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She has interviewed figures like Donald Trump, Madonna and OJ Simpson for her 90s TV series Ruby Wax Meets – but her iconic career has never been under her real name for a very tragic reason.
As the TV star, 72, takes part in this year’s I’m A Celebrity, it might surprise fans to know her real name is Ruby Wachs.
Her parents were Jewish Austrians from Vienna and changed the spelling of the family name after they moved to Illinois, United States.
Ruby’s father, sausage manufacturer Edward Wachs and mother, accountant Bertha Goldmann, fled in 1938 to escape Nazi threat.
Under the new spelling, she moved to the UK and became a household name in the 90s for her BBC shows and the many outrageous face-offs with A Listers which shot her to fame.
But Ruby previously opened up about her difficult relationship with her parents growing up, revealing that they ‘brought the war from Europe into our kitchen’.
Speaking on Jamie Laing’s podcast Great Company, she said: ‘They were fleeing because they were Jewish and they took the war with them and brought it to our kitchen.
‘Then, finally, when I was 18 I came to London because I needed safety. They escaped out of Europe and I escaped back into it again.
‘They were torturous, both of them – in my mother innocently and my dad on purpose. You know, he’d play mind games.’
Ruby added: ‘I think that I have lived most of my life in a high anxiety state, and so I want to know where that came from…and I keep blaming my parents.
‘It would be interesting to know who they’re blaming. And I won’t stop until I figure out how these people were made and who they were.’
The actress and comedian once appeared on a 2017 episode of Who Do Think You Are? where she was told that her parents had fled Vienna at the time of the Nazi invasion after her father was imprisoned and tortured for his Jewish faith.
Conditions in the jail where he was kept were so tough that many inmates jumped out of windows and committed suicide.
Bertha was later diagnosed with hysteria, which Ruby believes was caused by witnessing Kristallnacht, the period of time when Nazis destroyed Jewish businesses and homes.
Ruby’s great aunt and uncle, Gabriele and Salomon Birer, stayed behind and attempted to escape but just as their documents came through the laws changed, forbidding Jews from travelling.
Until filming, Ruby, who has three children with her TV producer husband Ed Bye, had no knowledge of her family’s tragic past, and admitted that she is angry with her parents for not telling her what happened before they died.
She said: ‘The parents I had when I was growing up do not relate at all to what I’m finding out… I just thought they were monsters.’
The episode also saw Ruby, who has been frank about her own mental health struggles in the past, grow emotional as she traced her ancestry to the Czech Republic and learned of two relatives that had been sectioned in the same asylum.
In another scene the comedian – who viewers described as ‘courageous’ and ‘amazing’ – appeared on the verge of tears as she stroked the headstone of her grandfather.
Ruby left the celebrity life behind in the early 2000s when her TV career imploded and she fell into a severe depression that resulted in her seeking treatment at The Priory Clinic.
From the ashes of her TV career, she retrained as an expert in mindfulness, earning a master’s degree from Oxford in 2013 and is an avid mental health campaigner.
She was awarded an OBE in the 2015 Special Honours for her services to mental health after giving talks, writing books and doing charity work for the cause.
Ruby married her husband Ed in 1988, and they have three children together, son Max, 37, and daughters Madeleine, 35, and Marina, 32.
Now the presenter has joined the I’m A Celebrity jungle in Australia and has proven to be a divisive figure among fans, with some enjoying her ruthless nature and dry comedy, while others have blasted her behaviour.
In Tuesday’s episode, the star was caught stealing food from her campmates, leading viewers to brand her ‘selfish’ after she secretly robbed a bag of Liquorice Allsorts to tuck into herself.
It comes after viewers also branded Ruby ‘inappropriate and embarrassing’ after she gave Ginge a pair of her clean underwear as a good-luck charm before he faced the Bushtucker Trial Terrifying Tours.
But Ed brushed off the drama as he touched in Brisbane, ready to be reunited with Ruby whenever she departs the jungle in the next 10 days.
