I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! is currently starring Ruby Wax in the 2025 series. and she’s already proving to be a strong character.
Ruby Wax has admitted that she was “locked in the house” at the time of her difficult childhood. The famous interviewer for television has been open about her personal experiences over the years.
She has openly discussed her experiences with mental illness and how she has struggled with it since she was an adult.
Ruby was the only child of Austrian immigrant parents and was born in Chicago, Illinois. She has previously claimed that she felt depressed because her parents had been physically abusive.
The ITV star said she felt her struggles stemmed back to her childhood. She said: “I was locked in my house as a kid – I had no idea.”
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The actress claimed that Berta Wachs, her mother, was a gorgeous “It girl” who could speak eight languages. Ruby, however, joked that her glamorous mother was not her kind, and that she was placed in “the slow class” due to her undiagnosed dyslexia.
She remarked, “It was a cruel house, you know, and it’s a miracle I survived it… ” I was aware that a sense of humor was the only way to get out of it. My safety indicator was that.
Ruby called her parents “torturers,” calling her parents “torturers,” and claiming that Ruby’s mother was emotionally unstable and would occasionally pursue her in the street. Her father was also alleged to be cruel to her.
The comedian responded, “Well, you know, I mentioned it in my book, I’m Not as Well as I Thought I Was, and other books. They were torturous, both intentionally in my mother and intentionally in my dad, even though this is not all that I talk about. He would play mind games, you know. He would constantly remind me of my wealth.
He would take me to the bank and stow some papers downstairs before asking, “Boy, are you wealthy?” It turned out that I wasn’t at all, but it kept me there until, you might say, in my late 30s.
Every time he commits a cruel act, I would write down a number stating that he owes me this much, he owes me this much, and I thought we were really wealthy. I charged a lot if something happened.
She continued, adding that Ruby could “make the joke that she was” on the ceiling with Q-tips” and that she was “never without a sponge.” Her mother was “hysterical” and Ruby could “make the joke that she was.”
She said her father would call her a “sad sack”, an “idiot” and quizzed who would marry her. The comedian said it “never stopped”, with the comments even occurring when she had done well. When asked if she loved her parents Ruby told Jamie Laing on his podcast: “no, I didn’t.”
Ruby said she didn’t “really know who they were” and wasn’t “really upset” when they died. In 2023 Ruby told Kate Garraway’s Life Stories: “‘They were pretty violent with each other (and me), you’d have the sh** knocked out of you.”
After Ruby left high school she then moved to the UK where she trained as a classical actress and worked on stage and TV productions before becoming a celebrity interviewer for the BBC in 1991.
Wax pursued mindfulness at Oxford University after making the decision to leave show business in the early 2000s. She then went on to publish several self-help books, including Mindfulness Guide for Survival and Sane New World.
She was awarded an OBE in 2015 for her work in mental health. Ruby has discussed how to overcome depression, which she first experienced when she was just a child.
Ruby is taking part in the current series of I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! and she has already made quite the impression on camp.
She and AngryGinge discussed the Divey Bushtucker trial in last night’s episode. The pair had to consume the food that had been given to them, including camel toe, fruit, and bugs.
However, they were able to finish the challenge and receive ten out of ten stars. Ruby wasn’t particularly impressed with the camp’s better meal, but this also meant rice and beans.
Ruby claimed she wouldn’t have cared about the challenge if she had known that the campmates would succeed because they had been given a kangaroo neck to cook.
*If you are struggling with mental health, you can speak to a trained advisor from Mind mental health charity on 0300 123 3393 or email info@mind.org.uk
