EXCLUSIVE: Ruby Wax is to charge 20 strangers more than £500 each for the chance to visit her at home for a day full of mindfulness and “brutally honest” conversations
Ruby Wax is charging fans to visit her at home(Image: Ken McKay/ITV/Shutterstock)
Ruby Wax is inviting 20 strangers into her private Notting Hill home for a £550-a-head day of mindfulness, lunch and tea – and she might even let them look in her wardrobe. The 73-year-old comedian, broadcaster and mental health campaigner is opening her doors to her Notting Hill home on November 17 for a six-hour retreat designed to help guests quieten their minds with some ‘brutally honest’ conversations about life. The unusual event comes as Ruby opens up about the importance of human connection on Annalie Howling’s Happy After podcast, which comes out on September 16. Speaking about why people need to come together and talk openly, Ruby said: “Retreats are about connection and it’s for people to speak from the heart.
“People go on and they speak honestly what’s going on. And by watching somebody else open up it makes you relieved, like you go ‘I’m not alone’. So, when you feel heard you feel validated as a human.”
Ruby believes there is something particularly powerful about being able to see and connect with other people rather than endlessly communicating through phones and apps.
“When people aren’t on their phones and they’re just on the screen, you see the whites of their eyes and that bonding chemical, that oxytocin spreads like wildfire,” she said.
“And whenever I get off, it’s like I’ve been to church or something because people opened up.” She added: “People don’t go on for hours. It’s like as soon as they feel heard and you see other heads going, ‘Yeah, I’m like that, too.’ They sort of don’t have to keep going.
The former Absolutely Fabulous star, who was awarded an OBE for services to mental health in 2015, received a a master’s degree in mindfulness cognitive therapy, appointed Visiting Professor in Mental Health Nursing at the University of Surrey.
She has also written books on the subject and still meditates every day to maintain her inner calm. She previously said: “I used to be able to see it [depression] coming and pull back everything.
“I’d know to cancel, cancel, cancel. I’d go to my room, a safe place where nobody can get me, and where I can see the doorknob – because I have a fear of being locked in.
“Sometimes I’ve been there for weeks. Instead of having to go to a hospital, I’d wait for the dopamine. Before that, I used to keep working and overriding it, then I’d get really ill. I usually know the tipping point. But this time, I missed it.
Thankfully, Ruby, who is married to TV and film producer Ed Bye and has three grown-up children, was also able to visit other places, such as a refugee camp in Greece, a month-long silent mindfulness retreat in San Francisco, and the Dominican Republic, where she swam with whales. However, she knows that her illness is something she will never be able to truly escape from.
Describing depression, she said: “The black hole of diseases, where you sit helpless as your mind hammers you with accusations. Your thoughts attack like little demons biting chunks out of your brain. It’s hard to stay alive and listen,” she also tragically admits: “I’ve spent a lifetime creating a ‘front’ to give the illusion that all is well. It wasn’t, and it isn’t.”
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