Daily Herald Suburban
June 9, 1997
“The Ruby Wax Show” has a distinctly British feel. It’s a lark, as Wax compares breasts with Pamela Anderson Lee, climbs into bed with Goldie Hawn and goes shopping with Bette Midler. But the thing that makes it work – both here and abroad – is Wax’s Midwestern straightforwardness, which must seem as exotic to U.K.viewers as “Cracker” is to us.
Wax holds up one of Lee’s skimpy T-shirts and says with disbelief, “Now, you don’t have a 4-year-old child. This is for your body.” She discusses childbirth with Hawn, saying, “I never forgave my children for not knowing where the exit was.” She compares struggling actor jobs with Midler and talks about being a waitress at the Evanston Holiday Inn.
The amazing thing, at least in tonight’s debut, is the way these stars reveal their essential selves when confronted with this lunatic. Lee is confounded.
“Can I be your body double?” Wax asks on the set of “Baywatch ” “As long as you don’t tell anybody,” Lee responds.
Midler, meanwhile, comes off as superior. She suffers Wax in order to plug her latest album. But ifs Hawn who really opens up, especially on being stereotyped as a ditz.
“I had a hard time with the giggle and the look,” she says, “because people expected it of me.” So when Wax gets Hawn giggling in her hot tub, it seems all the more natural.
Although it airs at 7:30 p.m., “Ruby Wax” is not family viewing.
“Is this getting too intim ate?” Hawn says at one point while giving her ditsy look, and the answer is yes. But, compared to Barbara
Walters and other TV interview shows, “Ruby Wax” is a breath of fresh air – a cool breeze of summer viewing.
