Actor, writer and television presenter Ruby Wax has also become a campaigner for mental health – at Downing Street, in a TED talk, at every opportunity – after obtaining a master’s degree in mindfulness-based cognitive therapy from the University of Oxford. She is uncompromisingly honest and blackly funny about her experiences of depression. Her new book, A Mindfulness Guide for the Frazzled (Penguin Life £14.99), out on 7 January, “reinvents mindfulness for people who don’t have time”. Her show, Sane New World – at which there will be walk-in centres open to the public with mental health professionals in attendance – is at the Arts theatre, London, from 19 January to 13 February.
1 | Theatre
Harlequinade & All On Her Own at the Garrick, London
It is Kenneth Branagh’s company but it is Zoë Wanamaker who does something that just tears your heart apart; she is magnificent. The plays are by Terence Rattigan – to do tragedy and comedy in one evening is a good deal. In All On Her Own, you get deep into the head of an alcoholic woman who loves/hates her [late] husband and is pretending to mourn him. The job of theatre is to touch you emotionally. If something is just wacky, I’ll be gone. I like the Chekhovian thing, where a play reveals itself but is not in your face. The best comedy is the deeper stuff. Laughter is the best way to present information.
2 | Nonfiction
The Brain by David Eagleman
The brain is something we should all read about. Eagleman explains how what we see outside is not really what is going on in our brain. What we perceive is not reality. Nothing is more important than understanding this piece of equipment: it is the most complicated bit of meat on the planet. And Eagleman really gets that down. The book makes you feel less alone because you understand how everyone shares the same plumbing. It also makes you understand that when someone is letting rip in front of you, it might be their chemicals rather than anything you have done.
3 | Music
Creep by Radiohead
I listen to Radiohead – my favourite. That song Creep, it just makes my heart bleed. A lot of music doesn’t. That song hurts so much. “I’m a creep/ I’m a weirdo/ What the hell am I doing here?/ I don’t belong here…” The idea of that low self-esteem in the face of someone perfect… I identify with it. [Thom Yorke] is Radiohead… and yet he comes up with those lyrics! What you feel underneath is not what you show, you know? And “You’re just like an angel/ Your skin makes me cry” – the lyrics are beautiful. I love his voice. Some music just breaks your heart. I can’t listen to it too much.
4 | Online
I didn’t like my own talk – I was being too desperate. But a lot of TED talks are by the most brilliant people in the world and – wow… Every time you hear, your mind expands. What a gift. I was an idiot at school, I got Ds. So I can’t understand where my intellectual curiosity came from – if this isn’t an example of neuroplasticity, nothing is. I wasn’t interested in science, couldn’t do maths. Now it is the science that grabs me. Maybe it wasn’t so interesting when I was growing up. In biology lessons, we used to dissect rats and put their organs in each other’s handbags.
5 | Restaurant
Fischer’s Viennese cafe, Marylebone High Street, London
It is one of those Jeremy King places. Fischer’s reminds me – I am Austrian – of the kind of restaurants we would have hung around in as children. But then I think: wait a minute… but then they killed all the Jews. So I am ambiguous about it. I love the place. It serves wiener schnitzel, herring in mustard sauce, kugel. It has delicious Jewish food. The food looks wartime – or prewar. It is my childhood but at the same time it looks like 30s Germany. I find it comforting, a little scary and very Austrian.
6 | Fiction
I Am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes
I Am Pilgrim is a thriller of the sort where if you start reading it sitting on the loo, you’ll never get off the loo again. It is a bestseller, it is out of this world – I have never read anything like it. It ain’t Dickens but the complexity of the plot is beyond your wildest dreams. It is like The Bridge squared. I like to read – I loved The Goldfinch, The Hare With Amber Eyes, The Fault in Our Stars… When I was depressed, I couldn’t read. I had depression seven years ago and for a little time last year. You can’t read because your concentration is shot. Forget about it, you can’t do anything.
