Ruby Wax

Ruby Wax on interviewing Trump, Sarah Ferguson & Co, performing 'Live from The Priory' and spending a month in a monastery. 

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Transcript

Jeremy Lee 0:15

I represented dozens of names, but we also work with hundreds more through their own agents. And one such towering talent is the comedian, best-selling author and mental health campaigner, Ruby Wax Drumroll. How are you, Ruby? I don't like to say fine, but I'm fine. My stock answer is well enough, but unfortunately that makes people ask more questions.

SPEAKER_02 0:40

Like, you know, hail fellow, well met. You know, fine. Yes. We've saluted each other. Now we can get on with reality.

Jeremy Lee 0:46

Do you know? In thinking about today, I remembered a conversation which you probably won't remember. A very long time ago, I can put an actual date on it. It was in 1997. I took a phone call from somebody organizing John Major's campaign tour in a hapless attempt to get re-elected as Prime Minister. Right. And they wanted somebody effectively as a warm-up. And they were under pressure to go with Jim Davidson, if you remember Jim David.

SPEAKER_02 1:23

I remembered that, yeah.

Jeremy Lee 1:24

And the producer said we think we cannot have Jim Davidson. It will just be a nightmare. So can you come up with somebody else? So I drew up a long list. I mean, it was quite a long list, it was 30 or so names. And one by one I phoned everyone. And everyone's answer was you gotta be kidding. No, no way. Except for you.

SPEAKER_02 1:49

Because I took the money and ran.

Jeremy Lee 1:51

That was your first question. I remember it now as though it was yesterday. Yeah, you said, What's the money? I don't know whether I gave you an answer. I don't know if I had an answer.

SPEAKER_01 1:58

Did I do it?

Jeremy Lee 2:00

No, you didn't.

SPEAKER_01 2:00

Oh, right. There you go.

Jeremy Lee 2:01

Do you know who did?

SPEAKER_01 2:02

Who?

Jeremy Lee 2:03

Jim Davidson.

SPEAKER_01 2:05

You get what you asked for.

Jeremy Lee 2:07

Well, quite. Let's not go. Anyway, I just I just wanted to share that because I can't get rid of that memory.

SPEAKER_02 2:13

Just let me be clear. I don't think I would have done Sean Majors. It wasn't the money. I just want to be clear.

Jeremy Lee 2:18

I think perhaps your answer might have been flippant. Yeah. I mean, it was a hiding to nothing, for goodness sake. But the conversation took place, I promise you. So I usually start with some kind of a recap. Not that my listeners will need much of a reminder, but your extraordinary career. I mean, truly extraordinary. You landed over here. I'm going to miss lots of bits out, by the way. We can skip birth. I can't remember in your memoir whether you went into that. But I remember, I don't even know. Do I call it a wiener factory or a is that the right pronunciation?

SPEAKER_02 2:51

You could say it wiener, yes. We're very proud of it. Sausage is another translation.

Jeremy Lee 2:56

Exactly. No, I really wanted to push myself. Anyway, we're not going to go into that. You landed on these shores. You found yourself eventually in the Royal Shakespeare Company.

SPEAKER_02 3:06

I clawed my way into the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Jeremy Lee 3:08

Which would be another story, but we haven't got time for it today. I saw you in Measure for Measure, the dates. Oh, playing Horestroke None. It was an extraordinary production which I didn't fully understand. And that's before I knew that it was regarded as a problem play. I remember enjoying it as an A-level student, and I remember your performance, but I don't remember any detail. Anyway, so you did that. Then was it your last outing as a nun?

SPEAKER_02 3:36

Yeah, it was my last outing as a nun that I never was asked again. And I thought I was Julia Stevens and I were fabulous. We had Pac Marks, and eventually we were laden with Pac Marks. We upstaged everybody else in the show. We had to improvise being hookers. And the assistant director made us go with through the town of Stratford being 17th century hookers. I got many clients. Many clients.

Jeremy Lee 4:02

I must have turned up late, unfortunately. You did. You ended up after a little while in a sitcom called Girls on Top. Then, and you did so many other things and appearances and as an actor. But you landed a chat show, and it became the first of a number of chat shows. Don't miss wax, the full wax, wax on wheels, and you start with French and Saunders, Comic Strip Presents, and you were also, I hadn't remembered this, I had to look it up. You were script editor on Av Fab. So it's the whole kind of front and behind camera stuff. And you have performed your One Woman show all over the place. Not just this country, but Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. You've been around, basically. And then I really you can you can tell I'm skipping now.

SPEAKER_02 4:52

I don't mind. I love listening about me.

Jeremy Lee 4:55

You did so do I actually. Then you decided, after seeing uh a comic relief campaign, to share your own experience of depression. And you went on to give a massive TED talk. A lot of my listeners will be fans of TED Talks, and you spoke about mental illness. And you went on to do a master's in mindfulness-based cognitive therapy and became a visiting professor in mental health mental health, mental health nursing. So that's a bit of a jump. Did you just decide to reinvent yourself or did it happen almost without thinking about it? Did you press pause on everything and say, I want to talk about me? What happened?

SPEAKER_02 5:41

Well, this the story is that Comic Relief asked me to pose for a poster, and I thought it was going to be a small poster. It was raising money for mental health. And instead, they put huge posters in the tube station, giant ones that said, with my face saying one in four people have mental illness, one in five people have dandruff. I have both. And I was mortified. They didn't ask for my permission. So I had to write a show because I pretended that was my publicity poster for a show. I didn't have one. So I wrote a show about mental health, but I didn't want it to be in the public because good luck holding on to a job. So I presented it in mental institutions for two years for free, including the priory. I did life from the priory where half were my friends and half were inmates. So nobody knew what was going on. Some people just screamed all the way through it. The bipolars laughed and cried. I mean, it was just mayhem. But I enjoyed it so much I did go to clinics for two years because the audiences were fantastic. I got material. And so that's how it happened. Then I became associated with mental health. And then you studied it seriously. And then I was thrown out lovingly from the BBC. Alan Yentob took over my job. You know, they said I didn't get enough ratings. Well, we had 14 million. But I mean, I'm not bitter because I wouldn't have gotten an OBE if I didn't get kicked out. So then I thought I have to reinvent again. So I became a psychotherapist. I was terrible as a psychotherapist. Because I kept saying, oh, just cut to the punchline, you know, just get to the end. I couldn't stand the, you know, that we didn't know what his mind was about, and that was my interest. I can crack people really. That's my only gift, I think, is that I can crack them and figure them out. That's why I did all the celebrity interviews because I wasn't interested in their career. I was interested in who they really were and what were they hiding. I got into Oxford eventually to study mindfulness.

Jeremy Lee 7:37

Okay, well, let's just take a break very quickly because I think for one of my own company away days, or whatever we used to call them, we kind of inverted commas did mindfulness. But I never really got what it was. Can you come up with the definition?

SPEAKER_02 7:55

I studied the neuroscience of it, so I like to when I explain. It's not in a pat little sentence, you sit there and breathe. I explain what is happening in your brain when you're doing specific exercises. And that's building a bulk in certain areas of the brain that are exactly what you're after, which is how to lower your own cortisol when you're in a situation where the shit hits the fan. But you know, people say I relax by jogging or I do golf. But if you're in the midst of chaos or your kids are screaming, or your boss is about to fire you, you can't say I'm getting out of the golf clubs. So mindfulness is something, it's a it's something to use in the situation. You don't get locked in anger. You can lower your cortisol and you can focus your attention. So the exercise, which I demonstrate, is exactly like explaining somebody doing a sit-up. You know, you lie down, you get up, you lie down, you get up. Eventually you'll get a six-pack. So with the mindfulness exercise, you're building up muscle in the brain so that you can do exactly what I just said you could do. And I can bring down my anger, which was my emotion of choice. I always love to express anger because it gives you such an adrenaline hit is delicious. I mean, nobody ever gets addicted to things that are good for you. Nobody gets addicted to kale. I love that rage. And now I know what it does to your health, so I pull it down.

Jeremy Lee 9:13

I am glossing over the fact that you've become an absolute authority on matters of mental health. You've written, I've got a list here, is it six books about mental health? How do you want me to say new world? Mindfulness guide for the frazzled, how to be human, and now for the good news, and a mindfulness guide for survival. That's probably not in chronological order. The mindfulness guide, which I had a very quick look at, you talk about the six big realities. Okay, just to list them so that the listeners get it quickly. Difficult emotions, uncertainty, loneliness, change, dissatisfaction, and the big one death. I mean, I guess that encompasses just about everything. Your point is we all go through all of those things. So we need to equip ourselves and know what's happening and have a clue, just some kind of idea how to deal with each one. Is that in a nutshell?

SPEAKER_02 10:13

Yeah. Well, I wrote it during COVID. And these are the things that, you know, existentially we've never figured out. So much we haven't figured out. If you can deal with those, then you're, you know, you're liberated from your own mind. Uncertainty is the only thing that's certain and how to deal with change. People don't know that every second, every millisecond, everything is changing. So the part of the mindfulness is to understand how to you notice what state you're in, but then you release it. Where you pay attention is who you are in that moment. If you decide, I'm not good enough, I'm not good enough, you're not good enough. But if you let that thought go, because it's just a recording, eventually you learn to live with these little negative influencers that you had from childhood. But I don't want to be captured by it. It's like having a scar from your youth. Eventually it gets fainter and fainter, but you're in charge rather than enhancing the pain.

Jeremy Lee 11:08

Just on that subject of change, it's kind of all around us now. And it was always I mean, I get that. It's in a high speed. And it's everywhere, I guess, is the point I'm trying to make. It's out there in the world in terms of shifting sands, relationships between countries, and is my job still going to exist in however many years' time? And am I going to be able to get a mortgage or afford one? All those questions, partly depending on age, I guess, and uh your own kind of circumstances. There's a whole lot of change going on out there, as well as whatever you're dealing with internally, as it were. Because I know you do that, you do that for my old company still, and they love you. When you're talking to conferences and people about leadership and change and things like that. I mean, this is the interesting thing to me. These are not rooms full of people who've paid to come and see you as they are when you're on tour. These are people who go where they're told to go, sit in the seat, and then Ruby Wax, lo and behold, is out in front of them talking about mental health and leadership and change. What's your shtick to those people?

SPEAKER_02 12:20

My shtick is that you paid for me, you know, for an hour or whatever, and it's not going to change you at all. You've just check marked that you've discussed something about mental illness or health, whatever you want to call it. But I do give them tools to recognize that we know nothing about how the mothership works, first of all, but there is a way of getting a little bit of knowledge about it. So I do talk a little bit, and they like this about neuroscience. But I dumb it down and I make it funny because once you get their mouths open, you can shove anything down there. Um, so it, you know, I at least I presented in a way that's not a lecture and they're intimidated. Oh, here's something else I don't know about. So I do give them tools because I think people discuss this is what's wrong, this is the world of changers, whatever. But I want to have what do I walk away with? And so I do give them some tools to walk away with. How to deal with you know the chaos around us. Hold on while the winds are blowing. So you don't blow away. We need to have an anchor.

Jeremy Lee 13:20

Do you ever hear back from them afterwards? Do you ever hear that they've actually done some of the things that you were talking about?

SPEAKER_02 13:27

I do retreats. So a lot of them show up at my retreats now. And I do them at home and I do them in in retreat centers. I do hear that they picked up on it. I meet people at my shows who say, after you spoke at our company or whatever, I still do what you were talking about. And it's changed me. You want to change people. You don't want to just talk at them. If their minds aren't listening, they're not there. So I get them into the room mentally. And I think that's what I can do.

Jeremy Lee 13:52

That must be one of the most gratifying things out there, isn't it? Isn't it a a bit like getting a big laugh in front of a live audience?

SPEAKER_02 14:00

So that's my challenge with all my shows is make them laugh. Because otherwise you don't deserve to give information. You have to deserve giving us a serious message. So give them some foreplay.

Jeremy Lee 14:13

Something else I'm going to write down. If I turn up at one of your retreats, which you do it at home, I gather.

SPEAKER_02 14:19

I do it at home too. Yeah. We 20 people come. They come downstairs, it's catered, it's a day where I teach them what to do. And they really have great results. I'm not being am I proselytizing my own work.

Jeremy Lee 14:31

I kind of imagine everybody sitting there in sort of bathrobes with nice smells going on in the background.

SPEAKER_02 14:37

Well, I don't do teaching. I don't sit on a gluten-free cushion. The way I teach it is very practical, so that you can smoke, you can swim, you can do sword fighting, you can put your kids to bed, but you can do it in a different way. But you have to do an exercise, maybe a minute a day. Everybody has this entitlement that if they just push the right button or take the right drug, everything will be okay. You have to do something. You have to conquer the brain, otherwise, the brain will conquer you.

Jeremy Lee 15:03

Your recent book, I'm not as well as I thought I was. I mean, the title is self-explanatory, but what made you write that?

SPEAKER_02 15:11

Well, it was tongue-in-cheek. It was during COVID. And I thought when this is over, I'm going to do something with more depth. I'm going to find meaning. So I challenged myself to go on a 30-day silent retreat. I just picked the extremes. I went to work at refugee camps and tried to get people out of Afghanistan. I swam with whales off backs that were migrating back up to Iceland. I mean, there were big ones. I lived in a Christian monastery and to see the results, to see if they would deepen me or, you know, lead me anywhere inspiring. They did. They really put their money where their mouth is. The descriptions of them in my book are funny. You know, a 30-day silent retreat is going to be with that gong going off all the time, telling you now to walk, to eat, to whatever, that made my cervix vibrate. And when they take away your phone, the desperation you are to kind of have something to do, when they take away everything, what you're left with is I wanted to go shopping so badly, I started buying stones in my own mind and making deals with myself, how much they would be, and then returning them the next day. They weren't the right stone. You know, you want to do what you do to distract yourself from your thoughts. But eventually, after a week, the thoughts get so exhausting that they start to quiet down. And then, I'm sure this is why kids do psilocybin, suddenly colors look much more poignant. Food, I had a love affair with the digestive. Food starts to be delicious because you don't have to sit next to somebody and ask them what they do for a living. I ran into the kitchen and I broke my silence. I said, How did you make this egg? My tears were coming out. They said, With an egg, everything becomes more poignant. Once those thoughts shut up, which is impossible, you know, that really takes discipline. I mean, they're quieter. They're not completely gone because we're creatures that think. It became really interesting. And then I ended up, ironically, and what makes the book kind of funny is I ended up in a mental board at the very end of all this. But there's a reason. I wanted to do psilocybin, so I came off my medication and I ended up in a clinic. I know it's a cliche, everybody wants to try this, but that was part of my journey. The lesson is don't come off your medication.

SPEAKER_01 17:24

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 17:24

So I did all these extraordinary things which were life-changing.

unknown 17:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:29

Every one of them was life-changing. And I could see, you know, how with neuroplasticity the inner landscape was changing. But then I have depression. I need those drugs. And I was depleted. So I went back to square one. It was a waste. But that's what happened.

Jeremy Lee 17:48

My goodness. And then, sublime to ridiculous, some would say, you accepted an invitation to go on to the last series of I'm a Celeb, get me out of here. What made you accept that invitation? I'm I don't know. Am I surprised? Maybe not, but I'm intrigued.

SPEAKER_02 18:06

To me, reality shows are the lowest form of life on the on earth. So I I've been turning it down, but suddenly they said, here's who would be with you. You'd find everybody interesting. I believe them. They said, This isn't about conflict. You'll like every single one of them, and I thrive in a communal atmosphere. That's where I'm at my best. Even people that everybody else would find loathsome, I can find interesting. So I thought this is an opportunity to lose weight because that you really don't eat. I've lost a stone. It was just a human experiment. My children were appalled because they said that's an appalling show. For some reason, I like having new adventures. Otherwise, you don't shift. You just become same old, same old. And it turned out to be one of the most rewarding things I've ever done in my life. I mean, I made friends with 23-year-olds. Where do you meet them? I did say what makes you like me so much. And they said, because you remind me of my man. I thought it was because I was so cool or attractive, but I loved every single one of those people. And you didn't know where the cameras were, so you weren't performing. You were totally yourself. You know, throw me into a situation like that. I do that in my real life anyway, the fact that it was filmed. I bought a place in Findhorn, which is a communal eco village. I mean, to me, that's experimental. I love just changing the locale, like you change your screensaver. I literally change it.

Jeremy Lee 19:28

You won't remember this either. You and Ed once walked into a cottage I owned. Oh my god. I mean, I think I know what you're gonna say. Go on. Quite literally. You weren't the only person to do so, I have to say. The front door was open for whatever reason, and this American couple came in, and I was there with somebody else, and I was just open-mouthed, thinking, What are you doing in my house? I didn't say anything, I just watched them. And they wandered around. And then after a while they said, We're just gonna go upstairs. And I I went, uh okay. And then a few minutes later they left. The difference with you and Ed being that we had a chat outside, and you said, Do you mind if we have a look around?

SPEAKER_02 20:10

Where was your house?

Jeremy Lee 20:12

In a Disney fied Cotswold village called Lois Slaughter.

SPEAKER_02 20:16

Oh my god, that's magnificent.

Jeremy Lee 20:19

And I think you were partly there because the house round the corner was for sale. And it was funny and it was lovely. But it's weird. It's weird to have people coming at your house as though you're an extra.

SPEAKER_02 20:34

Your house wasn't for sale, I just walked in. I mean, that's something I do.

Jeremy Lee 20:38

You asked, and that was cool. One day I was outside the little garden at the front, I remember picking up my mug of coffee on the windowsill and lighting a flag as I do, and then got a sense that something strange was happening. And I turned around towards the little kind of village green, and there were uh half a dozen Japanese people looking at me and pointing. I felt I was in some kind of theme park. I felt, you know, I ought to have straw coming out of my mouth or something, I ought to play my part. God, it was weird. But you didn't buy the house on the corner, and you had, I think, the insight to realize that had you done so, you would have had people staring at you the whole time.

SPEAKER_02 21:26

Oh, really? Was that the reason I didn't like your house?

Jeremy Lee 21:29

I've no idea. No, my house wasn't for sale. Let's let's let's let's That's the funniest.

SPEAKER_02 21:33

That's the funniest. But I used to walk into people's homes and say, Would you sell me this? That wasn't unusual. Uh I would see a house and say, I'd like to buy this.

Jeremy Lee 21:42

So you didn't want to.

SPEAKER_02 21:44

You know what? I was really just looking at the house. You know, I wanted to get in homes and just see how everybody lived.

Jeremy Lee 21:49

Well, I didn't really live there, so I guess it that probably showed as well. It looked probably like a rental cottage. Anyway, I want to come bang up to date. Well, sort of come up to date. I want to talk about the tour that you're doing right now, from now to July, from South End to Newcastle, taking two places at random. And you're playing 200 yards from my house in Barry St. Edmonds. So I will be there on the 5th of May, as will a number of my listeners.

SPEAKER_02 22:19

Otherwise, I'll go to your home and drag you out.

Jeremy Lee 22:21

Well, you probably will know anyway, wouldn't you? You walk around and you'll go, hmm. That was for me. The tour is called Absolutely Famous. And at its heart, as I understand it, correct me where I go wrong, is you and Clive, the wonderful Clive, who you've worked with for a long, long, 25 years, yeah. I talked to Clive a few years ago about um touring somebody that I uh represented at the time. And I had this I actually think it's quite a good idea. And I think Clive might have done it, but you know, circumstances or whatever. So I have a very, very greatest of respect for Clive. So Clive is your producer, and you two go back certainly to the wax meat space. Yeah. And that's the core, as I understand it, the core of the show. So you're telling stories and you're showing clips, among other things, of some of the people you did those legendary interviews with.

SPEAKER_02 23:20

Yeah, we show but we're talking about the nature of fame, the nature of what it takes to be a murderer. You know, I went from everyone from you know Madonna to O.J. Simpson to Amelda Marcos to Donald Trump. Guess which category I put him in. But we do kind of discuss what really happened rather than what you're seeing. But what you're seeing is pretty extraordinary.

Jeremy Lee 23:44

As I imagine lots of your audience will do. That must be what it felt like. When he refers to you as the world's most obnoxious reporter. Yeah. I mean, my mouth was open in disbelief. I don't remember seeing it at the time. You go with him into his casino and the Taj Mahal and watch him signing books for people who lost money there.

SPEAKER_02 24:24

Yeah, the Millionaires Club, where they have to spend a million in his casino, and these are poor trailer park people, so God knows how they got a million, but probably borrowed it, and then that he makes them buy his books, and they're adoring him and having him sign it. It's a loathsome scene, but it's so revealing. Steal from the poor and take to the rich.

Jeremy Lee 24:45

Which, you know, is a game we might be seeing, well, not a game, a story we might be seeing playing out all over again. But watching you and Melania. Oh, yeah. That was different. That looked like you were having fun. I mean, you were smiling, she was smiling. And she was, insofar as uh an international model ever is, she was in Petacoma's normal. What did you discover? Anything about her?

SPEAKER_02 25:10

Or She reminded me of Pamela Anderson. You know, she had no front. You know, she was she had a big front. She didn't have an image that she was holding on to. And she could play ball, and that always shows me how smart they are. They could do the irony with me, and so it's like playing a tennis game. I'd throw something to her, she'd throw it back. And you watch a rapport happening. Whereas with somebody who doesn't get the joke, like Madonna, it falls flat on its face. But bad television is still good television. I liked her. She was in love with him. She found him incredibly sexy, Donald Trump. And she told me how what she likes to do in bed. I mean, it's fine. And I tell her the same thing. I mean, I'm always honest with my guess. I told her I wouldn't sleep with Donald Trump and I found him lothsome.

Jeremy Lee 25:57

My guess is that he wouldn't have slept with you either. And he didn't. He found me disgusting. Which is a badge of pride, isn't it? Isn't that something you're quite proud about?

SPEAKER_02 26:06

No, it's it was a terrible interview. I mean, he made me so nervous that if somebody treats you like an idiot, you become an idiot. So I was asking moronic questions. I didn't hold my own. It happened with Bill Cosby, too. There's something so evil in front of you. I'm not talking politically, I'm just talking as a human being. There was such hatred and such of kind of visceral disgust that I wasn't even human, and he threw me off his plane at 33,000 feet. When I met Bill Cosby, he tried to choke me to death. So you kind of know, give me a few years and I'll reveal these people.

Jeremy Lee 26:39

Wow. You know, the interview that I couldn't find online was the one with Sarah Ferguson.

SPEAKER_02 26:47

And I think the BBC made us take it off, but you see it in the show. And that's incredibly revealing.

Jeremy Lee 26:53

That's what characterized your. I think somewhere I saw them described as comedy documentaries, your long-form interviews where you're having fun, you're following people around, you're programming them, you're asking questions that nobody else will ask. And because you do it in that way, they answer you. It's extraordinary. It's mind-blowing. And even that little clip that is still out there of you with Sarah Ferguson noticing the post-it notes she has on a chest of drawers, and which drawer has got the white t-shirts, and which drawer has got the pink t-shirts. And it's because apparently she was in such a rush in the mornings that she didn't want to waste time trying to remember. Opening the drawers.

SPEAKER_02 27:39

Yeah. Also telling me that she was injected with something, and that made her crazy. She was on a diet, so she had some injections done when she was 16, and she said that was responsible for her peculiar behavior. And so I said, an injection made you crazy? I mean, clearly she was delusional. And of all my guests, everybody had a talent except her. She just wanted fame so badly and would do anything for it. And we see the results now. Anything for it. She wanted attention and she wanted power. And she got neither. I was with people for a week, and I'd always have dinner with them. So you would see who they really were. I didn't get that interview after a half an hour. It was sometimes 17 hours. Sometimes it was a week. O.J. Simpson was three days. So it looks like I'm getting right into them, but I am, you know, I'm warming them up. She says how how she regrets what she's done in her life back then. And you can see she's kind of addicted to gazumping herself. So you do learn this is a person who will do anything for some attention. Anything. And plays the humble card.

Jeremy Lee 28:48

I don't know if this is a ridiculous question or not, but did you feel sorry for her? And do you feel sorry for her now?

SPEAKER_02 28:54

I did feel sorry for her. I've Clive and I both felt kind of bad that she didn't want to cut anything out. But we kept saying, take out what you don't want. Now I don't feel sorry for her. No. I think it's disgusting that she gets a pedophile in jail and asks them for a loan and knows exactly what's going on. That's a different ballpark.

Jeremy Lee 29:13

I can talk to you about those interviews forever. I love the Victoria Beckham one, by the way, of the Spice Girls.

SPEAKER_01 29:19

Oh, right. Thank you.

Jeremy Lee 29:20

The chat with this really kind of ordinary, down to earth. I think she still was. She comes across as down to earth then. Yeah, she was. Down to earth. You kind of watch it. And do you know what I thought? And what I think your audiences, a lot of them, will be thinking when they watch these clips and listen to you and Clive. They'll be thinking, oh, Ruby, go back, do it again, do it now. Give us a wax meets with Victoria Beckham these days, and we can see where she came from and what she's become. Any chance at all of that happening?

SPEAKER_02 29:56

No chance. I would do it in a second. You'd never be allowed to get the access that I had. Because, you know, the internet, you can learn what they want you to learn. They don't need your time. They can put out what they want. And this is why people get locked into images because they write up their own fantasy. We'll never get to know them as human beings ever again.

Jeremy Lee 30:16

Do you know the extraordinary thing, Ruby, after this chat? And in your books, and in so much of what we do, we, the audience, get to know quite a lot about you, or we think we do. There's a bit of a paradox going on, which is wonderful. Because as you just say, people put out what they like, and maybe we all do that. But the point I'm making is you show us a great deal more than they do. And that's revealing and that's wonderful. But you're still, in many ways, you're still the same old Ruby. You haven't changed all that much, I don't think.

SPEAKER_02 30:51

I was playing a character then because of nerves and because I thought that would keep me going in a series. I don't think I was like that in real life. Whereas now I don't really put on that person, you know, who's kind of you know Zanian American. So I don't think I was her then. It was a good front for 25 years. It kept me going. If I played it differently, I would be, unless I, you know, it had to do with age, I would be more deadpan like Louis Thoreau, but it wasn't in me. Yeah, well Deadpan means you can go on for much longer because people are guessing what you are. Whereas it was obvious what I was.

Jeremy Lee 31:28

I want to see you back doing those big interviews. Because Yeah, okay, I can see people making the comparisons with Louis Thoreau, but you're both distinctive. But what you've got, I think, is an ability to engage in conversation without it looking like the subject feels like they're being interviewed. Right. With Louis, yes, he gets into them and he gets them to apparently anyway to give honest answers. But it still feels like an interview, whereas with you it feels like it always felt like a chat. I mean, a probing one, getting into bed with Goldie Horn or whatever, goes beyond an interview.

SPEAKER_02 32:10

The difference is I formed relationships.

Jeremy Lee 32:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:13

And he's doing an interview. Some of these people became my friends. And that was the point of my interviews, is I wanted to have some A-listers because I was so unpopular in high school. I thought, now I'm going to show you. I got some A-listers in my address book. So it was my revenge for being the ugly girl who was mocked. And I said, Now I know Tom Hanks. That was my reasoning.

Jeremy Lee 32:34

It worked and some. Listen, dear listener, if you can, I don't know whether there are still tickets available. They're probably going pretty quickly, but if you can catch Ruby on tour, Ruby and Clive, I should say, and relive those moments. Because they were unique in the true sense of the word. As indeed are you, Ruby. Thanks for your time today. You look really wonderful. I wish I booked into one of your retreats. To be honest, I'm a bit scared.

SPEAKER_02 33:03

But maybe one day I'll get over it and I'll uh and I'll it'd be nice before the end to know your mind. I mean, to me, that's the ultimate. Not me know yours, you know yours.

Jeremy Lee 33:13

I think I know what you mean. Come on, outro music. We need the outro music before I say something I don't mean to say. Ruby, thank you so much.

SPEAKER_02 33:21

Thank you. Great interview.