Ruby Wax has seen a new wave of popularity thanks to her appearance on this year's series of the hit ITV reality competition I'm A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here!, where her sense of humour has attracted quite the fanbase.
However, the TV star's life away from the jungle and silver screen is quite different from what you may imagine – the 72-year-old has a home in the Morayshire town of Findhorn, which is known for being a rather alternative community.
Ruby Wax's home
Though she was born in Evanston, Illinois, over on the other side of the Atlantic, she now calls Scotland home. In an interview on the Travel Secrets podcast with host travel industry specialist Tanya Rose, she shared: "Well, I have a little house in Findhorn, which you'd never expect because I like five star."
© ITVThe coastal town has a tiny population, and is famous both as a destination for mindfulness and as a hub for ecological living, thanks to a commitment to sustainable practices including renewable energy from wind and solar power, as well as innovative waste systems. It has become especially notable for its spiritual community.
Explaining what drew her to the area, Ruby said: "I have another side of my personality that's quite bohemian, well hippy and kind of grungy, because it's my childhood. So I bought a place. It was being built. It's teeny." She also shared in an interview with The Independent that she is "trying to balance" her unsustainable habit of flying with her eco-home.
Ruby Wax's Findhorn community
Findhorn's community as it is now began in 1962, according to the community's website, when Peter and Eileen Caddy's jobs at the nearby four-star Cluny Hill hotel were terminated.
Left with nowhere to go and not a lot of money, they moved to a nearby caravan park with their family and began to grow vegetables with their friend Dorothy Maclean, to feed the family.
Soon enough, people started to join them, and a group of six became a small community, reaching around 300 members in the 1970s and 1980s.
Describing the community, Ruby said: "It's the first big kind of hippie community. It's called an intentional community. You can stay there in one of the caravans. There's pagan rituals on Saturday and yoga during the week."
This isn't the first time that the I'm A Celebrity contestant moved into an eco home: while writing her 2021 book, A Mindfulness Guide For Survival, she was living in Hertfordshire in what she describes as a 'nano house', a small low-cost dwelling, while her TV producer husband Ed Bye remained at their family home in London.
