THE QUICK-WITTED RUBY WAX describes her new Lifetime show RUBY as “60 Minutes on acid.” If you’ve ever seen her previous shows from England or the interviews she did on THE RUBY WAX SHOW here in the states a few years ago, then you can visualize that very apt description.

However, if you’re one of the unfortunate people who has missed out on her marvelously outrageous sense of humor, here’s a taste (from THE RUBY WAX SHOW): Part of her interview with Roseanne took place with the two of them in Roseanne’s bathtub; she asked to see Zsa Zsa Gabor’s scars from her plastic surgery, then wisecracked her way through the rest of the interview, which took place in Gabor’s chaffeur-driven limo; and her interview with O.J. Simpson was surreal—when I told her that a friend said he thought she basically let O.J. hang himself, she agreed that that was a fair assessment.

By the time you read this (RUBY premiered in August and will continue through October 23), on RUBY she will already have taken the place of a Las Vegas showgirl who got sick—yes, Wax walked down that runway in a top-heavy headdress, almost falling on her face when bowing. She will have just interviewed Rupert Everett, of whom she says, “I think it’s wonderful that he doesn’t care [what people think of him because of his homosexuality],” declaring other gay actors who are not out as “screwed up.”

OK, how does she feel about gay marriage? “I don’t feel anything,” the married lady answers matter-of-factly. “What would be the difference?”

Well, for one thing, it ain’t legal.

“Well, they can get married in Europe,” she deadpans, “...in Copenhagen or somewhere around there.”

Wax jokes that marriage in general is not that great an institution, even though she’s been married for 10 years and has three children, who, by the way, will appear in the episode of RUBY about sperm donors. In this episode, she guests on Conan O’Brien’s late-night show to get sperm from him. And when I talk to her by phone, she has just guested on Conan’s show the night before for real. She says she talked about the “wonderful food stuff,” that in England they “had spotted dick.”

Maybe I didn’t understand that, so I ask, “They had what?”

“One food was called spotted dick—it sounds like what it is. And another food they had in the grocery store is faggots in their own oil.”

“Faggots?!”

“IN THEIR OWN OIL. It says it on the tin...I swear to God.”

Hey, I figure I’ve got nothing to lose at this point, so I ask Wax if she’s ever made out with a woman. “I think so,” she says. “It was in Majorca. Not Majorca, but I don’t really know, because I was drunk.”

“So you may have.”

“I may have. I love women,” she declares.

“I do, too,” I reply. “I’m gay, but I adore them. But I don’t think that’s real uncommon.”

“It is for men” is her priceless retort.

Though Wax was born in Chicago, Illinois, she moved to England when she was 17 years old. She liked it so much, she’s lived there ever since.

“Did you like it because of the weather?” I ask.

She laughs. “Yeah, sure. That was the charm. The bad teeth I like too.”

Wax started out as a dramatic actress, and she says she was bad at it. When I ask if she’s serious about having been bad, she replies with her usual dry wit: “It was a Shakespeare company, so they were serious. I was serious, and I was terrible.”

She was terrible for seven years, but actor Alan Rickman (the best thing about Kevin Costner’s Robin Hood), who was a fellow thespian in the same company, told Wax that she should start writing comedy. Which she did. So for four years, she wrote shows, and Rickman directed them. And they became successful.

Still in England, she co-wrote a TV series in 1985 called Girls on Top, starring Wax, Tracey Ullman, Jennifer Saunders, and Dawn French. “It was really bad,” she says, “but we thought we were really funny. It was wild.”

And England has been wild about Wax ever since. She wrote and performed her successful one-woman show, Wax Acts; she presented documentaries; she wrote and starred in four of her own series for the BBC...the list is endless. What I want to know is if any of these shows are available to us.

“No, they are too risky for this country,” she says.

What does that mean? Are they too sexual or too risqué?

“They aren’t sexual,” she says. “They’re just dark. Like I joined a female chain gang, and sometimes it’s not funny. There’s black patches, and they don’t like that here.”

So Wax has to tone down her creativity in the states, but we can still get a glimmer of what the English get. On one of the episodes of RUBY, she goes to boot camp where she encounters “a potential gay.” In another episode, she makes it her quest to find a man for her friend, actress Carrie Fisher. After having been through all the men in Los Angeles, she goes to a ranch for a real-live cowboy.

Her search was unsuccessful for Fisher, but she boasts about finding a “great one” for herself. “But he wound up throwing up. That wasn’t filmed though,” she explains of her drunk find. “But he was gorgeous.”

“Well, that’s the main thing.”

Wax laughingly agrees. And it does seem that gorgeous men play an important part in Wax’s life. Well, somewhat. When I ask her who she would like to be stranded on a desert island with, she doesn’t hesitate. “Johnny Depp, ’cause he’s the most gorgeous thing I’ve ever seen, and he can act like a dream.”

Knowing she won’t have the same answer for a certain head of state, I ask what she thinks of Bill Clinton.

“I think Bill’s a pathological liar,” she says, “but that doesn’t mean he can’t be a good president. You have to be crazy to be president anyway. But he speaks really well, and he has great presence.”

No easy segue here, so I ask Ruby what movie she would pick if stranded on a desert island. The interviewer in her takes over. “Name me some movies,” she says.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been asked that question, so I have to think about it,” I say, stalling for time. “Uh, Resurrection with Ellen Burstyn.”

“I think I liked that film,” she says. “I remember it.” But she’s still waiting for me to continue with a list of films.

“Let’s see . . . Cabaret?”

“No.”

“Uh, let’s see . . . The Color Purple?” I’m starting to sweat now. “Movies that other people have said. Debbie Reynolds said any of those old musicals . . .”

Ruby ignored that one, as well she should. “I love Clockwork Orange, and I just met Malcolm McDowell, and I told him I’ve seen it more than 40 times.”

Ah, we’ve got one. “OK, have you got anything you want to add about RUBY?”

“It’s incredibly campy, and if you have a sense of humor, you’ll be happy.”

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