Ruby Wax in Conversation

Few careers have taken as many unexpected turns as Ruby Wax’s. From the Royal Shakespeare Company and the anarchic heights of 1990s television to encounters with presidents, dictators and Hollywood royalty, she became one of the most distinctive and fearless interviewers of her generation. Behind the quick-fire wit and larger-than-life persona, however, lay a recurring struggle with depression that would eventually lead her away from celebrity television and towards the serious study of the human mind. In this wide-ranging and characteristically candid conversation, Ruby looks back over an extraordinary life: growing up with difficult parents, finding comedy as a means of escape, surviving the strange machinery of fame and discovering what happens when the performance can no longer keep the darkness at bay. ​Her most recent book, I’m Not as Well as I Thought I Was, begins as a search for meaning through a series of supposedly transformative journeys and ends with Ruby checking into a psychiatric clinic. Brutally honest, unexpectedly moving and extremely funny, it examines the exhausting effort of pretending to be well and the difficult business of putting yourself back together. Ruby joins us to talk about fame, family, depression, mindfulness and what she has learned about staying human when both your own mind and the wider world appear to have gone off the rails.

About Ruby Wax

Author of I’m Not as Well as I Thought I Was

Ruby Wax is a comedian, writer, performer and mental health campaigner. Born in the United States, she trained as an actor in Britain and spent five years with the Royal Shakespeare Company before moving into television. Her programmes included The Full Wax, Ruby Wax Meets…, Ruby’s American Pie and The Ruby Wax Show, and her confrontational, comic interviewing style brought her face to face with figures ranging from Madonna and Imelda Marcos to Donald Trump. She was also script editor on every series of Absolutely Fabulous. After leaving television, Ruby earned a master’s degree in mindfulness-based cognitive therapy from the University of Oxford. She has written several bestselling books about mental health and the workings of the mind, including Sane New World, A Mindfulness Guide for the Frazzled, How to Be Human and A Mindfulness Guide for Survival. She founded the mental health charity Frazzled and was awarded an OBE for services to mental health.