I am not ashamed that I used to be a drunk, says Scots star

The Herald Scotland

26-04-2025

Admittedly, it's in the Upper East Side, a block away from Central Park and the Metropolitan Museum of Art and it cost the best part of $2 million (just under £1.5m in Sterling), so he's probably not slumming it.
And certainly the tiny corner I see of it through my Zoom lens looks handsome. What's that picture behind you, Craig? 'That's a Scottish artist, Hugh Williams, the horse painter guy. It's good, isn't it?'
It's Good Friday in New York today. And in Falkirk too, for that matter.
'You live in Falkirk? A million years ago I went to Falkirk Technical College for a year with Robin Guthrie who was in the Cocteau Twins. He was from Grangemouth. We were both electronic engineers. He made something of his life.'
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I think it's fair to say that Ferguson has too. Once upon a time known round these parts by his angry comedic alter ego Bing Hitler, Ferguson has gone on to become a film star, a late-night American talk show host - he hosted The Late Late Show on CBS for 11 seasons - and an author. These days he's 62, drug-free, drink-free, a podcaster, a husband and a father. And he has returned to stand-up.
Indeed, he's coming back to Glasgow this June with a new show, Pants on Fire. I ask him for the show's elevator pitch.
'It's a bunch of almost true stories. Some of them not true at all. Do you know when you see something on Netflix that's 'based on a true story'? OK, so this is all based on a true story.'
What it isn't is particularly topical.
'I made a bit of a change in how I did stand-up. When you do late night [aka The Late Late Show] you're forced into topical events all the time. Everything's topical, everything's politics. I was looking at that space thing with Katy Perry. [Perry went up to the edge of space for 11 minutes on Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin rocket; but you already knew that.] And I thought, 'God if I was doing late night I would be all over that stuff.'
'So, when I came out of it I wanted to go back to the kind of stuff I used to do right at the beginning when I was doing Bing. It was stuff that was anecdotal and personal. And that's what I did.'
In his last stand-up show I'm So Happy, which you can watch on his website, he addressed cancel culture and what comedians can and cannot say these days. Does he feel inhibited as a comedian now in any way?
'I recorded that special about 18 months ago and it was very much prominent in my mind at that time and I don't really talk about that anymore. I think it was a moment when everybody was very touchy.'
Craig Ferguson on his US talk show (Image: free) When he started comedy, in the 1980s, he reminds me, the only comedians around were himself, Fred MacAulay - 'Fred was doing golf clubs and I was doing nightclubs' - and his hero, Billy Connolly.
Back then, he says, 'you were always getting in trouble for saying something. Billy was always in trouble. And I expect it. It's the price of doing business in my line of work. Some people will get mad at what you say.
'When I was doing late night I had a very good producer who would say, 'Is it worth it? Is the joke good enough.' And sometimes it was and sometimes it wasn't.
'And that stuck with me. If it's a good enough joke I don't give a f*** who it annoys. But if it's not that good a joke maybe it's not worth the hassle.
'I know there's stuff I have done back in the day I would now go, 'Oh Jesus.' But you live and learn, I guess.'
It's maybe worth remembering that while hosting The Late Late Show on CBS for all those years the moments that cut through most were his interview with Desmond Tutu which managed to combine humour with a platform for ideas of forgiveness and compassion (the show won a Peabody Award as a result) and his monologue in 2007 when he revealed why he would not be doing jokes about Britney Spears when she was struggling with her mental health. 'We shouldn't be attacking the vulnerable people,' he said at the time.
All of which maybe raises the question, is he a very different comedian than he was back in his Bing Hitler days? 'It's funny. My youngest boy found a vinyl of Bing Hitler live at the Tron so he put it on and made me listen to it and I thought, 'Some of that is not bad.' That's 1986 I was 24.
'I tend to dismiss things and move on, but I listened to it and I can see how that did OK. Parts of it are funny, parts of it are awful.
'Am I different? I'm older. I move around less on stage now. I get out there, I stand and talk, that's it.'
Craig Ferguson as Bing Hitler (Image: free)
What's undeniable is that he's a very different person. In the days before we speak I read his 2019 book Riding the Elephant, a series of autobiographical essays in which he talks about his childhood in Cumbernauld, his comedy, his marriages, how he lost his virginity and his toxic relationship with alcohol. He has been sober for more than 30 years now.
Reading it, I say, what strikes me is the almost insane drive for success that seems to have animated him throughout his career.
'I think when I was younger I liked to phrase it like that because it sounds like I'm searching for something. That sounds a little bit nicer than what I think it might have been.
'I think I was greedy and I wanted things. I wanted attention. All the stuff people look for on social media. I wanted kudos and attention and money, I suppose.
'There was something that happened early on that reset that for me and I still talk about it with my kids. Whenever I get recognised in the streets we call it a 'Haw Bing'.
'Because one of the first shows I ever did at the Tron Theatre had gone really well and I had gone down the next day to get my guitar or whatever and when I was leaving somebody shouted to me, 'Haw Bing'. It was the first time I'd ever been recognised in the street. A guy at the Trongate shouted, 'Haw Bing' and I turned around. He went, 'You're a c***.'
'It was such an interesting, sharp lesson on visibility and fame and this kind of life. So, if I'm going somewhere the kids will say, 'Put a hat on dad so we don't get any Haw Bings'.
'So, was I searching for something? I don't know. I don't think it was particularly artistic or noble. It was hard to know who I even was. I felt like I was panicking all the time. I think we grew up pretty panicky. Maybe it was the Cold War or something. I felt like I was terrified all the time.'
Nuclear annihilation always seemed imminent back then, I suggest. 'It was, though, wasn't it? I used to have dreams about it. I was terrified. There was this level of anxiety all the time. It's probably much more dangerous and scary now.'
Craig Ferguson in Still Game in a guest role (Image: free) Does that younger you feel close or far away?
'Yes and no, I suppose. I've reached a point now - I don't know if this is age - I feel affection more than embarrassment or shame for being a drunk back then. I feel sorry for me then. I was so full of f****** bravado and gallusness, but it was all a front. I was f****** terrified and I'm not terrified anymore.
'Am I the same guy? I think essentially yeah. The same DNA obviously, but experience changes you a bit. I was talking to somebody yesterday who's a very successful writer of a TV show and she was saying she's managed to avoid bitterness in her career and I said, 'Well, yeah, maybe a bit of success has helped you avoid bitterness.'
'I don't know. I'm less driven than I was. I'm not out to have it all, girlfriend.'
Because you've already had it all?
'A little bit. I used to have a friend - he's still a friend, but he's not alive anymore - this lovely man who helped me out when I was trying to get sober and he was from Liverpool and he used to say, 'II always feel a bit more spiritual when I've a couple of bob in my pocket.' And I think there is some truth to that.
'Look, health is the number one. There's nothing else but health and if you have health you've got everything. But at the same time a bit of cash, a bit of success, a couple of pats on the back is not horrible.'
Well, I tell him, as we're more or less of an age, maybe this is a good time to talk about mortality. Craig, do you think about death much?
'The last four or five years I've had a couple of medical procedures. Nothing terrifying, but they involved me getting put under. They give you a drug called Propofol to put you under for an endoscope.
'Now, I'm drug and alcohol-free for decades, but the IV drip went into my arm and the anaesthesiologist said, 'OK, I'm going to send you to sleep now and I watched the drips go in and I thought, 'Oh God, this is great. I love this, I love this, I love this … And then I was gone.
Craig Ferguson at the Brave premiere in Edinburgh with Kelly Macdonald and the late Robbie Coltrane (Image: free)'And I think it's probably like that. You're just not there. But this is what I don't know. And I have become more interested … You know people say, 'How often does your dad think about the Roman Empire?' I've become fascinated by Hellenistic philosophers, Stoic philosophers, pre-Roman christianity, the Upanishads, all sorts of people trying to figure it out.
'I am much more interested in that than when I was skint Haw Bing.
'But having a concrete idea about it, no. Do I think about it, not directly. I try not to scare myself too much. But I do question the nature of the universe.
'I think illness terrifies me more than oblivion,' he adds. 'You can have a bunch of problems until you've got a health problem. And then you've got one f****** problem.'
We talk some more. We talk about how Billy Connolly is still his God ('If I play guitar, he's Jimi Hendrix'). We talk about his favourite places to eat in Scotland. ('The Curry Pot in Dumbarton Road is my current go-to.')
We talk about his obsession with Facebook Marketplace ('that's my new porn'), and his old friend and bandmate Peter Capaldi. ('He's one of those annoying bastards who can do everything.')
We talk about his plans for a Polish Easter weekend with his wife's family on a dairy farm in Massachusetts.
And inevitably we talk about the state of the world.
'Everybody's got a different opinion and everybody's a f****** expert and everybody has their own TV show on their phone. It seems to create a rather agitated society. Marx talked about religion being the opium of the masses. Clearly, social media is the opium of the masses now and I think it's just a new drug. Indignation is the new drug.
'Everybody is outraged by everybody else's opinion. Maybe that's not new. Maybe it's not that different. But everybody seems a little more ready to be indignant perhaps.
'I have social media accounts, but, full disclosure, I don't do them.
'Also, it seems like it's very addictive and I have a bad history with shit like that.'
Craig Ferguson is drug-free and living in New York. Craig Ferguson is an American citizen who still loves coming home to Scotland. Craig Ferguson is not a young man anymore. 'I've reached the age now when I see a cop I go, 'Oh good. There are some police around.''
Craig Ferguson is still making people laugh. What more do we need from him?
Craig Ferguson: Pants on Fire, 02 Academy, Glasgow, June 21