RUBY Wax is taking a look back at some of most iconic interviews with the great and the good from her series from the 1990s.
The original series featured a who’s who of A-list celebrities of the day.
Who has Ruby Wax interviewed?
We take a look back at some of the iconic people Wax met over the years – and some were far from successful.
Donald Trump
Wax’s 2000 interview with the future US President was an example of car crash TV and a disaster.
A frosty atmosphere began to develop when she quizzed the 75-year-old businessman about his presidential ambitions, which Ruby admitted she had assumed were a joke.
“He literally threw me off his plane at 33,000 feet, which is tricky,” she claimed. “He threw my crew out at Arkansas. We had no plans of going to Arkansas.”
She added: “That was a car crash. Bad interviews still make good TV, but I just think it’s appalling, and it’s what not to do.”
Madonna
10
Wax branded her 1994 interview with Madonna as her “most miserable showbiz experience”.
She said in 2013: “I thought we were going to bond but she hated me on sight.”
“We were setting up the cameras and she was saying, ‘No, no, no, I don’t want that camera, I want that camera.’ I got nervous and I was asking dumb questions and then she got up and left.”
Wax added: “She left her handbag so I rifled through it and found some of her underpants and put them on my head and started doing some comedy. Madonna looked into the room and saw it. She has never called me since.
“As for her pants, they were like a piece of dental floss with some cotton and some frills.”
OJ Simpson
10
Wax described OJ Simpson as “the most complicated person on earth” after her 1998 interview.
Simpson agreed to be interviewed in a white van similar to his Ford Bronco in the infamous high-speed, post-murder chase with cops.
Throughout Simpson remains blank and detached from it all.
Wax tried to get a confession from him but it’s in vain.
She does though manage to ask the question: “Do you think that’s weird, that you got famous as a murderer?”
Carrie Fisher
10
Wax and the Star Wars actress became great friends following the interview in 1994.
In an article for the Huffington Post, Wax wrote: “Who she actually was, was greater than a trillion Star Wars, she was a comic genius.
“Like a composer hears notes in his/her head when composing, she would imagine words and phrases, craft them to perfection and reel out daisy chains of comic jewels.”
She added: “We’d often lie in bed together (not sexual) she’d call me ‘mommy’ and read out scrawls from her notebooks and I’d just lie there thinking, ‘how lucky am I to have this woman as a friend?’ To the end of my life I’ll never get over that.”
Goldie Hawn
10
Wax wasn’t afraid of firing off a cheeky double entendre as her interview with Hawn revealed.
The interview with Goldie Hawn switches from a Jacuzzi to a hotel bedroom, which brings a revelation about husband Kurt Russell’s amatory prowess.
Wax asked: “Did you train him or did he come like that?”
Pamela Anderson
10
The interview with the Baywatch Star surprised many viewers in 1996.
Pamela Anderson recites a soliloquy from Shakespeare’s Hamlet before simulating sex with Wax in the back of a limo.
Tom Hanks and Jean-Claude Van Damme
10
A bizarre double interview from the second series in 1997.
Tom Hanks is bribed into meeting Ruby in a London hotel by the producer. Jean-Claude Van Damme fights off a plastic crocodile and saves the lingerie-clad Ruby from death.
Imelda Marcos
10
Wax described the interview to the Jewish News: “Oh yeah, I hit the jackpot with that interview. We went all the way to the Philippines and I was told that I had just 10 minutes with her.
“But I was still there four days later. I was just thrilled that she liked me so much. Then finally she said, ‘Do you want to see my shoes?’ She wouldn’t have done that on day one.
“When she showed me the accounts, I thought what kind of world are we in? Like OJ, she was an interesting mind to pick, you know, to figure out what motivates her.”
Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York
10
Wax conducted the frank 1996 interview with Sarah Ferguson whilst they were sprawled across the duchess’ chintzy double bed at her then rented home at Kingsbourne, Surrey.
The Duchess opened up saying: “I am so sad, I am just miserable about what happened in the past, but then I can’t look back.
“I look back all the time and I am miserable when I do, but I have to look forward now.
“But if you say: “Gosh, you could have had such a really fantastic life…well, yes, I blew it.”
The Spice Girls
10
Wax caught up with the girl power pop sensation on the eve of their European tour in 1998 and talked to them at their final rehearsals.
Victoria Beckham, then known as Posh Spice, confessed to Wax she didn’t really know who David Beckham was before she met him.
“I went over to him. I said to him, ‘are you going to come down and take me out type thing. And he came down to London and took me out,” she told Wax.
The three-part series When Ruby Wax Met . . . starts tonight on BBC Two.