Television
Ruby Wax's con-job
Ian Hislop
Ihave now witnessed a mugging to cam- era. It is not often that you see television used in an entirely new way but Ruby Wax Meets Imelda Marcos (BBC 1, Sunday) was quite extraordinary. Ruby Wax exploited her own relationship with the camera to beat up an old lady she was meant to be interviewing. And it was hysterical. We have become used to Dame Edna Everage or Mrs Merton interviewing a celebrity and using the character as a cover for rudeness. But in these situations the interviewee is always aware of what is going on. Ruby Wax has gone one stage further and used her own persona to be quite staggeringly rude to Imelda Marcos. And yet the vain old fraud had no idea that she was being stitched up. Ruby Wax flattered her outra- geously, effortlessly won her confidence and then made her look a complete idiot.
And it was all recorded on television.
Every question Ruby Wax put was undercut with a tongue shoved in her cheek and every answer greeted with a raised eyebrow. Every time Imelda looked the other way her 'new friend' pulled a face at us. When Mrs Marcos was out of the room Ruby Wax ran round snooping in her belongings and sniggering about the decor. It was incredibly funny, incredibly childish, and yet in its own way rather brave. When Imelda was singing sentimental ballads, Wax kept rushing up to the camera and holding up photos of the former First Lady meeting very unsentimental Third World psychopaths. `Gaddaff she would mouth gleefully. 'Saddam Hussein'. Imelda looked uncertain as to what was happening at this point but assumed that this woman from the BBC must be part of the real world of broadcasting that obeyed the normal rules of interview. It was a tribute to the power of Hello! magazine that once Imelda saw Ruby Wax on the cover of a previous issue it clinched her belief that she was in the trustworthy company of a fellow celebrity.
So Imelda let them film everything. Instead of the half-hour interview planned, she let the crew carry on for three days which produced some marvellously cringe- making footage. Imelda blesses the poor in church, Imelda is sworn in as a congress- woman, Imelda reads from her terrible book, Imelda sings very badly at the piano in a selection of hideous outfits. Ruby Wax even got to see the legendary shoe collec- tion, being taken up into the attic to view a whole floor full of new shoes.
And all the time Ruby was acting as a juvenile version of the viewer making one complicit in her naughtiness. There was Ruby casually looking through Imelda's legal defence documents, or telling the offi- cial press person to 'lighten up' or flicking up the singer's dress in the middle of a number so that we could see those shoes more clearly. The sheer glee with which she raced round the bathroom before Imelda came in, pointing out the towelettes that must have been taken from aeroplanes, was breathtaking. And yet there was a point being made there too. Five billion dollars removed from the Philippines during her reign and the former First Lady has not finished yet.
There was some footage added in after- wards of the assassination of opposition leader Benigno Aquino to point up Imel- da's views on the sanctity of life, and there were other historical inserts to underline the lies and the evasions that Ruby's ques- tions elicited. But it was the live footage which was really telling.
Obviously Imelda Marcos deserves much worse than this interview. She has escaped punishment for all the political and eco- nomic crimes in which she was implicated during her dictator husband's unpleasant regime. She has been allowed to return home to the Philippines and to re-enter public life. But at least she has been thor- oughly humiliated by a television pro- gramme. As a vain old woman who wants nothing more than the adoration of the media the punishment is in some way fit- ting. Ruby Wax did an outrageous con-job on her which is exactly what she did to a whole country.
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