DIARY RUBY WAX
Charity seems to be the word these days so I thought I'd latch myself on to one. Unfortunately, show business is as cruel in this arena as it is in everything else. You virtually have to audition for the disease you're interested in, and if your ratings are low you won't be invited to take part in what I call the 'biggie benefits'. For exam- ple, if you're asked to participate in a bene- fit for 'Make Sure Aardvarks Mate in Safe- ty' your career is definitely plummeting. But if you're asked to support a designer disease such as Aids, you're in. Liz Taylor is the Aids people's patron saint. So if you're connected to Aids, you're connected to Liz. If you become part of such a 'biggie', you go straight on to Wogan, bore everyone to tears for ten minutes with your face all scrunched up in concern and collect £200 from the BBC.
Ihave learned all this from bitter experi- ence. I tried to get in on Amnesty last year. I stood at the stage door screaming, 'I have a Puerto Rican cleaning woman. I know what suffering is.' I didn't get in. I watched it on television, heckling everyone involved till my saliva covered the screen. But this year I'm on a charity high, and I was asked (for the record, they phoned me) to do Comic Relief. My mission was to start at 6 in the morning and go on every live show, radio and television, in London, for the next 24 hours and give out a Comic Relief phone number to call in donations. Sounds easy? First thing in the morning, Radio One disc-jockeys scream at such a volume your bowels are ripped from your intestines by the sheer force of their hyped, caffeine- rewed personalities. I met 12 of these sound enemas between 6 and 10 a.m. Then I moved on to another phenomenon, breakfast television. Here, in complete con- trast, they manage to find presenters who have been clinically dead for several years. I like guessing who has more charisma, the presenter or the cushion cover. Let us remember breakfast television in its heyday — its goddess, Anne Diamond, that chirpy chipmunk o' the morn' sitting next to an empty sweater called Mike. She always had the look, whether talking about cystitis or spring colours, of a startled squirrel in your headlights just before you squish it to death. Then, just as your head would nod on to your lap, there would be someone with the IQ of a house plant giving you the weather, and so the show continued until you were sure there was life after death. Anyway, that cluster of talent is long gone. Anne has been replaced by Fiona Armstrong, who has what they call the 'F' factor, which I think means dogs bark at her when she walks down the street. In order to make all these live shows in one day it was necessary to have a police escort. I don't know if you've experienced a police escort but, let me tell you, two men in leather, on motorbikes with sirens blar- ing and lights flashing, waving cars off the road for you makes the act of sex seem like eating cereal. We all sped at 90 miles an hour down the Finchley Road, cut through Marble Arch, and I mean right through the Arch, not around the roundabdut like the plebs. We saw pedestrians stare in religious awe as my two ferocious policemen roared over them, and then look slightly disap- pointed as my pathetic van followed. You cannot say `up yours' to the world in a more poetic way than with the words 'police escort'.
Later in the day I visited BBC News, where they seemed stunned that I had a lower half, and then at about 8 p.m. I rolled up to Gardener's World. By now Comic Relief was on television, live, starring Britain's top comedians. And where was I? Gardener's World. Do you know that scene in one of Woody Allen's films in which everyone interesting is on a train going the other way while he sits alone in his old bor- ing one? That was me. So there I was facing some heathen mud-sniffer on Gardener's World telling me the latest gossip on fun- gus. Then he forced me to watch him plant bulbs and made me touch one. It was horri- ble. The man had child-bearing thumbs. He was getting a little too excited for my liking, so off I went to my last port of call, The Word, a Channel 4 'people riding the wild surf of puberty' show. Rock music blares as a camera runs you over and a Northern- accented, hair-gelled pit bull asks probing questions like, 'What's your fave colour?' If you wonder what the ape was doing just before it got up on two legs, wonder no more. He was a presenter on The Word. At 1 o'clock in the morning I went home, an empty sack of cellulite, jiggling from so much variety in one day, and just as my eyes clanged shut I realised I had done my bit for a few million desperate souls who are neck and neck with flies for the food. So in a way I am up there with St Liz, our lady of the face-lifts.
Last week I met Princess Diana. I was appalled by my response. I'm an American. I thought I was free from being heightened to hysteria at the mere flicker of a royal sighting. I have seen bright, well-educated, adult English people catch a glimpse of the Queen 'Mum', jolt to rigid attention and break into involuntary song, as tears of love streamed down their faces, and I'd pity them and smirk in superiority. Then I was asked to go and meet Princess Diana at a charity event. The charity, a Chiswick refuge for battered wives, wanted me to be 'received' by her, meaning I had to stand in a queue with three other women, Maureen Lipman, Helena Kennedy and a murderess, and wait to be touched. So, out of curiosity, I went. I started out very cool and amusing, thinking I'd just tell her how worried I was we'd be in the same outfit. But by the time she arrived I was a wreck. If you had an experimental rat stand in that queue as long as I did, watching photographers pre- pare for their feeding frenzy, it too would have snapped to a curtsy by the time the Princess showed up. When she finally took my hand, I said something so insane that if I could have sued my own mouth, I would have. I told her I'd see her again next month at her house. Her eyes drifted heav- enwards for help. So I said it louder. 'I'll be coming to your house,' I said, 'Buckingham Palace, and I hope you show up or I'll be arrested.' She smiled patiently and inquired what I was talking about. I told her that I'd been invited to come to the Palace in a month (which is true, I swear) to meet the Princess Royal. At that point, someone tackled me to the floor and whispered, 'She isn't the Princess Royal.' Well, I know that piece of information when my mind is still connected to me but it had drifted off into its own orbit. So I then argued loudly that she could be a Princess Royal because she has both those qualifications. I said she could be called lots of things like the Princess of Height as well. You could hear a pin drop. Everyone moved away from me in disgust. Only then did I realise I had made a big mistake, and curtsied my way backwards out of the room. Then I went home and beat myself. Yes, this country has created something beyond fame, beyond something money can buy. The people of this country have invested in these perfectly normal examples of homo sapiens so much attention that you could surf off the charisma that waves off them — like pieces of modern art that can demand millions even if they are just mustard squirted on a blank canvas. And who am I to argue?
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