Stressed? Don't be daft. It may be the title of her latest show but don't be misled by the misnomer. Ruby Wax insists - stresses, in fact - that it is not about therapy or stress. Both are mentioned but "only about two pages in a script of about 40."

"It's more about what irks me - like celebrities who do charity, you know, Sting gluing the bark back on trees in South America," she says.

"I cover a lot of topics really fast and it's usually because I'm knocking pretensions.

"The person who's doing the show isn't quite me - it's someone who has to lie down and listen to tapes of whales mating. If I was really that stressed I wouldn't be able to stand up in front of, sometimes, a 1,000 people and do a show."

Ruby says the style of writing in Stressed is a bit like the scripts she penned for the BBC sit-com Absolutely Fabulous.

"It's ironic humour. A very English style - I've been here for most of my life. I came to England so long ago I can't remember exactly when, but I was trying to marry one of The Beatles and I got side-tracked," she jokes.

In Stressed no subject is taboo, from models about which she says "It's new-borns on stillettoes, why not just toss a foetus down the runway?" and men "We know very little about them. They're born, they grow a stomach, they die," to health food cafes where, she reckons, you get "served by people who look like an elephant's scrotum in a kaftan." Wicked, but we wouldn't expect anything less.

As well as outrageous, off-the-wall, social observation Ruby includes some endearing anecdotes about her personal life and her childhood. Her parents, who were famously the subject of one of her television programmes, come in for a pounding.

"I mention the fact that they are Austrian - who eat their young unless they can get away.

"Some of it's kind of edgy. I try to make it dark-funny rather than stand-up funny. I don't tell jokes, it's more life stories," she explains.

In the show Ruby claims she is a "c**p" actress and performs hilarious extracts of Shakespearian roles she played when she was with the Royal Shakespeare Company, where she met velvet-voiced luvvy Alan Rickman who, she says, trained her to "do comedy."

"He's very funny - look at him as the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. He directed my last live tour and he has given me a lot of notes for this show."

Ruby is keen to point out that Stressed is a scripted production - there's absolutely no improvising.

"It's a bit like a play - it has a beginning, a middle and an end. It's kind of autobiographical but it's making points that everyone can identify with. I aim to hit every target. Everything is connected and it's all leading to a kind of conclusion about what we're all on earth for. I'm offering a philosophy of life."

Best known for her television shows The Full Wax, Ruby Wax Meets - where she rummaged through Fergie's T-shirt drawers - Ruby's American Pie and the dinner party chat show, simply called Ruby, which is currently on BBC2 on Monday nights, the woman who asks the questions nobody else dares to and many we'd never have thought of, is about to embark on yet more voyeuristic journeys. Next on her hit list is . . . wait for it . . . the World.

"I'm doing a sort of global American Pie, where I go to places like The Vatican," she reveals.

Ruby Wax rummaging through the Pope's sock drawer? I wouldn't put it past her.

Ruby is appearing at Southampton's Guildhall on Wednesday 1 November.