As soon as Ruby Wax arrives for our lunch at Zuma in Knightsbridge, she starts obsessiing over the fashionably dressed man at the next table. Her eyes flicker back and forth, taking in his designer clothes and Aviator spectacles. "Rich boy," she says, exaggeratedly mouthing her words. When his female companion turns up, Wax is all a flutter. "How much do you think she's worth?" she asks in a loud whisper. "I'd say 50 million." Her eyelids bat frantically. Her lips twist at the corners, breaking out into a vulpine grin. The newly arrived diner flinches. "Oh, OK, now she knows we're talking about her," Wax says, turning to face me. "Embarrassing."
For Wax, the American-born comic famed for her brash irrepressibility, the primary appeal of eating out is the opportunity it affords for people-watching. "That's why this – " she gestures at the table, now filling up with an array of sashimi dishes, "is a bit false. You're asking me all the questions but I want to find out about you." She skewers a piece of grilled tofu with her chopsticks and for a moment is totally silent, rolling her eyes and flapping her free hand as though she is about to cry. Then she groans with pleasure. "Mmm, have you tried that?"
When the waiter asks us about the food, Wax replies that it is "orgasmic" and peppers him with questions. Soon, she has discovered that his name is Claudio, he was born in Brazil and considers himself a fairly good dancer. Claudio giggles. Wax tilts her head flirtatiously. She smiles, her teeth twinkling in the light like the studded diamonds on her Theo Fennell necklace. Within seconds, Claudio is smitten and falling over himself to offer us special platters, "compliments of the chef".
Over shared dishes of light langoustine tempura and a punchy tuna tataki, Wax admits: "I love figuring people out." As a student, she took psychology at the University of California, Berkeley but dropped out after a year. Now, after retraining as a psychotherapist, Wax is studying for a masters in neuroscience and cognitive behaviour at Oxford University: "I have 11 classmates. They're all doctors and intellectuals." She takes out her iPhone to show me pictures of herself in a gown and mortarboard at her matriculation ceremony, mugging for the camera.
Part of Wax's fascination with how the mind works comes from "trying to find out what was wrong with me". Over the years, she has battled depression and bipolar disorder, with several spells in the Priory. For a long time, her illness went undiagnosed – "People thought it was glandular fever" – and she would be buffeted through a four-yearly cycle of frenetic spikes of energy followed by slumps of "nothingness" where the pain was unbearable. "I've spoken to women who've had depression and cancer and they've said the cancer was easier to deal with," she says, unblinking.
Wax recently turned her experiences into a one-woman stage show, Losing It, which she will be performing at the Edinburgh Festival. "It's not a show about mental illness," Wax insists. "It's really more about how none of us know how to live our lives. Everyone is bluffing. It's about those women who do Pilates five times a week so they can strengthen their pelvic floor and be able to lift a carpet. It's about when the list-making becomes extreme. I used to wake up in the morning dripping in sweat, having to buy a light bulb."
The first performance of Losing It was in the Priory two years ago. "We played mental hospitals for a year. To see people wake up [from depression] and start to laugh is really satisfying." The show has been "the happiest experience of my life because… I'm speaking the truth rather than doing anything shallow." At her lowest ebb, Wax had suicidal thoughts. "That was part of it, but I knew I wouldn't do it." Since finding the right medication, she has got better at recognising when her depression is about to spiral out of control. "I have to slow down," she says. "The doing too much is a sign of something else. Even on holiday I find it difficult to relax. I'm the one who has to go kayaking."
Is she difficult to live with? "Yeah, but I married my husband [television producer Ed Bye] for the gene pool. I was conscious that he would bring to the table a) length and b) the ability to be a rock." Her three children, Max, 22, Maddie, 20, and Marina, 17, are "so happy. They're the opposite of me". And two out of three of them are also tall, so the marital plan worked quite well.
Her 2002 autobiography painted an unflattering picture of her parents. Edward and Berta Wachs were Austrian Jews who fled to America from the Nazis in 1938. Growing up an only child in Evanston, Illinois, Wax was "an introvert". Her mother was an obsessive compulsive housewife who covered every available soft furnishing in plastic. Her father sold sausages and was a strict, sometimes violent, disciplinarian.
She thinks now that her mother too suffered from some form of mental illness. "She could have been saved, that's the sadness. A couple of little drugs…" Did they eat a lot of sausages at home? "Oh yeah," she says. "We ate so many sausages my mother would put wings on each side and say it was chicken."
At 16, she discovered a talent for comedy. "I was not attractive to boys and I wanted to be, so I started to be funny." She laughs. "It didn't work. I got a lot of gay guys." After dropping out of Berkeley, Wax came to the UK and studied at the Royal Shakespeare Company where her contemporaries included Alan Rickman and Zoe Wanamaker – both now close friends. Wax ended up writing for Not the Nine O'Clock News, French and Saunders and Absolutely Fabulous through the 1980s and 90s. But she is probably most known for her 1996 BBC series Ruby Wax Meets… in which she interviewed celebrities including Madonna, OJ Simpson and Imelda Marcos, alternately cajoling and cowing them into submission. In one memorable scene, she posed with a pair of Madonna's crotchless knickers over her head. "I think I became a cartoon to escape how ill I was," she explains.
Then, without warning, Wax was fired. "It makes me furious," she says, through mouthfuls of spicy beef. "Did I do something wrong?" Well, did she? "No! I mean, at the beginning I was very controlling because I was so scared, but at the end I was quite cool about it all. I loved it." Does she miss television? Wax pauses. "It would have ended at some point because women are replaced and I had 25 years; I was luckier than most." She takes a sip of Diet Coke. "Now, I go to Oxford...[and] if I hadn't broken with TV, that wouldn't have come up, so in a way I'm grateful."
She confesses she is scared of getting older – she refuses to give her age but, judging from the cuttings, Wax is 58. In person, she looks much younger: her features are small and delicate. Her eyes are always darting to and fro, as if looking for new material.
Does Wax still think she is funny? "I do. I'm not so sure I'm smart though." She grins, then looks at her watch. A car is waiting outside. After persuading Claudio to put the banana sponge pudding in a doggy bag, she takes her leave. "God I wish I could eat here every day," she says, eyeing up the rich boy at the next table. He looks up at her with an expression that lies somewhere between terror and adulation. Wax gives him a dazzling smile and then dashes out of the restaurant, doggy bag swinging from her hand.
Ruby Wax: Losing It is at the Edinburgh Fringe, 5-29 August; edfringe.com
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