Mum used to hide love letters from my boyfriends and put me down. Now I understand that she was a Polish immigrant forced to settle in Chicago. She was jealous of the freedom life gave me.

She cemented this trademark image in 1985 when Ruby Wax starred as loud-mouthed American actress Shelley DuPont on the British sitcom Girls On Top. She started her acting career as a straight actress at the Crucible Theatre Sheffield where Ruby Wax began a long-standing writing and directing partnership with Alan Rickman who later was to direct most of her stage comedy shows. In December 1989 Ruby Wax appeared in the Red Dwarf episode "Timeslides" as an American reporter.