"So you know, this show has been rescheduled from Saturday, 21 June 2025. If you’ve already got tickets, they’ll still be valid, so hang on to them; your ticket agent will be in touch to tell you more.
Craig Ferguson is 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. Join him on his 'Pants on Fire' UK tour."
There's a reason John Mulaney can support 13 Vietnamese. His ticket prices were more than double that of Craig Ferguson, Cumbernauld's top international comedian (sorry, Stuart Mitchell). Okay, John brought two more comedians than Craig, but tonight Craig gave us our money's worth: an hour and a half of him telling stories, all of which were true, except for the parts which were not.
The preshow music was entirely by Talking Heads, from the album '77', tracks so obscure that Shazam found them too tricky to identify. To be fair, the audience was noisy, and the music wasn't, so the app didn't have much of a chance. It even failed to identify Psycho Killer.
It did recognise:
Don't Worry About the Government;
Uh-Oh, Love Comes To Town;
Happy Day;
and No Compassion.
He came on pretending to play the bagpipes in a high-energy opening, marching about the stage, wiggling his ass and showing off his fake skills. When he cut the music, he explained why there wasn't a support act: they cost money. Why fork out for a less good comedian, when he could be less good himself and keep all the money?
But surely, Craig, you don't need the money? You live in America and have won numerous prestigious awards for your work.
Yes, this is true, but... look at it this way. He's playing a rescheduled date on a Sunday night in a former cinema in the Gorbals area of Glasgow. How well do we think his career is going?
He pulled out some special memories that only we would appreciate, like when his dad explained to him as a young lad, taking him for his first beer, that any woman smoking outside a pub was really a prostitute. He swore this as fact, despite the evidence to the contrary. "But, Dad, she's my Sunday School teacher".
Craig has perfected the buffering head-wobble/rictus-grin expression to punctuate anything he's said that's slightly dodgy. He admits he's not always been on the right side of right. In 2017, he recorded his Tickle Fight special in July, but by the time it aired in December, the whole world had changed because of #MeToo. Suddenly, using "Can Your Pussy Do the Dog?" by The Cramps as your intro and outro music didn't seem like such a wise choice.
He's also not proud of himself for his repeated use of the palm plant over his face to represent the cumshot ending of every porn film. He knows it's wrong, but it makes people laugh, and that's his job.
He remarked early on that he would be using a "reverse callback" using the word "Ting", explaining that the word would appear in a joke later on in the show. I found that a clever spin on a commonly used comedy convention.
He told us tales of offloading a $300 classic car to Jay Leno as a present when the host finished up on The Tonight Show, only for Jay to speak to the top people at Ford, who souped up the car so much that it became the most expensive car the company had ever made.
Craig bought a haunted castle in Ayrshire because the price was about the same as a small apartment in the Hollywood Hills. He lived there for a few years but sold it when he realised the amount he was paying Scottish Power to heat it would fund a large apartment in the Hollywood Hills.
There were other stories, but I'm struggling to recall them now. I think that's because he often veered off on tangents, which were probably scripted, but came across as spontaneous.
He finished on a joke, a simple one: setup/punchline, one of the first he ever heard. It was one of Bernard Manning's, so I won't repeat it here (because I can't remember it). Then he left the stage to the sound of The Cramps. What a cheeky boy!
As the night progressed, the woman on my left (who had one helluva barking cough) became more vocal, answering Craig's questions at a conversational, not heckling, level, often expressing agreement or chuckling as she repeated his punchline to herself. She hadn't been drinking and seemed normal in every other way. She was with her husband. It must be nice to engage with a comedian on such a deep level, where you think they are talking only to you. Maybe I just wasn't listening properly. I can't even remember the last joke Craig told.
Full Price Ticket: £32.50 x 2 = £65.00
Service Fee: £4.40 x 2 = £8.80
Venue Facility Fee: £1.75 x 2 = £3.50
Handling Fee £2.85
Total: £80.15 via Ticketmaster
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