Ruby Wax OBE

Ruby Wax began her TV career writing and starring in Girls on Top with French and Saunders and Tracey Ullman. Ruby went on to write and perform for both the BBC and Channel 4 for over 25 years in her own hugely popular television programmes including Don’t Miss Wax, Wax on Wheels, Hit and Run, The Full Wax, Hot Wax, and Ruby Wax with… in which she performed memorable interviews with major celebrities such as Donald Trump, Imelda Marcos, Madonna, OJ Simpson, Goldie Hawn, Jim Carrey, Ben Stiller and many others. Among her many award-winning documentaries are Miami Memoirs, East Meets Wax, Ruby Takes a Trip, Class of ’69, Ruby Wax Meets and Ruby’s American Pie.

On stage, Ruby has been directed by Alan Rickman in her own one-woman shows.  These range from Wax Acts and Stressed in the late 1990’s through to the more recent Losing It, Sane New World (directed by Thea Sharrock) and Frazzled which she has taken all over the UK and Australia as well as to the United States, Cape Town and London’s West End.

Ruby has studied Psychotherapy and gained her Master’s degree in Mindfulness-based Cognitive Behavioural Therapy from Oxford University. She is also a TedTalk Global speaker and awarded an OBE for her services to mental health.

Ruby’s books, How Do You Want Me? Sane New World and A Mindfulness Guide for the Frazzled and have topped the Sunday Times Bestseller’s lists and been published all over the world. Ruby’s latest book How to be Human – The Manual was written with the help of a monk and a neuroscientist, the book asks the thorny question: in a world that is increasingly online and beholden to technology, what is it that makes us truly human?  We can’t stop the future from arriving, no matter what drugs we’re on. But even if nearly every part of us becomes robotic, we’ll still, fingers crossed, have our minds, which, hopefully, we’ll be able to use for things like compassion, rather than chasing what’s ‘better’ and if we can do that we’re on the yellow brick road to happiness. How to be Human is the only manual you’ll need to help you upgrade your mind as much as you’ve upgraded your iPhone.

In 2016 Ruby received an OBE for her services to mental health.