This is a global original podcast.

Hello and welcome to full disclosure with me James O'Brien, a podcast project conceived chiefly to let me spend a little bit more time with people than is ordinarily available on my radio show.

And when I say spend time, obviously the privations of coronavirus continue to

affect us. So I'm delighted to be joined by Ruby Wax, albeit not in person. Ruby, thank you for doing

this. Sure. It occurs to me that people's idea of who Ruby Wax is is going to depend largely

on when they first encountered you. so my idea of who you are is probably slightly different from people who've come across you since you started being so open and and honest about your own mental health issues but i'd like to begin if i may at the at the very very beginning before you even arrived in Scotland to study drama.

What sort of pupil were you at school?

What was family like? What was home?

I wrote a book about it. It's pretty horrific, so that would take about an hour to explain.

Yeah, that would be appalling.

It was as dark and as dysfunctional as you can pretty much get.

I wrote a book called How Do You Want Me?

Just to give you an example.

And Carrie Fisher was my editor.

And she said my parents were almost as appalling as hers.

So you can't get a better review.

That's an astonishing achievement, really, isn't it?

Yeah, I worked on it.

They were so crazy that I could use their lines that came fresh out of their mouth

and I wouldn't even have to edit them.

So getting to Scotland, getting to drama school in Scotland was an escape?

I know you went to Berkeley before that.

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