sharp. I think I had my intelligence tested and they said, it's really fast incoming, but you have no...

1:20Nothing on your RAM. Is that a technical thing? Is that like saying there's no filter? There's nothing. There's just... It goes, it leaves. So, I don't really remember what I said. But everything is a surprise to me what comes out of my mouth. But that makes you so authentic. That makes you so... Well, I don't have time to edit. I don't have time to edit. But is that where life's a bit boring, where people are processing, having a think, taking a breath before they answer when you just say it as it is? But I have no other way of doing it. You've never known any different. No. And so, yeah, I can't think before.

1:53You know, sentences only come out because I'm dyslexic. So it's more like jazz than it is a symphony. Yeah. And people think that's comedy. My face is hurting already, by the way, from smiling at you. Oh, right. Because I'm smiling at you. No, but you just make me smile. Your whole demeanor. It's a cheekiness to you. I interrupted you then. Really? That's okay. Yeah. There's an intellect, a wit, but there's always an undertow that you're going to say something that even you, like you just said, don't even quite know what it's going to be. I was in the days where you could say anything. Get away with it.

2:25There was nothing. So when I'd interview a celebrity, I'd say, put the camera on at about eight o 'clock in the morning and we never shut down until way after midnight. That's how I got OJ to stab me with a banana because he was so exhausted. And I can, I'm like you, I can keep going. So I watched them burning out and that's when the show gets good. That's interesting. So you've got, it's like relentless stamina. Yeah. I'm like you as you're feeding off their energy. Yeah. And I was trying to, you know, I see those people like a Rubik's Cube that I'm trying to figure out the puzzle. I wasn't interested in the celebrity.

3:01I was interested in the nature of fame. Like, is it a sickness? What are they getting out of it? Where's, you know, where's their, how much do they notice around them? Why do they get angry when nobody's looking? That's intelligence. That's a, that's a brain working so fast. And using that word, I just use comedian. You are, it's a jigsaw puzzle and you are just literally forming pieces. And there's a hole here, but I'm gonna... You then know how to ask the question that fills that bit, and then there's some other mannerism. That's what I feel like I'm seeing. Oh, right. You're piecing something together very quickly to then potentially get what you want.

3:33What would you want out of an interview with someone? And what I mean by that is you don't want to have an interview with someone that has said everything to other people. You want something different. You want something that makes it bespoke to you. I want them to be surprised. So that's what we do. I went out for dinner with OJ, you know, where all these girls were lining up because they wanted to sleep with a criminal. And his sister had to push them away. And then he was, what is it, teasing me because he wanted me to bust him because I look like Marsha Clark, the prosecutor. So all the time he was teasing, like he'd do that poem.

4:07What's that? Lizzie Borden had a knife. She whacked her mother 40 times when she kept saying that to me and showing me where the knife might be. and going by Judge Ito's house and rolling down the window and screaming, so he wanted me to finally go nail him. In a way, he wasn't conscious of it. He's got a brain that some of it knows the truth and some of it lies, and the two don't meet. It's called doubling, I think, and that Imelda Marcos has that too, and I think Trump has that too. They don't know what the other half is thinking, so they can be a total fanatic liar, but they also believe they're speaking the truth.

4:41Wow. Yeah, and so it's really interesting. he start a sentence, OJ. And then because I was editing the shows, it was spaghetti hoops. He makes it like, you know, that noise on a radio so that he gets you so rattled that you can't remember where he started. That's how he was such a great liar. Because you're so confused by the time he finishes. You've articulated that beautifully. You've interviewed so many people. Yeah. Who have you enjoyed interviewing the most? Carrie Fisher. You didn't even hesitate there? No. What? It was like playing tennis with a pro. She just... She speaks novel. It comes out of her mouth.

5:18You don't have to edit. It's just magnificent sentences. Some of them are so dark they're funny. So she's a... She's literally just spiraled off each other. So I throw a ball back, you know, kind of getting it all over. But when you're playing with a pro, some of my balls would land, but never like hers. That's brilliant. I was the handmaiden. There's no question. And what about that interview can you kind of relate to a conversation with me, someone who is so enjoying interviewing people that I'm learning from, but is not a pro? Like, you are a pro. You have been doing this... Ruby, you are the queen of interviewing.

5:53You have countless stories, and there are the most incredible names you can mention. So I enjoy every conversation, but to, I guess, skill up, to in any way get advice from you, interview. What would you give to me to make me a better interviewer? You're already a listener so you got the check, you got that one. Tick. Tick. I didn't listen in the beginning of my career. All I wanted to be was out funny them. So it wasn't great interviews. And gradually as I got more and more into despots, like Imelda or whatever, I laid back because I was so entertained by this kind of madness that was in front of me trying to figure out, does she know she's lying?

6:35Imelda, Marcos, by telling me she was cleaning her house and a painting fell off the wall and she found gold in the walls. So 17 billion because her house was made out of gold. And I thought, are you lying or do you believe it? Do you know what I'm saying? The whole Marcos thing is they stole from the people. Then you've got to work out how to ask that question, right? That's your skill, like kind of... You almost let them... Get them to say it without you kind of... But I'm not there to bust him. But what I used to do was I'd look at the camera. And so that would be your opinion. But I wouldn't make a face.

7:06You just look at the camera. So that's what I used to do. They didn't like that either. You know, you had to... I was discovering and I was experimenting. And who, without naming anyone, you might use to, but who have you interviewed that you've not enjoyed and why? Oh, Donald Trump. Oh, Donald Trump. He hated my guts. because what I know now, you know, doing mindfulness and doing studying, I should have held my ground and just appeased him and said, oh, because he said he wanted to be the next president of the United States. So I thought it was a comedy act. So I started laughing and he said, I laughed.

7:42So he said, land the plane. I want her out of here. I should have just said, tell me what your plans would be because I could have nailed him by just being totally fascinated and straight. Like I was with Melania who's in the show later on and she's just saying how sexy she finds him. Does he put his mouth where his money is? Yeah. Oh my God. You have so much experience and the perspective looking back on that wish you had, you know, I could have done something differently. Is there anything else in your career wise now looking back that you wish you'd done differently? Yeah, I would have been more like, I can't believe I'm saying it, Louis Theroux, which is more let them be the actor.

8:21whereas in my day I had to do a lot of tap dancing because I was told I had five minutes five minutes with everybody as everybody does have even Graham Norton does but because I'd make them laugh they'd say letters like Hugh Hefner let me stay in the Playboy Mansion for a week so five minutes or Imelda Marcos it was five minutes we flew all the way to the Philippines but because I was flirting with her and I wore more expensive jewelry than her I said load me up with Theo Finnell. So she was off, she was off center, like, who is this person? And then she found a copy of Hello! magazine in her garbage can with me on the front.

8:56She really loved Celebrity because there were pictures of Saddam Hussein and Castro and Reagan. And, you know, she had them on her piano when she sang Feelings to me. She sang the song Feelings, which it's ironic as it can get, but she liked Celebrity. So then when she saw that I might be famous. I suddenly was flavor of the month and she said, do you want to see the shoes? Because she was got her next stash. She stole all the money so she could get 3 ,500 pairs of shoes during her reign and they're in a museum. So I said, I know you've got more. And in the beginning she said, no, I don't. And then when she knew I was famous, she went, come upstairs to the attic.

9:36You love opening those doors, don't you? You're someone that... A big part of what you've done is to get through obstacles, to get to someone, to interview them, to then have a conversation that is ultimately memorable, if you like. And I can tell there's probably a certain amount of satisfaction and dopamine hit from pushing through the obstacles, getting around them to get to what you want. To figure them out and to make them childlike. You know, by the end, Imelda was singing Feelings in five other songs. Well, more in her wedding dress to me while she let me pick up her skirt and show her shoes.

10:08But you get them in a kind of infantile state, which people want to play. so even OJ was playing at the end so a lot of what I do with celebrities break them out of their of their mask and have them in the sandpit so we're both playing that's a real skill isn't it there's a well I was trying yeah but you worked and I think there's a reduces to almost a kind of primitive you know like natural curious is what we talked about before the camera started you know my my genuine interest in asking you questions and learning people is from a curiosity point of view. And that's how we all are as kids. And somewhere along the way, going into adulthood, that can get knocked out of you, whether it's parenting, whether it's school, whether it's work, where there's a conformity.

10:50That feels like the sort of curiosity gets squashed. Yeah, I think people... The only thing that gets people or gets a baby moving is seeing novelty. That's why you go peek-a-boo and the alarm. That's also the birth of comedy is when you scare them and the banana really didn't hurt anybody, so they start making animal sounds and clapping and making that laughing, which is a half scream. So yeah, curiosity and the surprise is what gets, you know, it's not dopamine, it's not adrenaline, it's your heart bursts a little bit, and that's what people want. You want to be taken by surprise. I love your articulation.

11:28I really do. You mentioned mindfulness. Mm-hmm. There's a real association of mental health around a lot of what you have done and particularly do now. Right. Why is that so important to you? Well, I have mental illness. So originally, Comic Relief put a poster of me without asking me that said out at one in four people have mental illness, one in five people have dandruff, I have both and I was mortified. Huge posters all the way down the tube station. And so I hurled myself in front of the first few, but they kept going. So I thought, what am I going to do? So I thought I'm going to write a show and pretend that's my publicity poster, like I'm opening in the West End.

12:06So you turned something that totally shocked you into a positive? Yeah, eventually. I mean, I toured mental institutions for two years to try out my material, because if my people left, then I could say it. My people. Yeah. And one... It was my show and then question and answer at the second half. And my favorite question was, how do you find a poltergeist in a Hoover? And another one was, why is there a communist living in my back teeth? They ask questions that, oh, I've done this show over the years and I've done seven different shows, but the second half the audience speak. I can't top those two questions.

12:44How do you get a poltergeist out of a hooper? I'm still deliberating on it. Yeah, think about it. There's no way I can answer that. No. Carrying on with mental health. Once I was pushed out of the closet, I'd started doing the shows in West End theaters and I toured Australia and New Zealand and Cape Town and America. And the audience wanted to talk in the second half. They wanted to be heard. And so you let them out of the closet. And I could feel their liberation by, you know, they want... People just want to be heard. Well, that's therapy to them, particularly with you, because I think the word I was looking for earlier, I've got it now, is disarming.

13:19Whether it's back to some of these big famous people to drop the mask, it's relatable to all of us. You know, I feel that from you. You know, there is no nervousness or worry in any way other than throwing some curveballs at me. You're going to try and do anything other than have a conversation I benefit from. So I can imagine that those audience probably all remember those live shows. Well, and then you'd see their little heads nodding going, me too. So there was such relief. And then I started something called Frazzle Cafe in Marks and Spencer's up and down the country. and after hours in their cafes we started group meetings where people would come and they would speak their truth and the compassion would just be oozing out you know because and they they would leave really tentative and scared but they'd leave like this human charm bracelet and they're still writing to each other that's eight years ago then that's legacy that is well now we have it in online we're looking for partnerships so that i can do the final dream there's a lot you're working on there's a lot you're doing and i'm excited about something we're working on together as well what does legacy really mean to you it doesn't mean anything i need you haven't given any thought you are on a journey that is just a constant you don't stop to think too much about what you've done no and i mean that in a complimentary way you are eyes forward everything in your wake contributes to perspective experience and so it makes you a better version of you but i can really feel that in any way, not dissing legacy, but it's like it's all about what else can I do.

14:52You're still very... I don't rust on my laurels. You know, you change direction. So I got interested in mindfulness because I thought cut out the shrink and, you know, you become the shrink. You're watching your own thoughts, but you're accepting them like a shrink does. So that unlike the parents who said, don't think that way, don't say that, whatever, is that you learn to give yourself a break, but you can read what's going on in your mind and you forgive yourself for it because it's a **** for everybody if you ask them what they think. It's, I could give you the answer but four out of five thoughts are negative.

15:27I mean we're, um, Velcro for negative thoughts and positive, Teflon for positive. It's just the way we are because for survival we had to really be on our toes and be paranoid. And now... Constantly questioning, constantly ready to fight the flu. Like an animal looking around to see is it a snake, is it a stick? and now we have language which is a curse and a blessing and instead of looking around for danger our little amygdala can't tell the difference between real danger or did John not call me? Why has nobody invited me to the party? Do you think I'm a loser? You know language is we're substituting real fear of what's in the bushes.

16:07So I don't know how I got on this one. No. Well I'm going to carry the thread on from a mental health point of view because you are very open and you have been very open about the fact that you have mental health challenges if you like there's a real lovely maturity about you now where you're you know clearly from you just saying you've been able to help people where i imagine there's a certain amount of fulfillment that you get from that we realize that someone that dare i say probably didn't have any help and didn't know how to ask for it is unable to give that back i want to know what got you through times that probably were really challenging for you medication really yeah when i'm very sick and I'm in this, and people need to understand depression isn't having a bad day.

16:52It's not sadness. It's not anxiety. It's a sickness. And people in my audience, sometimes somebody else, they say, I have cancer and I have depression. And I always say, which is worse? And they always say the depression because you get no pity. And people think you're making it up. And that's savage. And people commit suicide, not because they had a liver infection, but because they have mental disorder. So I take it real seriously. A hundred percent. And so on that, to go the route of seeking or ultimately having medication, did you then go to talk to someone? So your journey, because at any one time, did you bottle things up?

17:30Were you sharing how you were feeling with people? Well, I thought I was crazy, you know, because your parents, my parents said, everything's fine. This is insane. You have everything. So, you know, you didn't let it out of the bag. So you should hold that in. Because that can create a whole load of other mental issues. My mom was cleaning the ceiling with a Q-tip, you know, and my dad was beating the shit out of everybody. But we didn't know that that was mental illness at that time. There wasn't a word for mental illness. So when I was kind of in a coma but awake as a kid, nobody knew what that was.

18:01And then gradually a doctor said, you know what, you have depression. It was one of the happiest days. because once you've got a diagnosis, you can do something about it or at least try. But I was interested in mindfulness because I met the professor at Oxford and I said to him, what happens in the brain if you practice this thing? Okay, don't throw me an angel card, just what happens in the meat? And he says, if you want to know neuroscience, you'd have to get into Oxford. So I did. And nobody got us as... A lot of people don't know this about you. I've been talking about this. Um, nobody was as surprised as he was, but what I loved, you know, there's the most evidence that it's mindfulness.

18:44It could have been witchcraft. It could have been anything, but mindfulness, praying, certain, uh, uh, yoga, obviously, um, martial arts, Tai Chi, you know, all of those things where you get the focus into your body, all of those things have a really interesting result in a scanner. And I don't know if you have a scanner at home, but you could check it out, what happens in the brain, which areas get developed. So mindfulness is actually like a physical exercise, except it's for your brain. People go, oh yeah, I see auras too. And I go, sweetheart, they can't see auras in a scanner. I'm sorry I'm scientific.

19:22But mindfulness, the exercise itself, which I can explain with neuroscience, builds certain areas. like, you know, you do sit-ups, you're going to get more buff. This builds certain areas that are responsible for attention. Everybody wants attention because we live in a state of distraction. Self-regulation, you can bring the cortisol down yourself. You don't need to run to a shrink, and good luck affording one. All the things that we want, you know, compassion or, you know, being able to pause before I punch you, because thoughts are ephemeral. They aren't the real thing. So if you learn to sit back and watch them, not all the time, but you can choose, I need this thought.

20:06This one's just garbage. So that's mastery. What do you do for yourself? So there's advice you're giving to people and there's people that will come to you for advice and you can pass on that information. But what do you do and do you have that kind of morning routine that you swear by, like a kind of a sort of non-negotiable day? Yeah, I have to do mindfulness. Do you start the day with it? Sometimes I'll do it in the Uber. It doesn't matter where it is. Mindfulness you don't have to sit on a gluten-free cushion. It's an exercise of the brain, which I'm happy, you know, you're not just... So it's transferable, you take it everywhere.

20:42You're not becoming a better breather. You're doing something. You're watching your thoughts, then you bring it back into the body. Watch the thoughts. You need the thoughts. People always say, I can't empty my mind. If your mind is empty, you're dead. So you're watching the thoughts. It's like the weight you have at a gym. Then you bring it back to, let's say, a sense, sight, sound, taste, touch, smell, or just interception. If you bring it into the body, you're training the attention to come back. So when the fan, you're able to lower that cortisol and the person, if they're throwing a ball at you, it just goes slamming back because you're, you've got the red mist down.

21:21And you can really listen to people when you're, when you've pulled that cortisol down. You cannot get into somebody's mind and see how they see the world unless you're cool. It goes back to removing that fight or flight, which we conditioned, right? That's all we try to do. So you're reducing that, flowing the heart down. I mean, people lose it by jogging or they do it by golf. But if somebody's shouting at you, what are you going to get some golf clubs? So with mindfulness, because you've trained your brain, you've learned to pull the reins in without repressing it. You know exactly what's going on.

21:52You feel it. You think it. But you're pausing because it's not necessarily the truth. It's just your habit of thinking. Like I think you're always shouting at me. I'm always wrong. And you realize, Ruby, you have that from childhood. But it's not true. So with the journey that you've been on, to be sitting here now and looking back at a younger version of yourself and the stress you put yourself under, the overthinking, the mental health kind of challenges that have developed, what advice would you give a younger Ruby? I'd say, hold on to your pants. It's going to be okay. But she doesn't believe me.

22:29Yeah. You will not believe what happens. You who got thrown out of busy beaver nursery school will go to Oxford someday. She would have laughed. And you're an OBE. And an OBE. When I tell people in America, they think it's a yeast infection. Well, we're in the UK here. Yeah. And that is a well-deserved achievement. And did you expect it? Well, no. I got it for my contribution to mental health. What an amazing thing to get it for, which is why I was going to bring it up, because just that whole relentless seeking knowledge and not being afraid to put yourself out there. So if you want to find something out, you're not afraid to put yourself in that sort of line of the bullet, if you like, and then see what happens.

23:11And by default, I think that relatability and that sort of element of change, changing narrative of how people talk about mental health is in some ways associated with you. But you know, I rather than just talk about it, which I'm asked for a lot of companies to talk about it because I bet that CEO knows what I'm talking about. It's one in four. So if it's not him, it's his mother. is that I'm, you always say you're talking about listening more, or you're talking about how to keep cool, or you're talking about being more compassionate. I hear all these talks with leaders and you think, well, how do you do that?

23:43Nobody says how. Well, at least with mindfulness, and I'm now running retreats, you've given them a tool. It's a tool. You can take it or leave it. But nothing has the evidence as in neuroscience, as mindfulness. If it was witchcraft, I would studied that. Or people, you know, believing they're channeling a cat. It doesn't show up in the scanner. It doesn't reduce the amygdala. It doesn't stimulate the anterior cingulate cortex, which is a part of the brain that when your attention goes, it brings it back. It's focus. So you get more landscape in those areas. If you look in, that's what happens.

24:20If you play piano, there's more neural connections in that area of finger movement. It's not because your fingers move faster. Everything you study, tap dancing, it's registered in the mothership. It's not because your feet move faster. So everything is up here. You know, it depends what you practice. And whatever you practice is where your attention is. Talking about practice, you made me chuckle then with the cat. You bring humor into so much of what you do in such a beautiful, eloquent way. How much of that has come from perhaps trying to run away from what was clearly a really traumatic childhood and bring humour in and maybe disarm people through laughter, through humour.

25:03When I used to live at home and obviously I'd have to visit Chicago and then I'd come back and I'd always stop by Alan Rickman's house because he was my mentor. We were in the Royal Shakespeare Company together. I played a Leaf. He was Jaquies. But I'd stop by his house and I would do the greatest comedy you've ever seen because out of torment comes comedy. If I wasn't able to speak comedy, I'd be locked up or I'd be dead. So it's your outlet. So it was my outlet. Luckily, I could speak that language. And then it was like I expired. And then he tapped me on the head and I go to sleep. But I think that it takes a lot of anger to come up with some comedy.