Ruby Wax claims that her BBC interview programme, Ruby Wax With…, was cancelled because she reached 50, which “wasn’t allowed.”
In a recent interview, the comedian and TV personality, 70, accused the company of ageism when it cancelled her high-profile talk show in 2003, claiming that they didn’t want older women presenting chat programmes.
On the short-lived show, she chatted with celebrities such as Jim Carey, Susan Sarandon, and John McEnroe.
Her show, which came after earlier series she directed such as The Full Wax, Ruby Wax Meets…, and The Ruby Wax Show, was replaced in the slot by Louis Theroux’s docuseries.
The Good Morning Britain host questioned the mum-of-three on Wednesday’s broadcast of Kate Garraway’s Life Stories: ‘So why did the television series dry up?’
Ruby said, ‘Because I turned 50, and that’s not permitted.’
When Kate responded asking if it was ‘an age thing’, Ruby replied: ‘Of course, and then there was a man who took my job – it’s not Louis Theroux, who is a really nice man.
‘And whoever – I will not mention names – said, “We want you to do a game show”, but I said I could be a really good interviewer and they said, “Uh-uh” so I left town.’
The US-born celebrity previously stated that she blamed Louis for her show’s cancellation for years before realising that the decision was made by a TV executive rather than the investigative journalist himself.
However, losing the show inspired her to reconsider her professional path, and she enrolled at Oxford University for a master’s degree in mindfulness-based cognitive therapy.
As someone who has experienced with spells of severe depression, she began to raise awareness about mental health via her profession, earning her an OBE for services to mental health in 2015.
‘But I wouldn’t have gone to Oxford or got an OBE, so I thank them all,’ she added.
Ruby’s collaboration with the BBC began in 1991 with The Full Wax, followed by a one-off special featuring Madonna.
Ruby Wax Meets… then saw her interview the likes of Donald Trump, O.J. Simpson and Carrie Fisher, who she called her ‘heroine’ and favourite interviewee, ‘because the way that she wrote, not Princess Leia’.
She praised the late writer and Star Wars actress, who died in 2016, for her ability to pen a line ‘that could stab you in the heart but make you scream out laughing’.
Ruby also stated that she would have perished if she had not escaped and gone to live in the UK during her physically brutal upbringing.
‘If I hadn’t had a whacking great sense of anger I think I would have gone under, but I was addicted to anger for quite a long time, I had to work really hard to get it out of my system,’ she told host Kate.
Ruby referred to it as method of survival because ‘it saved me, if I wouldn’t of [sic] gotten out of there, I would be dead’.
The comic also mentioned ‘a long line of suicide on my dad’s side’, adding that ‘so yeah, it would have happened’.
Kate Garraway’s Life Stories is available to stream on ITVX.
