Real Life With John CowanRuby Wax, born on April 19, 1953, in Evanston, Illinois, is a British-American actress, comedian, writer, and mental health campaigner. She gained fame on TV shows like Girls on Top (1985–1986) and The Full Wax (1991–1994) and worked as a script editor on Absolutely Fabulous (1992–2012).
Wax holds dual citizenship and has lived in the UK since the 1970s. She earned a master's degree in mindfulness-based cognitive therapy from Oxford in 2013. She became a Visiting Professor in Mental Health Nursing at the University of Surrey in 2015, receiving an OBE for her mental health work.
An accomplished author, Wax's memoirs How Do You Want Me? (2002) and Sane New World (2013) topped the Sunday Times bestseller list. She is married to producer Ed Bye and has three children.
She will be live in New Zealand in April.
Christchurch, 4 April
Auckland, 5 April
Wellington, 8 April
You're listening to a podcast from News Talk sed B. Follow this and our wide range of podcasts now on iHeartRadio, Real Conversation, Real Connection, It's Real Life with John Cowen on News Talk SEDB.
Kday, Welcome to real Life. I'm John Cowen and I can't think of anything I'd rather be doing right now than talking to Ruby Wax. Welcome, Ruby, thank you, thank you, and Jack so looking forward to having you down here in New Zealand. But just to bring listeners up to speed. You'll of course remember Ruby from comedy shows like for Wax and being the script editor on Absolutely Fabulous. But she's also applied to her immense talent and brain power to help people with mental health issues and shares a master's degree from Oxford and cognitive therapy. And I don't think they give them away.
To you can win a lottery. Once a year they give.
A couple up. And she's written probably more books than I've ever read, and mainly on mindfulness and her own journey of mental health. And she's a visiting professor in the School of Mental Health and Nursing. She's had been awarded an OBE and as as well as that, several Doctorates, Honorary Ones, Ambassador for the British Neuroscience Association, President of the charity Relate and Chancellor of Southampton University. That's pretty impressive.
Good, isn't it. I don't I always go who is that? Yeah, they couldn't find anybody else and I took it. And the Queen is giving away awards for people who were mentally ill.
So bingo, Oh, well, I want't done for that.
Growing up in Illinois, you probably wouldn't have picked this future for yourself.
Oh no, no, no, it's it was not on the cards at all at all.
Well, I'm glad that it has worked out well for you. A lot of that's been born out of some anguish and pain, which you'll probably talk about. But first of all, you're going to be coming to New Zealand, which New Zealand is already freshening up the paint work and mowing the lawns in preparation for.
Your visitor and so so I'm getting ready too.
So what will you be doing when you come out here?
Oh, mowing the lawn and painting.
No, I'm doing a show, I hope you know, because there's a theater booked I've doing this show based on my book, but it isn't I'm not just doing reading called I'm not as well as I thought I was, which is my latest and I've been touring around in the UK about many, many, many times, and then took it to the West End. So I only did it so that someday I could get back to New Zealand.
I love New Zealand.
Okay, In case people are wanting to know christ Church on the fourth of April, Auckland on the fifth of April, and Wellington on the eighth of Vapil, just get online and book tickets because it's guaranteed to not only entertain you. I think it's going to make some people better.
Sorry, I heard your accent and I thought.
Better better, A few sad sour people might be better. Hopefully they'll be better.
They'll be better. I mean, it's it takes you on a ride.
You know.
This isn't stand up. This is something else. And I was just talking before about that when I went to Early in my life, I was in the w Shakespeare Company and Alan Rickman became my mentor, so he directed all of my shows and this is the one he would have really been proud of because he's trying to teach me coming in and go oh no, no, no, it's awful. And he kept saying, try to stop trying to be funny, and I always I said I'm not. He said, you look desperate, and so this is the first show I think I look desperate.
I think I'm fantastic, and so I think he'd be happy.
Well, I'm sure that will honor Alan Rickman. As we're watching you Mindie, you could drop when any name dropping competition, I'm sure you know, just dropping in Alan Rickman. Yeah, but he was not here.
I met him, do you know what I mean.
So it's so funny for me because we were friends when we were children. So I mean we weren't children, but we were in our thirties twenty yep. Anyway, so it never seems name dropping to me because I remember him like just you know, wearing some underpants on his head.
You know, being funny.
We had a tortoise called Betty, you know what I mean. He was the father of Betty.
He wasn't famous, right right, Well, I know it impinges upon what you're going to be talking about, So can we just back up in your story a little bit. Can you tell me what happened at your daughter's sports day?
Oh yeah, this is a long time ago, so it's hard to remember. But I think the gun went off and all the other mummies took you know, their children took off because it's very competitive in London, in notting Hill, and all the mummies were going Roden run, Climydi Rotten run like the wind, and my daughter just was at the starting line waving at me. And from that wasn't why I had a nervous breakdown, but it didn't help because so I ended up in a mental ward, not just because of that.
And no, you're you're going to land on your daughter.
The word the race too once I was in the clinic.
So but that was at the outset of probably a worst crash.
No I'm making it, I'm lightning it. I mean when I talk about mental illness, if you spoke about it for the reality of the core of it, it would be called whining.
So the reason I flip it into comedy, and not.
All always, but sometimes it's because that's the way you can get people to listen and to hear it and to go, oh yeah, maybe that's me too. And I think that makes us feel more of a tribe. You don't have to be mentally ill, but let's be honest.
With each other.
And that's what I try to do in my show, is like speak from that, from your guts. Don't give me how everything how wonderful everything is, or jokes about your cat. I like to talk about the real thing.
And comedy is probably the only way that you could probably package a story about mental health problems. I mean, you have a wonderful ability to tickle their ribs and then you slip a knife between those rooms us.
Everybody, anybody said to me, but.
What was depression like for you when you ended up and that ended up in that institution.
It look it's like it's if you if the one and four had the same disease as I do. We all know what it for you like, but it's there's an inability to make you understand if you're not you know, one of us. It is not a sad day. It's not you know that your can't diet. This is something where you your personality leaves town and you're replaced by something made it that's locked in cement. It's a death, but you're awake, so it's as bad as it gets. I mean, I've had people in my audience over the years, and I don't want to heavy this up, but sometimes people put their hands up and tell me what their story is. And some people have said, I have cancer and I have depression. I always said, what's the worst, and they always said the depression, that's the worst.
It's as bad as it gets.
And I'll take anybody on for that, saying, oh, well, it's your imagination, like I thought, I'll get up and have depression or play golf.
And how do you respond when someone says, oh, just put a smile on it.
Of course they go perk up. They say, yeah, like I never thought of that one. Well, then you walk away. You learned to walk away now.
Okay, Now you would discreet about your mental health issues back then. I mean, I don't think you even told your daughters no. And yet you went from that to being the poster girl of mental health problems. How about it?
Comic Relief put a poster of me up.
They took a photo and said we're going to raise money for mental health charities. And they took my photo and blew it up and put it all over the tube stations, the underground stations, and they were gigantic, and it set on it. One in four people have mental illness, one in five people have dandruff. I have both, and I was I never gave them permission. First of all, that's a terrible line. You know, I don't have dandruff.
So I was mortified, and I thought, I'm going to write a show.
I'm going to write a show, and I'm going to pretend that that's my publicity poster that I'm going to perform somewhere. So I had to write a show. I couldn't trap myself, and so I performed in mental institutions for two years for free, and I met some of my greatest characters, the greatest characters telling me somebody asked me how you get a poltergeist out of a hoover. I mean, nobody asked questions like my people. And then I performed for two years, and then I took it all over the UK and it seemed to get more and more popular. And then I wrote a show for not people who were just meant leal, but everybody, which is the frazzled.
And I didn't make that word up.
And so the first show became frazzled, and that's how I started really with my shows.
Okay. In the process of making it into a show and helping people and talking to people and audiences, you must have learned a lot and got an appetite for learning more.
Oh yeah, I mean, to me, nothing's more interesting than the brain. You know.
You can throw out every organ, but that brain is the mother shift, you know, and we don't know how it works.
You know.
It's like I say, we have a Ferrari on our head, but nobody gave us the keys. So that's why I went to Oxford, because I thought, how do you run this baby? And that became my interest much more than show business.
Okay. And so you know, you have been chuning up the Ferrari and you've been learning how to drive it and helping other people to drive it with your manuals on how to be mindful and everything like this. Unfortunately, even though you know how to drive it, it can still have the wheels, can still come off occasionally.
Count of no question. I mean, nothing is one hundred percent. But where you have the muscle, you know, when the piano falls on you, it's better if you worked out in the gym and you can take it more than just being smashed.
Right, So is depression something you've had all your life or has it just been something later in life that came upon you.
I think I had it when I was young, and they kept thinking it was some disease. So I had all this blood taken out of me and they couldn't find anything physically wrong. So I felt I was possessed by the devil for the first thirty years, and then suddenly somebody said, wait a minute, you got something here. And the minute they named it, I felt much better because then you can take medication.
Isn't that amazing that the idea of getting a diagnosis can be so helpful?
Well, people say, oh, what you know, diagnosis it you know, it puts you into a corner. Well, I thank the gods of diagnosis because otherwise I would have medication. And I pray at those feet and thank the gods for those for lamotrogen.
So medication has worked well for you. Yeah, Can I ask what else? What else helps?
Well?
I do mindfulness and that helps when you're not depressed. It's like going to the gym for your brain and finding out what your glitches are, what your what your triggers are. They don't go away, They're not going anywhere. But it's better I know before I throw it on you. You know, usually you you know, you're The way you think in your head is how.
You talk to other people.
So when they're talking to you and they're giving you hell, you imagine what it's like in their head. So a lot of this, you know, this doesn't mean that you're suddenly a pure you know, you're sitting on a gluten free cushion with your eyes rolled back. It just means that you have I know what goes on in my head, and better I know than you know. You know, I won't throw it at you. I'll think about it and reassess maybe this isn't appropriate, instead of believing that I know reality and you don't.
So when you do have an episode of depression, now which I hope a reader, if you do it for the book, okay, how can I suppose that was rather inconvenient when you're trying to write a train about going it made the book better?
Okay I'm saying I still try that at home, but it has accident.
Well, you're the most polyanderous visit I've ever made. Yeah, I had depression. It was wonderful for the book, you know, but you had it made a good book? Not good? Yeah, when when you have depression. Now now that you have, as I mentioned, you know, this master's degree in mindfulness cognitive therapy and all this insight, does that actually help when you're in the middle of depression.
No, not at all.
I mean it's a disease, you know, and when you have it, you haven't got a mind, So why be mindful? You really are, you know, you're reduced to literally a block a cement. So it doesn't help at all.
No.
Yeah, but it means that I.
Can tell before it's coming, and I haven't had it for twelve years until this last time. Yeah, but there's a reason I got it last time. I don't talk about it in the show, but I had come off my medication, and that was a stupid thing to do.
I think I heard was big so in preparation for trying something else.
Yeah, I was going to try psilocybin, but I never got to it, so I got off my medication and there's a lesson.
Okay, So in your book you describe trying all sorts of things to help discover meaning in life and what adds to life. And after the break, I'm looking forward to talking to you about what you discovered in this journey that's turned into this book, which is turned into a show. And if you've just tuned in, I don't need to tell you who I've been talking to. You recognize her voice straight away. I'm talking to Ruby Wax and I'm delighted to be doing so. So I'm looking forward to talking to her again after this break.
Intelligent interviews with interesting people. It's real life on news talks it be.
But was.
What otn' loong?
This is news talk? Said b I'm John Cown talking with Ruby Wax, who's also picked that song for us. What are we listening to? Ruby?
A creep by Radiohead, which is my favorite song?
Why would that be your favorite?
Because I identify with it and got a creep. I feel like one, and I was one in school. You know, I had my front teeth in another time zone. You know when I was tortured. They all tortured me in high school. Really, you know, it really ketchup in her underpants. Yeah, they it was like carrying that films were at the end of it. But then at sixteen I turned from this kind of ugly duckling into Joan Rivers and then I got all the good looking guys.
But they were they were, yeah, but it's still they were the most beautiful. So that was revenge.
So that sounds like a fairly miserable way to stagger through your adolescence. And well in the end, and you and your parents.
They were insane.
They they were insane.
Yeah, and I say that lovingly.
Yeah, I say that with great love because they gave me the career that.
I have now.
Okay, but it doesn't sound like a very happy tongue.
No, it wasn't happy for the first half, but it's it's pretty good now.
Okay. So did that blossoming? Did that I would side with moving to England? Or is that just something else?
I know that you know, you have to survive, and you're not beautiful, and you can't dance, and you can't you do a lot of things, and suddenly comedy comes into your mouth and you get everybody. I mean, that's that's a great salvation for many of us. I feel like we were.
Creeps and it's the great revenge.
Right. Okay, So you're going through all your training as a Shakespearean actor, and TV came along and you're doing bits on movies and things that must have been a lot of fun that you enjoyed us.
Yeah.
I mean for a girl that feels she's a loser suddenly to get in the Royal Shakespeare Company when I couldn't act at all, I auditioned for every drama school there was in America, not into one, but then I got to the UK. I auditioned with a whimple on my head for all the drama schools, and I didn't know how to act. So I thought, well, I was doing Juliet. I thought she's supposed to be really sad in this scene. So I stood on stage going my dog, my dog is dead to make myself cry, except I accidentally said it out loud.
I was really noted, and.
They said, does Julian have a scene where she's talking about her dog? My dog is dead? And then I just stood there and wept with my wimble. So I wasn't very good, but I went to drama school and thought I can ever go back to Chicago. So I practiced and I did tongue exercises, and that's how I got the English accent I have today.
Right, have you got an English accent? Yah?
Can't you hear it?
I got into rusch Exspeare Company and I played wenches because when you speak with that R, you know, they have that R sound. So I could get away with doing that Gloucestershire accent, and I was one of the great wenches of all time.
You'd have to look that up.
I'll take your word for it. And actually I believe that I heard once that people back in shakespeare in times probably spoke with an accent that sounded more American. Yeah, then you probably heard that.
Yeah, new concern.
Now you're during COVID. You decided to go deep and meaningful or at least write another book or something, and so you hatched about this idea of hatched on this idea of doing exciting journeys that that.
Might change my life.
Yeah, might change your life. Yeah, can you tell us about some of the ones that you I went on a.
Thirty day silent retreat, and that's in the show. And you go from sitting there listening to gongs, gongs to wake you up at five o'clock in the morning that are so loud.
My cervix vibrated, and then you had to do You had to get no.
Rules, no sex, no intoxicants, no killing, which was a bummer because that's what I came to.
Then you had to.
I just go on with the stories that are so horrific in the beginning, because all you hear is your thoughts, and you think I'm in how I'm in total hell. But then after about a week something happens that's miraculous.
Is that.
I mean before that I was desperate. I was because you have no telephone. They make you put those in big Tibetan drums. You have no distractions, you can't read. You're just doing mindfulness for twelve hours a day, and you think you're going to lose your mind. But after about a week or nine days, the thoughts get really quiet, really quiet. Some of them are even complimentary, and you think, and you can taste food. It starts to taste delicious because you don't talk to anybody. So you know, I had at one point, I was in ecstasy and I broke my silence and I ran into the kitchen and I said, how did you make this egg? And they said with an egg? I mean everything tastes unbelievable, and you can watch a single ant go up and down a tree and not get bored. I mean, it becomes sensational. And I think that's why people who are in the world of meditation are also younger people are drawn to psychedelics because I'm sure you get that in one hit, whereas it took me nine days.
And then it's not you don't hold on.
Suddenly your thought goes, oh my god, how many more hours do I have to sit here?
This is just agony.
But then you get those moments where you're completely there and everything is the lights are brighter, the colors are more luscious, the taste of everything. I mean, there's a point to doing a month, and I got what the point was, but I almost lost my.
Mind, right, So it worked, and that's the amazing if you find that. I mean, you tried quite a few things, swimming off whales and working for great causes and things. Did all of these things sort of work?
It all kind of worked, But I mean, ultimately I did end up in a clinic.
But the real reason is, and you don't hear about it in the book.
You just assume, oh, that's what happened next is because I came off my drugs and then that was you. I would have kept going with these remarkable journeys, I mean, going into Afghanistan and getting people out. I would have kept going and then I ended up. But it makes the story. So I don't want to say good. I would rather not have depression. But the story of being running outside to find meaning while inside the floorboards are rotting. So the book and the show become a story of looking outside outside, you know, always running, and then inside something's really going wrong.
So when I did go in.
The clinic, they gave me a really you know e m d R. It's I movement desensitization reprocessing. Don't try and memorize it. It's a new type of therapy for trauma. And I said, I haven't got trauma. Trauma is an Oprah word. Trauma is when you fought in Afghanistan. Okay, I haven't thought there. But then at the very end I do find out why I was running. So far I do find out, which is I was locked in my house, which I didn't know as a kid, and so so that at the end I realized I wasn't running from meaning, but I was running away from a childhood. So the show and the book become one is a journey outward looking for something in the world, and the other one is a journey in in to find out why are you're running so hard? So that's what makes the book and the show really interesting, not just the journeys, but the juxtaposition.
Some of these techniques that you used on the way, like prayer and meditation, they're really ancient.
I don't really pray.
I just wentn't look monastery because I wanted to know what it's like to have to leap out of a chair and you know, filled with the spirit and then you know, go into tongues. I want to know what that's like. So I went there and there was a nun who took care of me, who was like missus doubtfire, and you do see what I wanted to be around people with faith.
What's your take on people of faith?
Well, I envy them. I really envy them because they've got to route of finding meaning and feeling peace.
But I just don't have any. And that's what I was looking for.
I was looking for something that would shake me out of my you know, sleepwalking.
Well, I'm looking forward to that. Actually I wish I could, but I'm out of anywhere near that.
John, you can come, Come on, Sam, you come, Okay, Sam the producer has just chimed in and he's going to go Hey christ Church on the fourth of April, Auckland on the fifth of April, Wellington on the eighth of April, and to see Ruby Wax and her show.
And I'm sure people are going to enjoy it. Ruby has been fantastic. I had a whole lot of more questions I wanted to ask you. I wanted to share my own personal Ruby. Thank you so much for taking the time to share with us, and I hope you really really have a great time when you come to New Zealand.
Thank you, Thanks very much.
This is Real Life. I'm John Cown. Looking for to being back with you again next Sunday Night with Real Life.
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