In late 2023, my wife and I went to see Craig Ferguson do standup for the first time in fourteen years, and I was surprised when the show started with no opening act. Instead, Ferguson came on playing bagpipes, an instrument that I absolutely hate. If scratching fingernails on a blackboard was a musical skill, I’d like it more than being forced to listen to a bagpipe player.
Ferguson only played for thirty seconds or so, then tossed the pipes off stage, and for the next two hours regaled us with stories from his life, including his experience with long Covid, the gory details on two nasty infections he had and his attempt to find relief, and why he can’t do foreign accents around his wife. He also did extended bits on the generation gap, jokingly begging his “millennial and Gen Z brothers and sisters” not to cancel him.
Much of what Ferguson said was laugh-out-loud funny, and the parts that were only amusing were bolstered by his snarky smile and a wink. He also spent a few minutes talking about Geoff Peterson, his skeleton sidekick (designed by former Mythbuster Grant Imahara) on “The Late, Late Show” on CBS.
I was a fan of Ferguson’s years hosting that show, particularly after he followed the advice of Peter Lassally (a/k/a The Host Whisperer) to not begin with a monologue full of one-liners (a la Carson, Leno, and Letterman), but simply tell humorous stories and share observations about his own life or something in the news that caught his eye. That simple suggestion changed the course of the show for the better, and made Ferguson looser and more relatable, qualities that remain in his standup work.
One of the shows from Ferguson’s tour has been turned into an hour-long special called “I’m So Happy,” which just started streaming on YouTube. I’ve embedded it below for your listening and laughing pleasure…