Ruby Wax said "I couldn't stand being a nobody. America put too much value on being tall and blonde. So I used laughter to make people take notice".

Ruby came to England in 1977. She always wanted to be famous, so decided to become an actress. She didn't get in to RADA but was awarded a place at the Scottish equivalent, before later joining the Royal Shakespeare Company alongside Helen Mirren, getting all the wench parts.

"I really could never find my niche. I was a terrible actress, I couldn't sing, I couldn't do characters, I couldn't do an English accent and I lived in England, so I was narrowing it down"

She started off in 1979 writing for Not the Nine O Clock News.

She met Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders at a party and ended up working alongside them a number of times. On television in "Happy Families", at charity events such as "Hysteria" and notably the sitcom "Girls on Top", apparently meant to be a kind of female Young Ones. French, Saunders and Wax all co-starred and co-wrote this ITV series. Ruby played Shelley Dupont, a stereotypically loud American dying for a career in showbusiness.

Ruby eventually got a chat show after drunkenly interviewing Michael Grade (who was head of Channel 4 at the time) in a tent at the Edinburgh festival. She subsequently made a range of programmes (most featuring her name in the title!).

In the 1988 show Ruby's Celebrity Bash, Ruby interviewed stars including Joanna Lumley, Patricia Hodge and Felicity Kendall. More staged and rehearsed than Ruby's more recent interviews, they included acted bits and prepared one-liners to the cameras. One famous episode saw Ruby break into Joanna Lumley's house - smashing windows and then hiding behind her sofas!! She gets thrown out but returns later with a ladder and calls up into the window, before climbing up and breaking in again. Joanna Lumley's character was very much a premonition of Patsy, who ends up in a mental institution and has cupboards filled with alcohol! The show was very much pre-Abfab, and an early and unusual role for Joanna in comedy at the time. Ruby Wax later became the script editor for Absolutely Fabulous, coming up with many of the one-liners.

In 1992 Ruby did a stand-up comedy show at the Wimbledon Theatre, available on video as Wax Acts. Written by Ruby, it consisted of amusing monologue and observational comedy. Her description of childbirth was almost enough to put you off for life, pain-wise she says, 'it's like sitting on the Eiffel tower and spinning' - ouch indeed!

Ruby's Health Quest (1995) followed Ruby as she went in search of alternative medicines, advice and treatments in aid of seeking perfect health.

In 2006 Ruby went back to college to gain a postgraduate diploma in psychotherapy and counselling, and then began a masters degree in mindfulness-based cognitive therapy at Oxford University.

These days, Ruby is making a name for herself as a Leadership Consultant & Executive Coach. She draws on her 25 years of experience in interviews, using clips from some of her most famous interviews.

She also has a touring show with singersongwriter Judith Owen called "Loosing It". Both Ruby and Judith are long term sufferers of Depression and the show is a hilarious and sometimes dark show of having to live life with the illness.