Former Late Late Show host Craig Ferguson on stand-up show he is bringing to UK this summer

Craig Ferguson kickstarted his entertainment career as a drummer for a punk band - the lead singer was Peter Capaldi - then as an actor and stand-up comedian in the late 80s.

After a successful turn at the Edinburgh Festival and shows at Glasgow’s Tron Theatre - he credits Sir Michael Boyd, the artistic director of The Tron as the person who persuaded him to take to the stage - he moved to the United States in 1994, going on to star in The Drew Carey Show, writing and appearing in movies before securing his role as the host of the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson in 2005.

The show ran for eleven seasons featuring interviews with celebrities including Betty White, Jon Hamm, Steve Carrell, Rashida Jones and Mila Kunis. A multiple Grammy nominated, Peabody and Emmy Award-winning actor, writer, producer, director and comedian with a diverse career that encompasses film, television and the stage, Ferguson is a New York Times bestselling author and has recorded numerous stand-up specials for Netflix, Epix, Comedy Central and Amazon.

With such a varied career, why does he continue to return to stand-up?

“I think it's, it's your original it's thing. It's like your original instrument” he says, speaking from his home in New York.

“If you're a guitar player, you can go out and if you do well, you'll play in a band and maybe do somewhere an orchestra and do a concept album about knights of the round table and have a 50 piece thing and all that. But really what you do is you play the guitar, so you go back out and play the guitar, and I feel like that's what stand-up is for me.

“It's what I did at the beginning. I've done it all the way through. I mean, I stopped for a bit, I think in the nineties I stopped because I was doing those independent films and I was working on the Drew Carey Show and there wasn't really any time.

“But other than that, when I started in late night in America, I went back doing stand-up. I felt the two things complimented each other and it is just something I've always done and I like doing it. It's a weird thing. I would probably only say this to someone from Scotland, but it's my job. It's what I do, so I'm going to do it.”

Craig made a conscious decision to move his comedy away from topical beats, the political fodder that informed his opening monologues on The Late Late Show.

He talks about the show he is bringing to the UK: “It's anecdotal in the sense that it's stories and it's personal observations. The only rule I give myself about standup, I started round about 2016, is that I gave myself a stylistic choice.

“That I would no longer discuss any kind of politics at all. I'm not going to do it, because particularly, I mean, look, it's a long time since I've done stand-up in the UK, so I don't know if it's the same kind of temperature, but in America, certainly, everybody's doing it.

“It's such a hot button. It's kind of an interesting way to go for me to avoid it. And also I felt like as an audience member, I thought that what I would like is a break look.

“I'm sick of the people that I agree with, nevermind the people that don't. I'm just like, I'm just sick of hearing it. So for an hour and a half or however long I'm on stage, there'll be no politics and all the stuff that you're angry at will still be there when you get out. So nobody's going to lose.”

Further information and tickets are available here.

Craig Ferguson: Pants on Fire will be at London’s O2 Shepherds Bush Empire on 14 June and Glasgow’s 02 Academy on 21 June.