Ruby Wax - How Do You Want Me?

Ruby Waxs acting and presenting career has spanned stage and screen, and her writing talent has created some of our favourite television comedies, from Girls on Top to Absolutely Fabulous.

This life is a test. Only a test. Had it been an actual life, you would have received further instructions on where to go and what to do. Someone Smart

SHORTLY AFTER MY grandmother died I went to view her grave. I happened to wander over to the 3 headstones nearby and saw they were marked For The Wax Family. I didnt know they existed until then. On the right the Mother, on the left the Father and in the middle the Daughter, meaning me. This haunts me to this day.

My philosophy: who you are in the playground is exactly who you will be at the end of your life, unless something cataclysmic happens to you or you make a supreme effort to change your story. But it must be supreme. How are these parts cast? I dont know. All I know is I just showed up one day at recess, was handed a script and assigned my character. Who cast me in this role? Was it in the stars or in the DNA? Or is there some natural selection going on like in the animal kingdom? How do they recognise head of the herd? The one with the longest tusks? The buffalo with the biggest balls? Whos the natural born joker in the cow pack? Which heifer is going to make Vegas?

So many questions.

For some reason I was not part of the common herd in playground society and I do not know why I got exiled. Perhaps my parents sprayed me with weirdness dust. They clearly wore it, so maybe I picked it up. I had absolutely no chance to be one of the popular girls as they could smell I was not of their species; so I became one of the boys. I became their lackey, a runt/boy who ran their dirty chores.

To trigger a memory of why I was rejected I tried to find some photos of me as a child. I noticed I had some drawbacks. Luckily my father chronicled every moment of my life in film and photographs, from potty training to summer camp nothing was too embarrassing. Since I was an only child the spotlight was always trained on me. When I found the evidence, I saw immediately why everyone hated me.

I had front teeth that were so protrusive they were in another time zone about an hour in front of my face. Kids thought my name was Roovy since my lip flaps didnt meet. I made our dentist very rich from reining in the tusks. He fitted me with a sputnik-like head brace that didnt so much bring my teeth to me but the rest of my body up to live under them. My first year in school I pretended to be a beaver. I took apart a Davy Crockett fur hat and pinned the tail on my bottom. This meant I couldnt hear the ridicule since I was far too busy sawing down trees and building dams.

My mother encouraged my unattractiveness by cutting my hair in a bowl shape, like a monk. She would also dress me in outfits to ensure Id look older than her and uglier. Long before The Sound of Music I was in full dirndl and lederhosen. From four years old on, I was dressed as an Alpinian sheepherder while my mother was decked out in Yves Saint Laurent, Oscar de la Renta and Valentino couture.

You could hear an intake of breath as people realised such a bombshell had released something as plain as me. She always wore a mink coat or fox fur wrap where the head ate its own tail, smoking non-stop those extra long cigarettes. She was the beauty in the house, I didnt have a chance, I could only ever be understudy waiting for her demise. There she was, this golden goddess, nyloned legs soaring up from Italian, La Dolce Vita, high heels with leather ankle straps. I yearned for those legs and shoes; instead my feet were encased in saddle shoes, which she said I needed so I wouldnt develop bunions. (I did anyway to spite her. Ha ha.) On shopping expeditions Id scream for black patent leather pumps but they might have made me attractive so I never got them. Just hush puppies to keep me hushed. And Id get, Come on Ruby, theyre cute, believe me Im your mother I would tell you. Sometimes, Id sneak into her closet, which was off-limits, and see rows and rows of designer shoes lined up as if for an SS inspection.

Even as an infant things were strange. I know here in England, as children, you were read stories about Pooh Bear and his tiggily-wiggily friends. I was read German stories about Strange Peter who had twelve-inch nails and frizzed up hair like he had just been electrocuted. He would set fire to people for fun or cut off their thumbs for a laugh. Grimms Fairy Tales was another bedtime favourite. I remember one charming character, Frau Rotzkauph (translation: snot-head) had a beard, a wart and ate her children. Then she proceeded to cook them in a pie for not washing their hands before eating. There was another tale about a goose that ate a whole family and how they had to be cut out of its carcass with an axe. They all jumped out smiling but covered in bile. I didnt need nightmares, they were read to me. It all makes perfect sense when you think that young Hitler must have gone to beddy-byes hearing those same enchanting little tales.

Even without this bedtime reading, I was somewhat nihilistic. I knew as an infant, when you lost your tooth, you were supposed to picture a beautiful fairy with wings and a wand who flew into your bedroom in the night to bring money just for you. By about five, I knew this was for a limited season only and that later on I could have whole root canals and thered be nothing under my pillow. And when I got older, it was clear that even if I had large vital organs removed shed be a no-shower. I didnt believe in the tooth fairy, Santa, the Messiah, and certainly not Mr Wonderful; I knew nobody could save me.

Things were off-whack anyway, since I came from a German-speaking household, which caused me great embarrassment. You ordered food off the menu, it sounded like you were declaring war in Europe: Ill have the schvenkackten-zinka schvinetang Ga retchkavkch People came out of the kitchen with their hands up.

In German even a phrase like Have a nice day, Arent the butterflies lovely? was made by bringing up a large quantity of phlegm and spitting it in the face of the person you were addressing. To communicate, you literally had to lash someone to death with your tongue. My first language was German, which was so helpful at my nursery school called Busy Beaver. It was cruel to send me so ill-equipped, not speaking the language of the nation I happened to be a citizen of but it was only the beginning.

To try and understand my parents, Id like to give you a little history. It wont last long because they never told me much.

They escaped from Austria in 1938 though they never discussed the specifics of their departure. It was only recently that I found my mothers passport, complete with red J for Jew, and the stamp of the swastika. My mother indicated that she had practically waltzed out of Vienna, being a great beauty of the age. I recently found a suitcase full of letters, pleading to my parents (then safe in America) to get papers for the writer to help his family escape. These were followed by other letters saying their young cousin Max was now in a camp. My parents never mentioned there were family members exterminated in the camps, let alone the fact that his name was Max which is the name of my son. Finally, four years ago, at a Deli called Barnum and Bagel, when I asked again if I had any relatives in Austria, my mother casually replied, Oh, yes, they were burned, and continued eating her muffin.