Craig Ferguson on Glasgow's West End and working in Ubiquitous Chip

Former The Late Late Show presenter, comedian and podcaster Craig Ferguson talks about how Glasgow started his career.

Transcript

00:00I think, you know, my wife and I, my wife's not from Scotland,

00:03but we always say, you know, when you go up and down the buyer's road,

00:07it's always run about 1984, 1985 on the buyer's road.

00:11You go into the shops, it's always like Depeche Mode or Deacon Blue

00:15are playing on the stereo.

00:17Everyone's, it's kind of 1984, 1985 on the buyer's road consistently,

00:22which I am very okay with.

00:25I love that.

00:25Yeah, I like streets and buildings and bars and cafes that find their era

00:31and just stick with it.

00:32Yeah, I feel like, somehow I feel like, I remember once,

00:39it was a very niche tweet I put when I used to do Twitter.

00:43I put out a tweet once about, something about having fond memories

00:47of the ubiquitous trip because I winched a jakey once there on Hogmanay,

00:54in 1985, and I remember a couple of the Scottish guys from Game of Thrones

00:59liking the tweet because nobody else understood it.

01:03But, you know, but these were like, that was, that was something that connects.

01:07Yeah, I mean, it's a very specific area,

01:10and I come from a very specific time in that, then as well.

01:14I think I read something about, was it, was it, one of the directors of the Tron

01:20had kind of told you that you could be an actor or giving you some advice

01:24in that direction?

01:24Yeah, Michael Boyd.

01:26It was Michael Boyd that put me, that was the first time I was put in a real theatre.

01:32You know, Michael, he passed away about 18 months ago, Michael,

01:35but he, he and I, you know, stayed in touch right to the end.

01:39But he, he was the first guy that said, you know, I was actually working as,

01:45I was a barman in the upstairs bar in the chip,

01:48but I was also doing stand-up, like in, like in shitty places and, you know,

01:54in bars and stuff.

01:55And, and he said, no, you should come and do in the Tron Theatre.

01:59That was the first time I'd done a theatre theatre, you know,

02:01like where people sit down and face the front and they're not all drunk.

02:05And, you know, and they're not, it's not, it's about the stage.

02:09It wasn't about anything else.

02:10And I was, I was amazed at the difference of the feeling,

02:15how much I loved it.

02:16But he, he used to come into the, the chip bar with a bunch of, you know,

02:22the, the arty people used to drink in the chip bar and I was a barman there.

02:25So I just kind of got to know them because of that.