Ruby Wax: Totally Celebrity Review – A candid return to her most revealing celebrity interviews | comedy

WWhat are these shows in which veteran artists regale us with clips from their glorious careers, if not attempts to get another round of applause – without having to produce any new material? The virtue of Ruby Wax’s contribution to the genre is that it is pointedly frank about it. In a show that’s all about the thirst for fame and the celebrity experience, it seems so important. Co-hosted with her long-time TV producer, Cliff Tulloh, Undoubtedly finds Wax speaking to us through clips from her BBC show When Robbie Wax Met…, in which she interviews the most controversial individuals of the 1990s and early 2000s: OJ Simpson, Imelda Marcos and a certain New York businessman whose notoriety was at that point (oh, the innocent times!) still in its infancy.

There’s no point in pretending we’re experiencing the shock of the new: Wax has already reflected on these interview experiences in a BBC retrospective. There’s also no denying that the footage, combined with Wax’s insights, makes for a very enjoyable evening. Here she talks (and acts out) sexual positions with Pamela Anderson, here the steely Madonna reads her the rule book. Marvel as Simpson imitates Wax stabbing Wax with a knife, and peek through your fingers at her encounters with Donald Trump and Bill Cosby — whose disgust at the assertive interviewer is evident across the screen.

“There have been no interviews before or since that have been so revealing,” Tolloh says. This may be an exaggeration, but he and Wax are convinced that the circumstances that occurred when Robbie met Wax…may never be repeated. Since she is good at flattering herself, Wax was allotted half an hour with Marcus, and she got four days. She interviewed Simpson for 17 straight hours. You can’t get access to something like that nowadays; Nor are the BBC’s expenditure budgets. Wax’s combination of humor, charm, psychological acumen and chutzpah remains a rarity. The second act Q&A adds more details, more clips, and more celebrity gossip from Wax’s life as a top girl — which, like the show as a whole, is non-revealing but always engaging.