March 9, 2010, by
The quirkiest of all of the late-night talk show hosts Craig Ferguson is so happy that he's left alone by CBS.
"I'm glad I'm not on at 11:30 because I bet they'll [expletive] with me," he said. David Letterman, who owns Ferguson's show, "should do it as long as he wants. I have no real ambition."
He likes to get out of the black hole that is Los Angeles and hit the road when he has a break. He goes on a bus. “Very rock and roll,” he said. He’ll be rolling into Atlanta on Sunday March 14 to the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre.
The Scottish native who still has a strong brogue keeps to the basic elements of a talk show: monologue, skits, guests, music. But he'll mix it up. Recently, he got rid of the studio audience and spent an hour interviewing one person, his friend and comedian Stephen Fry. And he used puppets for his 1,000th episode.
Q: So how’s your stage show going to be different from your talk show?
A: It’s completely different with a couple of surprises, a couple of little dance numbers. I’m an awful dancer which works well for comedy… And there’s far more cussing. I don’t recommend people who don’t like cussing to come.
Q: Why cussing?
A: I like to cuss. A lot of people say cussing shows a lack of vocabulary. I don’t hold to that. D.H. Lawrence in one of his greatest authors, he uses words in ‘Lady’s Chatterley’s Lover’ you couldn’t use on a second show in Reno. It’s not because he didn’t know. He wanted to use cuss words!
Q: What was it like doing that show without an audience and just interviewing one person?
A: There was so much [crud] going down in late night. I started thinking about the format itself. I didn’t know why everything thinks it has to be the same every night. I decided to do it like the old ‘The Late Late Show With Tom Snyder.’ I knew my friend Stephen [Fry] could handle it. It wouldn’t have worked with Paris.
Q: How did the puppets work out?
A: I enjoyed it. But I don’t think it worked very well at all. It was fun. And that was that. So much of television is sanitized and bull[expletive] and corporate and all the fun and failure is sucked out of it. Hey, I [expletive] up, I own it. It’s alright. This is not rocket science. I feel I have a connection with my audience. They understand it’s all about having a good time.
Q: Are you tired of talking about the whole Jay Leno/Conan O’Brien mess?
A: Strangely enough, I haven’t talked that much about it. I really don’t care. I’m happy to have a job. I’m happy to get paid to do a job I enjoy doing. In this day and age, how lucky is that? I don’t even think I’m doing a late night show. We’re kind of cable access with props.
IF YOU GO
Craig Ferguson
Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre
Atlanta, GA
Sun, Mar 14, 2010 07:30 PM
$32.50-$52.50
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