Ruby Wax's London Cultural Diary

The Ruby Wax Sane New World tour combines stand-up and mindfulness to illuminating effect. The comedienne shares her arts and culture highlights for spring.


For comedienne and television presenter Ruby Wax, mindfulness and better mental health are subjects adding an intriguing new string to her bow. Her best-selling book, Sane New World , draws on her own experiences of depression, plus a Masters from Oxford in Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy, to supply a manual of how the brain works, and how it can be managed to survive 21st-century life.

Now she's taking the book around the country, and tells CW, 'It’s like a Bill Bryson tour devoted to how the brain works. Our brains don’t have the bandwidth to deal with the information thrown at us today. We are natural born drug addicts, and all of this information drives us nuts.

'I think what I’m doing with my show is a way forward for performance. It’s not going back to theatre exactly, nor is it someone doing stand-up the whole time. It can’t ever not be exciting, but at the same time people want information. It’s like a Ted talk, but funny.'

Here are her arts and culture picks for spring.


Theatre: Anything on the fringe of improvisational theatre


Theatre is reinventing itself again, which it has to do, or it will die out. Punchdrunk is something to be so proud of, and there are always things going on around London Bridge underground. I love it when theatre is taken out of the auditorium. It can do such great things then.


Book: Mindsight by Daniel Siegel


I’m obsessed at the moment: I only read science books. I was in school until September [studying Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy at Oxford University]. Daniel Siegel writes for the layman about how the mind works, which is a whole different thing from how the brain works. It's about how we deceive each other. I love the fact we can regulate these instincts, and stay in control if we know how.


Album: Theatre Is Evil by Amanda Palmer


Amanda Palmer [the American singer-songwriter and wife of Neil Gaiman famous, among other things, for her send-up of the Daily Mail] is not generic. She sings like something Brechtian. Is she a man or a woman? She’s outrageous. She isn’t just a babe; she’s tough, and smart, and I love that. Watch the Amanda Palmer TED talk about piracy and outsourcing – she speaks beautifully.


Food: Breakfast Club , Hoxton


I don’t go to really cool places, though I know they’re all out there, but I do love Breakfast Club in Hoxton, near the White Cube Gallery. It looks like an American diner of the Fifties, and it’s open all day. The atmosphere is unbelievable – there are people shouting their orders, there are milkshakes in tin drums. It's my fantasy of America, pink, happy and milkshakey, and it reminds me of the home life I never had.


Festival: The Burning Man Festival


Sixty thousand people living in the desert for a week among art installations. There’s nothing like this anywhere else. It’s the eighth wonder of the world. Good luck getting to it!




Ruby Wax's Sane New World UK tour continues until 22 May 14. Find details here

















Photo of Ruby Wax by Steve Ullathorne







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