We catch up with comedy legend Ruby Wax ahead of her visit to the West Midlands and Shropshire with her Absolutely Famous tour and talk about I'm a Celeb and Donald Trump

Recently, she came back into the UK spotlight as a contestant on I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! and this year is embarking on a new tour that will see audiences get even closer to her.

Coming to The Alexandra, Birmingham, on April 18 and to Shrewsbury’s Theatre Severn on June 13, ‘Absolutely Famous’ will see Wax live on stage, dissecting some of her most iconic interviews, with audiences given the chance to ask questions – and anything goes.

“The title isn’t about me,” she says. “I’m showing clips of what I used to do. There’s Pamela Anderson, Trump, Jim Carrey, OJ Simpson, Tom Hanks – people who are or were ‘absolutely famous’. So you really see what an interview was when you have a week with them instead of five minutes. 

“It’s a springboard; then I go and riff on everything else. In the second half the audience can ask questions, and I don’t care what they ask – anything.”

As has often been reflected, it is probably easier to name those celebrities that Ruby Wax hasn’t met than those that she has, and when asked if she has a standout favourite or ‘not favourite’, the answer is very easy. 

“Well the ‘not favourite’ was Donald Trump,” she says. “That was like a bull charging at you. He hated me on sight, so he removed me. He said he was going to throw me off his plane, except we were at 33,000 ft.”

Over a career that has seen OJ Simpson feigning to stab her with a banana, Wax’s chats across shows including ‘The Full Wax’ and ‘Ruby Wax Meets…’ have captured some of the most sensational moments ever televised with some of the biggest names on the planet. Yet, to her, global fame is not what makes somebody a worthy interviewee.

“If people are really interesting, then I kind of interview them,” she says. “So, even in I’m A Celebrity, you know, [Angry] Ginge and Aitch, I interviewed them, inadvertently. They were more interesting than any bigger celeb I could do. 

“Just to crack somebody who’s a streamer and another guy who’s a rap artist, to me was really interesting. Just because you’re really famous (and now there’d be PR and they’d say ‘you can only have five minutes’) it wouldn’t be interesting. Somebody who you can have a week with, then it gets interesting.”

During her time on I’m A Celeb, Wax was a fan favourite. But, of course, she also had favourites of her own.

“Well, Aitch and Ginge and then Lisa [Riley] were kind of my close ones in camp. You have to eat a scrotum to be there, and I would’ve eaten, like, 12 to be around those people.”

What Ruby thought about I'm a Celebrity.. Get me out of here

When asked if she had aspired to go into ‘the jungle’ for a long time, her answer came with delectable bluntness.

“No, I thought it was a c**p show,” she said. “I said I’d never do a reality show, but then they promised the people would be really interesting – they weren’t throwing in a Nigel Farage. So I believed them, and they did deliver.”

Holder of dual American and British citizenship, Wax has resided in the UK since the 1970s, and in her early days shared a flat with none other than the late, great Alan Rickman – her best friend, and a man who became integral to her career, remaining so until his passing.

“He told me how to do comedy for 30 years,” she said. “At the start he kept saying I looked desperate and, ‘that’s really ugly’ and he would get it out of me, and I think 35 years later I can kind of get what he said. But he directed everything I did from then until the time he died. Even the TV shows – he was behind them.

“He was a great comedian, so I could imitate him.”

Thinking back to those early times, Wax’s eventual stratospheric trajectory wasn’t even a glimmer in her eye.

“I was kind of a loser as a kid in high school,” she says. “So I’m happy where it’s ended up. Now that I’m in mental health, people say, ‘thanks for saving my brother’. That’s more complimentary than somebody saying ‘that was a really funny line’ – it just goes deeper.”

Wax has been open about her struggles with bipolar disorder and depression, having made an online series on mental health issues for the BBC and also having worked with various mental health charities.

In 2013, Wax gained a master’s degree in mindfulness-based cognitive therapy from Kellogg College, Oxford.

In 2015, she was appointed visiting professor in Mental Health Nursing at the University of Surrey, and in that year’s Special Honours, she was awarded an OBE for her services to mental health.

However, her journey into mental health activism began through somewhat hilarious means, in a way that it only could for her.

“Somebody from Comic Relief put my picture on a poster without asking me, and it said ‘one in four people have mental illness’ on it,” she said. “They put it up all over London, and I kind of got busted, so I pretended it was a show I’d written, but I didn’t have a show. And then I had to actually write a show. I pretended I was opening in the West End and that was the name of it. 

“Anyway, I performed it in mental institutions for two years to get their approval. They helped me write it in a way that I could see what was funny, and then I took it to the West End and I took it on tour.

“By then Rickman was touching it. When I did it, it was my new job because you can’t fire somebody when they’re on stage. So I left TV, and I did that for 15 years.

“I took that information from when I studied at Oxford and I put it into my shows. Things weren’t just about mental health, but about how your mind works – what motivates you, evolution, relationships, all that kind of stuff – and I flipped it into comedy.”

Wax’s passion for mental welfare has become a cornerstone of her life and work, and, needless to say, her take on what those in power should do to support it further is typically direct.

“Give them more money so they can research,” she said. “Mental health is left on the shelf because people think it’s lightweight, where it isn’t lightweight. Everything happens because of your mental state.”

Though her best friend Rickman sadly died in 2016, the Absolutely Famous tour will be supported by another of Wax’s most trusted associates – lifelong friend and A-list producer, Clive Tulloh.

“Clive produced all my shows, and he’s really funny,” she said. “He’s like the wit of TV. He’s been around helping me get all these celebrities, and he knows my story and how difficult I’ve been, and how demanding I’ve been on him. He disappeared after he worked with me.

“He stole Joanna Lumley from me and did tours with her, and I’d be really p****d off, except she’s more talented, so it’s ok. And now he’s come back to me.”

Though Tulloh will be joining Wax on stage, there is no delusion as to who the star of the show will be. 

“He’s not going to answer questions,” said Wax. “I’m not going to let him. But he knows how I work and what I’ve become, and he’s also great at comedy, so he adds to it.”

As a career-long commentator on the ideas of fame and celebrity, Wax is reflective about how these, and people’s view of big stars, have changed over the years.

“On I’m A Celebrity, they wanted authenticity instead of ‘hiding behind the mask’, and I think people did that before. 

“People are sick and tired of people being fake. They want to see what people are like when they’re real rather than what they’re like when they ‘put make-up on’.”

And with Absolutely Famous, Wax is hoping to provoke even more questions about what celebrity means.

“I’ve never shown these clips like this in a show, but they’re here as a kind of basis to talk about what your ideas are about everything, especially celebrity,” she said. “What is celebrity? Is it good for your health? Why do people want it? Why do they think that’s interesting? All that kind of stuff.”

From our conversation, it is clear that Wax has lost none of the tell-tale edge that took her to the top of her game all those years ago, and when Absolutely Famous hits theatres, audiences are in for a treat.

All readers will know why they should get their tickets booked, but for anyone in doubt, Wax sums it up with unbridled perfection.

“A: They’ll laugh. B: They can ask anything they want. And C: Because they’ll laugh, they’ll digest their food better.”

For tickets to Ruby Wax: Absolutely Famous head to https://www.birmingham-theatre.co.uk/ and https://www.theatresevern.co.uk/