Comedy Festival 2017: Ruby masters comedy but not Trump

Donald Trump gave Ruby Wax a scoop on his plans for the presidency but her response incensed him

Donald Trump kicked Ruby Wax off his plane in 2000.

SOMEWHERE over America, high above the flyover states that would eventually sweep him to power, Donald Trump gave Ruby Wax the scoop.

Real estate mogul Trump told Wax, who at the time hosted a popular television chat show, he would, one day, run for the US presidency. It was 2000. They were aboard his private jet.

Wax, a polarising interviewer at the best of times, scoffed at his White House ambitions, causing Trump to land the plane and kick her off.

“I always thought of him as a great property developer, but then I saw the face of a narcissist,” Wax told the Herald Sun.

“He hated me and my fear showed. If I had stayed cool, kept my engines down, it would have been a really good interview.

“But he scared me so I became aggressive.

“It doesn’t matter,” she says, resignation in her voice. “You never got to see what he was really like.”

She is, of course, mortified that he followed through, and reached the Oval Office.

“Everybody’s asking: ‘What if he pushes the button?’. But he doesn’t even need to nuke us, he’ll just send out another crap tweet,” Wax says.

“The guy is sick. But what are we gonna do? My people voted for him.”

Her war with Trump, immortalised forever on YouTube, has been rebooted for a new comedy show, Frazzled, which deals with Wax’s new pet topics, stress and mindfulness.

She wrote the show a few years ago while studying for her masters degree in mindfulness-based cognitive therapy at Oxford University. “If you want to know how your brain works, you can go to Oxford to find out as much as they know,” she says.

“I always said I was going to use (the studies) for comedy, so for my practical (exam), I did a show. That was the first time that’s happened at Oxford. Then I made it more amusing, and it became a show, and a book.”

What was it like to study at Oxford?

“For a masters degree, you only go in for three days every five weeks or so. I was in my little group. I’m sure they thought I was a wanker,” she says, laughing.

“I didn’t get the full splendour. I wasn’t in the rowing team, so it’s not the image you have in your head, but it was pretty sexy.”

But those qualifications have landed Wax, an in-demand speaker on mental health issues, in some unexpected boardrooms, including spy central MI5.

“That was really thrilling. What a great bunch of people. And talk about stress on the job,” Wax said.

There were no secrets entrances or foreboding corridors. “I walked down a flight of stairs and suddenly, I was at MI5,” she said.

“They gave me a great present — it was like a pepper jelly made by the security department.”

That sounds very James Bond. How does one use pepper jelly?

Wax: “You put it on your toast.”

 

RUBY WAX

The Playhouse Theatre, Arts Centre, March 30 to April 2

comedyfestival.com.au