Chat show and stand-up legend Craig Ferguson sits down with Deputy Editor-in-Chief Jack Murray to talk through white lies, balancing joy with despair, and the inscrutable desire to learn Greek ahead of an upcoming hometown return to comedy.
In an alternative reality, Craig Ferguson might’ve been a joiner. Dialling in from America with his camera perched upon a windowsill, he points towards the yellow-painted cladding behind him as an example of his handywork, positioned in the corner enclave of a guest bedroom with the same yellow tone, overcast by dull natural light flooding in. The DIY-enthusiast/talk-show host/comedian extraordinaire cuts a relaxed shape for someone seeking refuge from the new family puppy, having traded Scotland for the States a long time ago.
Perhaps it’s by virtue of spending most of his adult life across the Atlantic that a return to the streets on which he grew up is a rare affair for Ferguson, who stops by for a homecoming stand-up gig in Glasgow’s O2 Academy this week. Prefacing our chat about the show, there seems to be a certain glint in his eye as he stares intently down the lens, a glint that signifies stories of his own beyond those he coaxes out of guests across the mediums of television and (as of late) podcasting.
Whenever the conversation turns towards Glasgow in the 80’s for example, the decades spent stateside dissipate, and he might as well be rolling midway down Sauchiehall Street with the Dreamboys (his former punk-band, fronted by Peter Capaldi) in tow, presumably post-gig. It’s this well-developed transatlantic patina of life experience that still informs his weltanschauung (or worldview) to this day, as well as his penchant for complex German philosophical vocabulary and arm tattoos.
You’d expect a man designated ‘homies’ with the likes of Jon Hamm to never cease in finding conversational gears to shift between or tangents to ride through witty anecdotes, but perhaps what’s more surprising than the rise from Cumbernauld to California, is the fact he’s managed to stay down to Earth whilst doing so – signified by a wry smile that begins to form from the moment we start to talk.
JM: ‘Pants on Fire’ is some name for a show, should I get a fire extinguisher or is it more metaphorically about the white lies that almost naturally embellish any stand-up comedy set?
CF: I think that some of them are little white lies, and some of them are great big red lies! The reason I called it that is, I made a decision around 10 years ago, maybe more actually, that I would never talk about politics in my stand up. I understand it, something new happens every day so there’s [always] something new to talk about with politics, but I just couldn’t be arsed. It’s a stylistic choice and I like it, because I don’t talk about [politics] it kind of forces you into an anecdotal style of work which I find really interesting. It’s part of both Scottish and Irish heritage that every time you tell a story, you kind of embellish it a little more, but of course a wee bit over 100 shows can get to a big bit! There’s an authenticity throughout the show, but not every anecdote contains a high volume of verisimilitude.
JM: It feels like returning to stand-up has been a cyclical reoccurrence in your career so far, how has your attitude to writing material shifted?
CF: When I was back in Glasgow at the very beginning, doing the “Bing Hitler” stuff, it was all about shock and awe. You had a guitar and you were gonna play it really fuckin’ loud and that was the thing, but I think over time you get interested in different notes and different things. I like to write stuff that makes me laugh, and interestingly enough it’s why I stopped doing a podcast – because I found it was interfering with my writing. I remember I was talking one day on the podcast, I was blethering a load of shite into the phone to talk, and I started wondering out loud if ever a Kennedy had been eaten by a shark.
I thought to myself, I don’t think a Kennedy has ever been eaten by a shark, but you [have] to figure somewhere in the history of the Kennedy family somebody must’ve been eaten by a shark! I started talking about it and then realized that: “Has a Kennedy ever been eaten by a shark?”, is a piece of stand-up comedy but it’ll never be developed because I said it too soon and I needed to think about it and maybe talk to some Kennedy’s or sharks!
JM: On a more serious note, you won a Peabody award with the Late Late Show for an interview with Archbishop Desmond Tutu – how do you even prepare for something like that?
CF: You read his books; I read his books! [Laughs] I was aware of what Tutu and [Nelson] Mandela had been doing in South Africa because I’m a human and I read the media, but what I did was I prepared using respect, which meant I would talk to him about whatever he wanted to talk about. I knew enough about what he had done so I wouldn’t trip over myself but also because he was a Bishop, I also asked him if he could only move diagonally which he thought was funny, and I thought was funny, and so there was an informality to it. Respect and knowledge of who you’re talking to, but I’m not a journalist. Like you say, I’ve got a Peabody award but I’m not a journalist – I’m not gonna find the thing, I just talk to them. It’s hard to understand really, it doesn’t seem that unusual to me that you’d just talk to someone.
JM: Do you think America is moving away from late-night talk shows?
CF: Y’know, it might surprise you but […] I am uniquely unqualified to discuss the state of American late-night television! I think honestly [being a stranger to American late-night television] was my secret sauce because I was never really part of it. I mean, I used to say on the show nearly every night: “look, this isn’t a late-night show and I’m not a late-night host”, and nobody ever believed me! I suppose it’s hard for them to believe you when it is a late-night talk show, and you are a late-night talk show host, but I was just trying to explain that I don’t know how it happened. I still can’t really explain it. I’m really glad I did it, I’m really grateful I did it, I think we did something really quite interesting and different, but I’m glad I don’t have to do it anymore.
JM: More recently, you’ve hosted Joy: A Podcast. It was during a monologue defending Britney Spears on The Late Late Show that you said “comedy should have a certain amount of joy in it”, how much has that influenced your worldview?
CF: It influences everything I do in life; I don’t walk around banging a tambourine or anything but the reason I got into comedy was to feel better. You make other people laugh and if it’s properly done, they’re probably having a good time, right? I don’t respond as an audience member to comedy which is cruel, I don’t like that, and for me to enjoy something it’s got to have some joy in it. It probably has to have some rage and despair in it as well, but you’ve got to put a bit of sugar in your curry to make it work!
JM: On the podcast, there was once some discussion about how you never felt as if you fit in most places. Has that sense of individuality helped throughout your career?
CF: I can’t tell you if it has helped me or hurt me, to be honest. I feel like sometimes maybe things would’ve been more successful if I had been better at joining the gang, I guess? When I lived in Hollywood, I didn’t go out. I had young kids at the time, but since I got sober anyway, I’m not particularly a sociable animal. Actually, I don’t know how sociable I was whilst drinking either, but I was out more! I don’t know. Ultimately, I’m glad of it, because you end up being pretty self-aware. Have I made compromises along the way? Fuck yeah, everybody does but nothing so big I think: “I wish I never did that”.
JM: Last question. You moved to America at broadly a student age, if you could go back, what’s the one piece of advice you would have?
CF: I think I would’ve stayed in school. I mean I bounced out of school and into a punk rock band when I was 16 years old, and I don’t regret not being part of an established career path. In fact, I’m grateful for not being that, but I really wish I learned to read Greek. Ancient Greek. I want to read Homer in the way it was written, because I suspect a lot of that stuff is lost in translation! I want to read Greek, and that does not happen easy when you’re in a Punk band.
I think there are certain academic trips [that] I wish I’d taken, particularly in literature because I still am a voracious reader but there’s probably dots I wish I could join, that I probably have missed. Perhaps that’s a grass is always greener thing. The thing was in Glasgow; you had to have read the most obscure piece of literature: “Of course you’ve read Camus’ The Outsider, I read that when I was 14!”. It was real currency, and I’m really glad of that, although I don’t know what it’s like now.
This conversation has been edited for concision and clarity. Tickets to ‘Pants on Fire’ at O2 Academy Glasgow on 26 April are available here.
