Ferguson to make Fringe stand-up return

Scottish-born Hollywood star Craig Ferguson is returning to the Fringe – where he first made his name – for his first UK stand-up comedy show for 25 years this summer.

The Cumbernauld comic and TV presenter, who found fame after relocating from Scotland to Los Angeles in the mid-1990s, made his name at the festival in 1986 appearing under the name “Bing Hitler”.

But now it has been revealed he will be back for a one-off show at the 3,000-capacity Edinburgh Playhouse on the last weekend of the Fringe.

Ferguson, who is about to release his memoirs, made his name in America in the sitcom The Drew Carey Show, before finding huge success hosting his own chat shows.

He returned to Scotland most recently to film a cameo role as a love interest for Isa in the penultimate series of Still Game shown last year.

Ferguson has been touring America with a stand-up tour, Hobo Fabulous, since last autumn.

Ferguson said of the new stand-up show: “What the world needs now more than ever is an ageing, unhinged vagrant travelling from place to place ranting nonsense into a microphone.”

Promoters Gilded Balloon said his forthcoming Fringe show would feature “100 per cent all new material, for one night only”.

Karen Koren, artistic director of Gilded Balloon, first worked with Ferguson in 1985, the year before his Fringe debut, when she staged comedy nights at a venue in Edinburgh’s west end.

She said: “I’m utterly delighted to be bringing Craig Ferguson back to where it all began. It’s only taken me a quarter of a century!

“I remember putting him on when he was first starting out, back in the days of Mcnally’s on Palmerston Place when he was known as Bing Hitler – and look at him now, performing at the Playhouse. Tickets are going to sell fast.

“I couldn’t be prouder of Craig, his career and his infectious, hysterical, one-ofa-kind comedy.”

Ferguson was last at the Fringe two years ago when he brought a late-night version of his radio chat show to Gilded Balloon’s Rose Street Theatre.

Discussing his desire to keep performing stand-up, he said: “There is such a sense of ‘worthiness’ about a lot of today’s comedy, y’know, you’ve got to be doing material about this or that.

“You should do a joke – any joke – if it is a good joke. Not hateful, not misogynistic. Just funny.”