RUBY WAX INVADES THE U.S.

Zany lady Ruby Wax has exported her outrageous interview show from British television to Fox on Monday nights. This woman is not afraid to ask anything, no matter how personal.

Wax is American, and that is her real name. “My parents were from Austria and didn’t understand that it’s less a name and more a bird call,” she joked.

But she’s lived in England for about 20 years, since she “ran away” from Chicago to study acting at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. From there, she performed with the Royal Shakespeare Company, did years of stage work and wrote and performed in shows with other RSC actors including Zoe Wannamaker, Alan Rickman and Jonathan Pryce.

Now she is fully ensconced in British television comedy, having served as script editor and co-writer on the series “Absolutely Fabulous” (seen here on cable’s Comedy Central). She is best known for hosting “Ruby Wax Meets ...” for the last 10 years, which didn’t start as an interview show and has been carried on A&E.;

“The people in ‘Absolutely Fabulous’ were in my show, and a tiny bit would incorporate a celebrity, like Billy Crystal,” she explained. She found that these guest “bits” had a big impact, so she decided to focus on one star per show.

She has dinner with each guest beforehand and tries to spend as much time as possible getting to know them. Fox’s segments include chats with Lisa Kudrow, Brett Butler, John Goodman, Tom Hanks, Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson, Fran Drescher and Bill Cosby. But for all her attempts at chumminess, Wax really likes to cut loose. In the first show that aired June 9, Wax offered to be Pamela Anderson’s body double on the set of “Baywatch” and talked sex and fitness with Goldie Hawn while reclining in a hotel bed; she also takes a reluctant Bette Midler shopping. All the while, Wax digs for dirt on husbands, habits and histories, which turn into comic bits starring herself.

“None of these things are planned before I meet [the guests],” Wax said. “Otherwise the subject will sense this huge agenda. This way, they think, ‘We’re part of something that’s being invented,’ and they go along with it.”

She explained that her show is geared to catch the famous off guard and really dig beneath the surface. “I never make them look silly, I just make them look accessible,” she said. “I try to get them in a really good mood.”

Back in England, where she lives with her husband and three children, Wax strives for weightier guests and nearly landed Yasser Arafat, she said.

Wax said that most of the six Fox shows are recycled from her British series, but some have been made especially for an American audience, since viewers here would not recognize some of the guests on English television.

There are other differences between making a show for the two countries, she said. “I’ve found that with American television, [people in the business] take themselves incredibly seriously. When television is great in [England], it’s great--and when it’s awful, you couldn’t even get it on cable in America.”

But British comedy shows that were long considered more shocking than their American counterparts may be losing ground, Wax observed. “I think that the sitcoms in America have now surpassed [those in] this country. Look at ‘Cybill’ and ‘Seinfeld.’ ”

Wax’s comedy does have an English sensibility, as in the way she puts herself down. (She contrasted the size of her breasts with Anderson’s, for example.) “That’s an English thing. I learned that here,” she said.

No matter. She’ll do whatever it takes to “make them laugh so they’ll give me what I want.”

“The Ruby Wax Show” airs Mondays at 8:30 p.m. on Fox.