Sitting in her house in Cape Town overlooking the sea and the mountains, Ruby Wax is in her element and therefore in a surprisingly good mood. Currently rehearsing her new show before premiering it in South Africa and then embarking on a worldwide tour which takes in Oxford, her evident contentment has a lot to do with the subject matter, mindfulness.

Her accompanying book Sane New World does what it says on the cover, but if you think this is a brief flirtation before she returns to stand-up comedy and TV, think again. This is it, the rest was just a warm-up and to be honest it’s a relief because last time we spoke, during a previous comedy tour, Ruby wasn’t a happy bunny.

Not that she’s any less brusque or self-effacing, that famous caustic wit still able to strip paint faster than a Black & Decker, but she’s less jaded, more engaged and enormously enthusiastic.

“Listen: I don’t do things out of goodwill, so I really looked into mindfulness and why it works and how it works in the brain and did a lot of research because we need to be able to help ourselves, and mindfulness is self-regulated.”

As a result mindfulness is big news, not that Ruby Wax will take any credit, saying she jumped on the bandwagon rather than the other way around. “They don’t need a celebrity to endorse it,” she says. “They’re doing fine on their own. Its success is purely down to Mark Williams. He doesn’t need me.”

Mark was her teacher at Oxford University where she recently graduated with an MA in Mindfulness-based Cognitive therapy. “Graduating three weeks ago was the most incredible moment of my life,” she tells me proudly.

While we adjust to Ruby and her psychotherapy fervour, she is bemused by the fuss. “It’s always been about psychotherapy for me and what it does,” she says, as if her comedy days had never existed.

“This has always been my area. I was even into psychotherapy as a kid and wanted to know how your brain works then.”

Her recent ‘journey’ began with her own mental illness and subsequent breakdowns, something she’s refused to hide, and her resulting transformation into an unlikely mental illness figurehead.

Having caught her at the Wilderness Festival over the summer, when her mindfulness talk sold out, crowds craning to catch her wisdom, I testify she’s big news. So do people still expect her to be funny? “Yes and I am, but now I use it to help tell people about mindfulness. And I think word’s got around,” the 62-year-old says wryly. “I don’t think people expect me to get up on stage and start cracking gags. It’s been ten years since I’ve done comedy but people still like to peg you because what you once were is where they were at the time... “But, yes, I had to work harder to be taken seriously.”

So does she feel she’s on a mission to spread the word? “Hey, I’m not the fighter. It’s not my mission. I’m only here to save myself, my family and friends. I’m not an evangelist. Who’s to say what would and wouldn’t bring people presence of mind?”

“I’m not a teacher you can’t get your message over in a sentence. And mindfulness is hard — you have to survive it and do your exercises. It’s not our natural default. I just want to plant a seed,” she says enigmatically.

“Mindfulness is not a religion. It’s more like going to the gym; an exercise that doesn’t take all day.”

As for helping others, Ruby says that one day a week she brings lots of experts onto her show, so that people can find out more and get help if necessary, “so I hope I’m giving back that way.”

Does she get thanks? “Yes, people say I’ve changed their lives, that they are less scared, that things are less terrible. And you don’t get that from anything else, so I’m the lucky one.”

As for the comedy tag it’s going to follow her around wherever she goes, whether she likes it or not. Does that bother her? “Taxi drivers still ask me why I’m not on TV anymore. “So I tell them that I had terminal cancer. That shuts them up.”

It’s shut me up too.

Ruby Wax
 

  • Blackwell’s hosts this talk by Ruby about her new book Sane New World  (Hodder&Stoughton, £18.99 hardback)
  • Oxford Town Hall
     
  • Monday, 7pm
     
  • Tickets: £5
     
  • Call 01865 333623 or visit stores.blackwell.co.uk