Craig Ferguson is the only late-night talk show host who’s interested in bringing his show into greater contact with the actual world, not just tinkering with the audience’s concept of comedy and creating ever more refined, self-referential little works of pop art that can be passed off as gags. Letterman and Leno and many of the other people who’ve helmed talk shows since Johny Carson retired are doing the job they’ve wanted their whole working lives. Ferguson, who just sort of fell into it sideways when he was in his mid-40s, can convincingly claim that his main priority is keeping himself interested, and for him, staying interested is a matter of constantly being surprised. When he does an entire episode talking to Stephen Fry without his usual audience, or traipses off to Paris with his robot skeleton announcer and his pantomime horse and Kristen Bell to do a week’s worth of mind-bogglingly casual shows, he doesn’t give you the feeling that he’s self-consciously trying to re-invent the talk show format. He just thought it would be fun to do something different, and it usually turns out that his instinct was right.
Ferguson’s week in Scotland has loosely resembled his week in Paris, but with some key differences. For one thing, the Scots speak English —though some thoughtful soul has included subtitles for sleepy American viewers when some of the thicker-accented locals chime in—so Ferguson has been able to do some actual talk show-hosting, as in interviewing celebrities in front of a live audience, a pleasure that was denied him when he was in France. The folks who came out to sit on hard chairs in Glasgow’s Tron Theatre got to see an actual movie star, Mila Kunis, who got a big round of applause for liking fish and chips, and Ariel Tweto, the charming and easily confused star of the Discovery Channel series Flying Wild Alaska. (When Ferguson points to an antique plane and tells her that it’s the kind he flew when he fought the Nazis, she says, “I didn’t know you were that old,” and you’d need to convene a tribunal of gods and psychics to come to a definitive conclusion as to whether or not she’s joking.) To end the interview with Tweto, Ferguson does his ritual “Big Cash Prize” number, in which a guest is awarded a bag of money if she can guess the answer to a question, which it’s already been preordained she’s going to get right. When the crowd doesn’t make a sound, Ferguson points out that this is difference between American and Scottish audiences: The Americans whoop it up as soon as he announces the bit, the Scots sit on their hands and mutter, “We’ll wait and see if you win first.”
Of course, the big difference is that the host is in his old stomping grounds, and memories, most of them weird and unhealthy in nature, keep bubbling up. When Ferguson goes on a walking tour of the areas where he grew up, he is accompanied by Michael Clarke Duncan, and as his anecdotes grow increasingly violent, it becomes clear why he might want Duncan at his side while strolling down Memory Lane. No historic spot in the country seems more important the Spur Hotel, where a fellow named Cal Calhoun treated young Craig to the ass-whupping of the millennium. After learning that Cal had just entered the bar and found his girlfriend sitting in Craig’s lap, Duncan decides to take Cal’s side. (“What were you doing with his girlfriend in your lap?” he asks. “Well,” says Ferguson, “there were hardly any seats.”)