Ruby Wax was in Melbourne last month for the Comedy Festival, but these days the American comic and long-time script editor for Absolutely Fabulous is more mental-health campaigner than stand-up comedian.
Wax performed a run of shows but they were a tie-in with her new book, A Mindfulness Guide For The Frazzled.
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In the past few years "mindfulness" has become a popular buzzword and practice – up there with adult colouring books and longevity wellness resorts. Not something one would connect with the irreverent Wax.
"It's a terrible word," she says as we peruse the menu at Bistrot d'Orsay, where we meet for lunch, "but it's science. It's cognitive, not a guru-y thing. I wouldn't have done it if it was something New Agey - I'd take the piss out of it."
![Lunch at Bistrot d'Orsay.](/web/20170511145033im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/v/w/9/6/9/image.related.articleLeadNarrow.300x0.gvw949.png/1494401366778.jpg)
Phew.
Taking the piss is what we associate with Wax, who is probably best known for her celebrity interview programs The Full Wax and Ruby Wax Meets in which her disarming techniques gently skewered the rich and famous, from Madonna to O.J. Simpson.
If you didn't see them – in the pre-internet meme and social media world – most are on YouTube. At a time when celebrity interviews were restrained, Michael Parkinson-style chats and a plug for new products, Wax broke all the rules.
There was the time she got Liza Minnelli to work in a fish and chip shop, when 14 million viewers watched her snoop through the Duchess of York's fridge and, recently resurrected and much discussed, her interview with a pre-reality TV/US President Donald Trump where she was thrown off his private jet – but not before he revealed his plans to run for US President, an idea which seemed absurd in the 1990s.
![Wax chose the lamb at Bistrot d'Orsay.](/web/20170511145033im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/v/w/9/5/g/image.related.articleLeadNarrow.300x0.gvw949.png/1494401366778.jpg)
"That was a horrible interview. He's revolting. That mouth! I mean – it makes you vomit," she says. " Let's not discuss it before we eat."
Trump leading the free world, Wax says, along with the post-Brexit UK, are reasons we should all be studying mindfulness.
![We're all frazzled: Wax brought her one-woman show to the Melbourne Comedy Festival.](/web/20170511145033im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/v/w/9/8/0/image.related.articleLeadNarrow.300x0.gvw949.png/1494401366778.jpg)
"That's what we've come to. How did we get to this? That's part of what I'm trying to get to in the book."
Having battled depression and bipolar disorder for years, including stints in luxury mental-health hospital The Priory, Wax discovered mindfulness when she was looking for something to finally – after trying pills, therapists and other routes – "fix" her mind.
![The bill please.](/web/20170511145033im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/v/w/9/5/1/image.related.articleLeadNarrow.300x0.gvw949.png/1494401366778.jpg)
"I was curious as to what would actually get the best results as far as changing your brain. This had the best results."
But more than just reading about it, Wax spent two years studying it at Oxford University and graduated with a Masters degree in 2011.
That hadn't initially been the plan.
"When I went to Oxford, I thought, 'this will be a show – and maybe a book'."
And this was no fashionable detox retreat: she was studying alongside mostly qualified doctors.
"And genetic scientists, someone who runs a prison, another who does cancer research," she says. "I was the only one who did it this way."
She did, though, get two books out of her studies – 2013's Sane New World, and her latest, but she's adamant she gained much more than just material.
Wax has been doing press since 7am – "I've got a book to sell; it's my baby" – and hadn't realised she would be photographed. She expertly applies lipstick using a butter knife as a mirror.
"I can put make-up on while I'm driving," she says, equally impressing and terrifying me.
We order a main course – Wax goes for the lamb, I have the gnocchi – and she opts for tap water. "I can't drink before a show, ever."
Mindfulness, as Wax outlines in her book, is a calming of one's mental state through awareness of the present moment, and reducing stress – or "frazzledom" – by "exercising your ability to pay attention" to one's thoughts, feelings and bodily sensations.
In Britain, where mental-health problems are estimated to cost £105 billion a year, Wax recently launched the Frazzled Cafe project, in conjunction with department store Marks & Spencer, a fortnightly "mental-health drop-in", hosted by trained volunteers, in 11 of the stores' cafes.
Inspired by interaction with her audiences, Wax wanted to provide a space "where people can talk openly with others who understand how they are feeling".
"People come in and meet in groups of 15 – I'm not there – and they can form a community," she says. "It's a lifeline, everybody opens up and supports each other. They're not mentally ill, by the way – they're just frazzled. Which is everybody."
She says the cafes have attracted people of all ages who "just want to chat".
"They're not depressed, they're just human. We have a lot of pressure, being human."
To keep on top of her own frazzledom – and it's hard to tell if she's experiencing this at our meeting, or is just a little defensive – Wax does daily exercises. Her book features a six-week mindfulness course, teaching readers her routine.
"You can do them anywhere," she says, adding that she keeps them up even on tour.
"Before I go on stage I do some exercises so I don't get too nervous. I think of it like an athlete controlling their heartbeat," she says.
As well as seeming rather serious, although the book is peppered with her trademark humour, it all seems a very first-world concept.
"It's only first-world concerns," Wax says, "but that's our sickness. And if you feel guilty about feeling stressed, it compounds it. How come so many people are burning out? It's not like the individual self-indulgent wanker – look at the numbers."
Modern life, she says, is exhausting. Being switched on to the 24-hour news cycle, balancing work and home life and social media all leave us "frazzled".
"The world is the way the world is – we know too much and yet we're helpless. You know, if you go fight in a war zone you probably wouldn't be as crazy."
Has it changed her life?
"I don't know … just like if you went to the gym every day, eventually you'd start noticing, gradually. I can tell that I can focus longer, and I can breathe – it's not 100 per cent," she says. "But sometimes, when a situation is stressful and I could have a trigger reaction, I can hold it back for a few seconds."
Although I seem to undo it all when I mention a review of her show which refers to the second half, a Q and A with her audience, as "therapy".
"It's not therapy – I don't know why someone would call it that," she retorts. "That part of my show has been going on for 10 years; the audience gets to ask questions, and I ask them questions and they clearly want to do it. It's not therapy."
Does she care about reviews though? "No – but I would like them to say nothing bad."
I change the subject, although we return to the review again a couple more times.
Does being the interviewee feel odd? "I do get sick of hearing myself. This is OK because you're not asking the same questions … but if somebody's an idiot, my hair will stand on end."
And, one imagines, an annoyed Wax would be rather scary.
"Well I have to try and make sure my eyes don't go hard because then people start getting scared and the questions get worse," she says. "I've been scary – I thought I got away with it but people can read your expressions…"
When our food arrives – after one more reference to her review as she explains how we all get "frazzled" by things like social media ("I'm hysterical because you said I was reviewed – now imagine 1000 of those! Most of us live or die by people liking or not liking") – Wax is anything but scary.
She chats about food ("I suck at cooking. I like to eat out. I like food to be put in my mouth, you know? I just like to open the fridge and eat"), her three kids ("they're all in their 20s now – it's devastating") and the fact that both her daughters have just started trying their hands at comedy.
"I discouraged one of them from being an actress but I couldn't do anything about the comedy," she says. "They're really funny. They do characters – I could never do characters. I just do me."
She wouldn't though, recommend the life of a comic, "unless you're really good. But they rebel against everything I do and am."
She asks for restaurant recommendations and gushes about how she loves Melbourne. "I love Fitzroy, I would live there. Although I see it's lost a bit of its grunginess and got gentrified, so I'm a little upset."
By the time we've finished lunch, Wax is as warm as an old friend, and as irreverent as she is on her old interview programs.
"Wanna see a really bad facelift," she asks. "Look at the table in the corner. Oh my god!"
At 63 – she turned 64 a couple of weeks after our lunch – Wax still looks amazing. Has she had plastic surgery?
"No. And I wouldn't ever do it if it was as bad as that."
Ruby Wax's A Mindfulness Guide For The Frazzled (Penguin) is out now.