Ruby Wax is at her unpredictable best as she revs up for her new Absolutely Famous UK tour. She tells of the famous faces she’s left quaking with her ferocious interview techniques
Ruby Wax’s acidic brand of humour should leave anyone she clashed with on her infamous BBC chat show, When Ruby Wax Met, quaking in their shoes, as she promises to reveal off camera secrets. Last seen heading out of the Australian jungle, when she was the 5th to exit last year’s I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here! Ruby says of her guests: “I was not interested in their films or whatever they did. I just thought that fame was like a Rubik’s cube they put together, like it was an addiction or a disease and when they were done with it, they had to go cold turkey or had to do horrifying comebacks for the rest of their lives”
Now 72, Ruby, who interviewed everyone from Madonna, to Sarah Ferguson, Pamela Anderson, Joanna Lumley, OJ Simpson and Donald Trump on her controversial show, has lost none of her edge. Speaking ahead of her 35 date tour, which starts on March 25, she recalls a spectacular clash with Donald Trump in 2000. Then a mere New York real estate magnate, he invited her onboard his private jet for a visit to his former Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City.
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Ruby says: “It was the worst interview I had ever done in my life. We got on his private jet and he had a gold bidet and a toilet. Urination at its finest. My make up artist Naomi had to take a nose hair and wind it around his head like Mr Whippy before the road kill he has now. It was a grotesque moment in my life.” Despite efforts to win him over, Ruby says Trump failed to fall for her kooky charm. She says: “At the end of the interview, which we don’t have on film, he said he wanted to be the next President. So I thought ‘Oh, he is a comedian’ and I started laughing. But he then said ‘That’s it. I want her out of here’. He hated me. But it still made great television.”
Ruby also managed to bag a brief chat with Melania Trump, then a model, adding: “That was the last time she smiled. I did like her. She really was in love with him.” Another memorable guest on the show, which ran from 1996 to 1998, was Pamela Anderson. Ruby says: “We got Pamela Anderson on the first series and she came back for the second. She had 140 million viewers of Baywatch at the time. We got 14 million viewers for our first show with her. Pamela was really smart. You see her now and you knew she would be that smart. She was just not this image. “
Interviewing the star – then dating Motley Crue star Tommy Lee – at her LA home, Ruby continues: “Pamela told me about her favourite sex positions. She told us she had a swing over her grand piano.” The next revelation has been censored, as Ruby spills the beans at a run through of her new show at a tiny north London comedy club.
Ruby says Hollywood superstar Tom Hanks was a breeze to interview, as was former first lady of the Philippines, Imelda Marcos, who even showed off her impressive shoe collection. Arriving at the interview wearing £60,000 of borrowed jewellery to impress her host, Ruby immediately confronted her about the $10 billion she and her husband Ferdinand were said to have stolen from their country.
She says: “I asked her ‘’where is the money?’ She said she was an ordinary housewife but told us how one day when she was trying to hang a picture on the wall, it chipped and gold was there. She did not realise her house was made of wall to wall gold bullion! When we did the interview, we borrowed £60,000 worth of jewellery from Theo Fennell in London.
“Also, somehow, a copy of Hello! magazine was found at her home with me on the front cover. Was it planted there? After seeing it, she sat me on her lap and fed me chocolate. She even took me to Parliament and screamed ‘everybody, she is on the cover of Hello!’ and I got a standing ovation.”
But Ruby does have regrets. She feels remorse over getting Sarah Ferguson onto her show in 1996. Invited to the former duchess’ Surrey home, she says: “I feel terrible about it. She was desperate for fame. There you see the disease [fame] in its purest form. She would do anything for it. It was unhinged.”
Ruby’s chat show success elevated her to grilling tougher subjects, such as American football star OJ Simpson, who was cleared of murdering his ex wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman in 1995. Despite being cleared in what was dubbed ‘the TV trial of the century’, Ruby tried to get OJ to confess to the murders during a marathon 17 hours of interviews.
She says: “I was told he had dissociative identity disorder. So part of him knows he killed Nicole and part of him doesn’t. If he took a lie detector test he would pass. He said I reminded him of Marcia Clark, who was the prosecutor in his case. We would drive past the judge’s house and he would scream ‘asshole’ out of the window.
“One night we went for dinner with his sister and all these girls would line up at our table because they all wanted to go home with him. His sister told me ‘Some women just want a criminal.’” Ruby finally walked away from her chat show in 1998 after BBC bosses vetoed plans for her to grill former Libyan leader Col Gaddafi and former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
She says: “I wanted more guests like murderers and despots. John Simpson [BBC World Affairs Editor] lined up that I would interview Arafat and Gaddafi. I told the BBC and they said ‘no. You are a comedian. Just stick to celebrities’. I thought ‘I am out of here’.
But Ruby has no regrets and is still winning fans across generations. During her jungle stint she was a hit with Manchester rapper Aitch and social media star Angry Ginge. Of her reinvention, she says: “Thanks to being on I’m A Celebrity, now unborn foetuses know who I am! Tiny people come up to me and say ‘can I have your autograph…and your name is?’ When I was in camp with Angry Ginge and Aitch, I said to them ‘why are youfriends with me? Is it because I am kinda cool and attractive?’ They said ‘no. Cause you remind me of my nan.”
*Ruby Wax’s UK tour Absolutely Famous starts next week. For tickets visit www.rubywax.net
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