SO MANY entertainers suffer from manic depression it almost makes you wonder if it's one of the criteria for the job, Stephen Fry being one of the more recent to nail his colours to the mast but Ruby Wax has gone one further and built an entire stage show around her ailment.

Ruby Wax: Losing It at Newport's Riverfront on Wednesday was a must for fans of this zany American entertainer accompanied in this show by Judith Owen a singer-songwriter who has also suffered from depression.

Not a good recipe for a night out you might think but to quote Ruby: ³If depressives laugh, you know you¹ve got a hit.² Well I don¹t know if there were any depressives in the audience but there was no shortage of laughter.

The show revolves around Ruby¹s insightful, unsentimental take on the human condition viewed from the perspective of her personal experience of breakdown while questing the meaning of life with the audience but examing aspects in a highly witty or informative way, helped no doubt by her degree in pyschology.

If there is any criticism to be made of this well constructed show it is that we didn¹t hear enough from her extremely talented companion Judith Owen but the show, after all, was about Ruby ­ losing it ­ and she did in some style.