I met Peter Cook a couple of times, burbles Ms. Wax. He wasn t very funny. He was too drunk already. We met at a party. He looked at me for a few seconds and then sent me out to get some Indian food. I don t think it was love. He just handed me a fistful of money, directed me to the Indian place and told me what his order was.
You cannot but admire the man. Even in the dregs of his cups, Cookie was still sharp enough to recognise real comedic talent when he saw it, and when he didn t. Pickled to the toejam in his socks he may have been but, hey, what a critic.
There are many of us who know precisely how Peter Cook felt. In the considered opinion of this TV viewer for one, Ruby Wax is a pounding pain in the arse. It s not only the fact that she s a honking, tasteless American with a fevered ego and a clown s klaxon where her self-restraint should be. Actually, it is. But what really nauseates is the unfettered glee with which Ms. Wax flaunts her crass ineptitude. Her talent is worthless but you should see her pimp that sucker for all it s worth.
The soul of the modern British chatshow lies suffocated and submerged beneath a sputtering mud-slide of second-rate trash. It s the litter of the runts and Ruby Wax is the runt of the litter.
Her list of credits reads like a war crimes indictment: Don t Miss Wax, East Meets Wax, Wax On Wheels, The Full Wax, Ruby Takes A Trip, Wax Cracks Hollywood, Wax Cracks Cannes. The levels of clumsy crudity with which she wedges her name into the programme titles may vary, but the incoherent awfulness of the content never does.
In Dublin to preside at the launch of Miller Genuine Draft beer, Ruby is holding court in the Fitzwilliam Suite of the Burlington Hotel, doling out her dazzling personality in 20-minute slices to a succession of waiting hacks. In person, Ms. Wax is, fortunately, several dozen notches lower on the berserk dial than she appears onscreen.
To my surprise, she almost immediately disarms my hostility by agreeing with much of my assessment of her TV persona. Why do you think you re so widely despised? I venture, always a firm believer in the rapport-nurturing powers of a gentle ice-breaker.
I don t know if people hate me so much anymore, Wax replies pensively. But they did hate me. It was originally a natural reaction to the flashy American but it was also quite justified. I was originally much louder and obnoxious because I was so nervous. That s no excuse, but that s what it was.
Some of us could have forgiven loud and obnoxious if the shows were funny, or at least not quite so painful to watch.
Listen, I agree, Ruby Wax asserts with a smirk the size of an over-ripe banana. I spent too long floundering on television, producing a lot of crap. I wish I hadn t done that. I learned a lot but why did it take so long? I think all those shows were particularly bad and I hope they re not re-run. Don t Miss Wax was terrible and the beginning of Full Wax, when I talked to an audience, was excruciating. I thought I had to shout to the back row but they told me, no, I had a mike. It s taken me ten years to learn how to make television that doesn t make me want to throw up.
So much common ground so quickly found was not what I had expected. Ruby Wax seems extraordinarily eager to disavow most of her career to date and to persuade me that she is nothing like her TV character in real life. On camera, her own comic delivery may be more bedpan than deadpan, but she becomes positively granite-faced when she talks about where she sees herself in the hierarchy of contemporary television humour. It s almost poignant to observe.
My biggest fear is somebody seeing through me, she admits. It always has been. I am nothing, nothing, nothing like the jerk you see on TV. I tried so hard, too hard, because I was afraid of being caught out.
The standard of comedy in Britain used to be brilliant and I was lucky to be able to tag along on its coat-tails, which was my rightful place. That standard now wavers a helluva lot. When it s high, it s high. When it s medium, it s so trashy that you re ashamed. The Day Today, for example, was one of the most brilliant shows I ve ever seen. But there s so much crap also.
Whereas America is now the front-runner in comedy. Jerry Seinfeld and Garry Shandling, these are gods to be worshipped. I couldn t compete with those people. I m just not good enough to do sit-coms like that. I m not even good enough for their coat-tails. So I m happy with what I ve got. Why upset myself?
The common ground Ruby and I had so carefully cultivated now begins to crumble beneath our feet. Ruby believes that with her recent BBC series of interviews , ingeniously entitled Ruby Wax Meets, she has finally conquered the television medium. True, it may well be the best (i.e. least bad) thing she has ever done but it s still meatball stuff. Let s face it, making luminaries such as Imelda Marcos and Sarah Ferguson look silly is not exactly skilled labour.
It s an homage to the death of the chatshow, she chortles. The chatshow is over. That is why this show was created. Everybody has asked the standard questions, now we re gonna play ball. That s why it works. Chatshow interviewers started treating celebrities like their image. That s death anyway. I m asked to treat celebrities that way too, but, gradually, they start to play ball and they tell their PR people to fuck off. Then, we re cooking!
Who did she find dumber, Imelda Marcos or Fergie?
It s not a question of dumb, Ruby retorts. Who s more interesting? Imelda Marcos. Which interview did I enjoy the most? Imelda Marcos. It was brilliant and, sadly, the culmination of my career. I m just treading water now.
For an alleged iconoclast, Ms. Wax is remarkably protective of her erstwhile guests especially, it seems, the lassie Ferguson. Everybody has an opinion of what I was doing, Ruby proclaims. Only I know what I thought I was doing but that actually doesn t matter. I thought I was making her look really sympathetic. That was the deal, but with a little bit of cheekiness thrown in. I wasn t trying to annihilate her. I was trying to be like a journalist, to get to the bottom of the story.
Fergie called me a few times to thank me after it went out. Then, I never heard from her again. My vibe is that, in the intervening time, somebody had said to her that what I had set out to do was annihilate her. That s her tragedy. She listened to somebody else. She d been right in the first place. I did do what I said I was gonna do, which was to make her look good.
No sale, Ruby. You re telling me, I guffaw, that you travelled out to Fergie s house that day with the sole intention of making her look good?
Yes, Ruby insists. I hoped there would be comedy too but I thought she would come well out of it, and I think she did. She agreed to do the show because she d seen other shows. If the guests are the type of person that s going to get along with what I m doing, they re going to come well out of it.
First of all, I m showing them a good time. I ve done Pamela Anderson twice. She now thinks I m her mother. Enough already. She s always unloading on me. I go, I don t want to hear anymore, okay, Pamela? The interview s over . But I kinda like her. She s really refreshing.
If you actually analyse it, what I m doing is the reverse of what a lot of people think of doing. It clearly is that Sharon Stone and I are getting along. It clearly is that Goldie Hawn and I are getting along. As a result of the show I did with Sharon Stone, a lot of women now like Sharon Stone. They re not dumb.
So, what s the difference then between Ruby Wax Meets and the old-fashioned chatshows she claims to deplore if the purpose of both is merely to make the celebrities look good?
Mine is funny, Ruby boom-booms.
Ah yes, funny. Humour is, after all, Ms. Wax s stated stock in trade. Let s see how many sides she splits if I play her straight man for a while.
What wedding gift would Ruby give to Liam Gallagher and Patsy Kensit if she were invited to their nuptials?
Are they getting married? she ripostes, quick as a flash. You know, that kind of stuff just goes over my grey matter like air-conditioning.
What s her biggest pet hate? Girly girls. They really bug me. I hate them.
Who do you most despise in the world of showbiz? I don t know if I love Noel Edmonds.
Who s her favourite Spice Girl? I don t really listen to a lot of music. I like a bit of everything. I love The Chieftains, I actually do love them. There was a bit of De Dannan I heard which was brilliant. I actually like Irish music more than any other kind. Always, I loved Irish music. Mary Black and who s the other one? The girl who sings A Woman s Heart , who s even better than Mary Black.
Eleanor McEvoy.
She s a genius. That s an amazing voice but she just needs a good song, am I right? Her songs are dull, dull, dull.
What does Ruby Wax take with her when she travels on an interview shoot? Clothes are very important. I have lucky underpants I used to wear. Clive (Ruby s long-suffering director) made me throw them away. He said they were fecund is that a word? Now, they re just red. I m wearing red ones today, and whenever I need to be lucky. Sad, isn t it? Sorta tragic.
Is Tony Blair sexy? No, but Bill Clinton is. Blair looks too doe-eyed. Clinton looks like he could be really dirty.
Would she do a Ruby Wax Meets show with OJ Simpson? I d be fascinated. I have my own curiosity and if that s engaged then the show is going to be good. Oh yeah, we considered it. I just think it wasn t appropriate at the time because of the fiasco that happened with Richard and Judy. But I d love to do it.
Is there a possibility that Ruby and her mates, Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley, will themselves become the very people they try to satirise in Absolutely Fabulous?
I guess for people who work in Woolworth s, we re rich but it ain t rich. It s not like we have somebody else driving our cars. It s not in those proportions. Maybe we are so obnoxious and we don t know it anymore. There is a distinct possibility that s happened. But most of my friends are housewives and normal people and I can tell they still like me.
Which makes her funnier, drink or drugs? I m pretty funny on both.
I was asking the question from the audience s point of view. Is it better to be drunk or to be stoned when watching a Ruby Wax show?
The answer is still both.
Does she find intoxication creatively inspiring? No, because I can t remember anything so drink and drugs don t help at all. I m really funny when I m drunk or stoned, and then nothing. That s why I can t remember my childhood. I don t do a lot of drugs, just the marijuana stuff but I m seriously funny on it. The next morning there s lots of newspapers covered with felt-tip circles. You can t read any of it.
What question would she most like to ask Mary Robinson? You can never say. It s when you get with somebody that it happens. It s all down to when you meet them. I do as much research as I can and then throw it all out the window when I meet them. Because they aren t what they seem. It s like sometimes you memorise stand-up comedy but the room isn t applicable and you drill on and it s always a failure. I ve never gone in with the standard questions.
Halfway during all this breakneck, hilarious repartee, it occurs to me that Ruby Wax s chief problem is that she fears frivolity. She wants to be taken seriously. In her own mind, she s a cerebral high-brow, a regular Naomi Chomsky. Television, comedy and popular culture are merely the clasps which she hopes will set off the jewel of her lofty intellect. Little did I know how right I was.
I am a serious person, Ruby declares. Away from television, what I do is talk to people earnestly and passionately. I visit people all the time and I try to get as serious as I can as fast as I can. I want my TV stuff to become more serious now.
It turns out that, come May, Ruby Wax begins a three-day-a-week discussion series on BBC2. While my mind boggles, she describes the programme as more conversational, more journalistic, more like After Dark.
It ll be serious when it s serious, she continues. I m not going to try and make it funny. I hope it s not too shallow, which I ll make sure it s not.
Her ambitions for the next batch of Ruby Wax Meets productions are equally grand. There was a reason why we did so many TV people last time, she affirms. How famous in TV terms they were was the only criteria. I don t want that next time. I want to talk to people like Winnie Mandela. I d love to do Yasser Arafat. If you do Winnie Mandela, it s not going to be a joke. If there s something witty in it, that s okay. But I m not going to come in like a grinning idiot.
I m gonna have more of those people, serious people; that s the direction I want to go. I want to prove that I can do serious too. I don t think I can seriously sit in front of someone who s on a sit-com and pretend to be interested in what they re saying anymore.
Flogging beer in Dublin for a fat appearance fee is hardly the act of a serious person, is it, Ruby?
This is the first time I ve done this, she avers. How many times have I mentioned the word Miller to you? Doesn t that show that I m a real pro?
Does Ruby Wax see herself doing more of this kind of marketing work in the future?
I d do it every fucking day of the week, she chirrups. Are you nuts? n