March 11, 2025 • 36 mins
This week on JOY podcast the guest is you! Craig shares what's been on his mind recently and answers some questions from fans. EnJOY!
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is me, Craig Ferguson. I'm inviting you to come
and see my brand new comedy hour. Well it's actually
it's about an hour and a half and I don't
have an opener because these guys cost money. But what
I'm saying is I'll be on stage for a while. Anyway,
come and see me live on the Pants on Fire
Tour in your region. Tickets are on sale now and
we'll be adding more as the tour continues throughout twenty
(00:23):
twenty five and beyond. For a full list of dates,
go to the Craig Ferguson show dot com. See you
on the road, my DearS. My name is Craig Ferguson.
The name of this podcast is Joy. I talk to
interest in people about what brings them happiness. Hello everybody,
(00:54):
So let me begin with an old fashioned but traditional
way of starting out anything I do.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
It's a great day for America, everybody. I won't say
that a ton right now, because.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Everybody gets mad. Everybody gets mad if I say it's
a great day for America. People who think it's not
a great day for America, and they argue with people
that do think it's a great day for America. But
it's just the thing I say because you know, anyway, look,
here's the thing, this is the Joy Podcast. Normally I
(01:27):
talk to people who I want to talk to or
sometimes and I'll be honest with you, I don't really
want to talk to at all, but I think, oh well,
I'll talk to them because see if I can find
any common ground because that's kind of what I look
to do when I'm talking to someone that's finds some
common ground.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Now that's not.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
That's not hugely popular right now because common ground and
agreement isn't clickbait friendly, you know what I'm saying. It's
kind of like no one wants to see people agreeing
about things.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
So I know that. I mean not that I do
this for people to see it.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
To be honest, I do it because it kind of
it interests me to talk to people about anything, whether
they be celebrities or not, if they're just interested in
walks of life. And that was the whole idea of
doing this podcast, was to talk to interest in people
about stuff that they do. And now interesting doesn't mean
(02:22):
I agree with them, it just means interesting. I'm like, oh, well,
why tell me why you think that? But it was
suggested to me, and I kind of liked the idea of,
you know, because one of the most popular bits we
did on the old late night show was that Tweets
an Email segment when I would get tweets and emails
from people who would just send them in and I
(02:44):
never looked at them before, and I would like, get
the tweet an email and that would just talk to them.
I would answer the tweet or the email and you know,
and figure out what was going on from there. And
it was as somebody said, why don't you, Why don't
you try that on the Joint podcast. So the upshot
of it is, we are going to try that today.
So the guest on the Joy podcast today is you?
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Is You? Is You? Because I like the idea. I
like the idea of trying it out.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
So what I have here there's a bunch of tweets
and emails that people have sent and via the social
media and such. Now look full disclosure, I'm not really
on that social media much, you know, the the Instagram
and the Twitter x account or twis account that I have,
or Facebook or any of the things, or YouTube or anything.
(03:38):
I don't really look at that too much because not
for any kind of it used to be I think
a snobby thing.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
But really, really what it's about is about mental health.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
It drives me crazy if I dig into that, you know,
it makes me depressed, so I kind of stay away
from it. But Tomas, who I work with, who produces
this to Matsuzakopal, who's a lovely man from the Czech
Republic or as we must learned to call it now Checkia,
although he doesn't like saying that, but he monitors the
(04:07):
social media and he looks at it and he put
together the questions.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
For you to ask me today.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
So written a here on these is a selection of
tweets and emails that people have sent and now I'm
going to answer them and we'll.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
See where we go from there.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
So let's see, this is from email and email from
Stuart McMillan. Can you name the bars you worked in
London and Glasgow and how many still exist? Well it's
very easy one that because I never worked in any
bars in London at all.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
I only drank.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
I drank in some bars in London and I was
thrown out, thrown out some bars in London, some pretty
pretty good ones too. But I never worked in any
of them. It was really interested in supplying. I was
more interested in consuming. I did work in one bar
in Glasgow. I ex actually I love that job, but
it was in a It was the upstairs bar of
(05:02):
a restaurant called the Ubiquitous Chip in Glasgow. That was
the name of the It's a very fancy restaurant. Actually,
it's very popular. It's still there and if you've going
to Glasgow, please spend your increasingly devalued American dollar there.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
It's a very fancy restaurant.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
And upstairs they had a bar where they sold a
beer called Fustenberg. Fustenburg is a German lager beer which
they sold on tap. I think you can get it
in more places now, but in the time when I
work there, it would be the mid to late eighties,
that was the only place that I knew of, certainly
in Scotland that I knew of, that you could buy
(05:38):
Fustenburg lager beer on tap. Now this stuff is very,
very strong, and the bar itself was very close to
Glasgow University, and Glasgow University academics used to come in
and say, I'll take a lager beer, because that's how
academics talk. And I would say, well, okay, you can
have one, but you can't have any more than you
can have anyone too. They would have two of them
(06:01):
and they'd be like, what are you talking about, and
they'd have four and then we'd have to call the police.
It's a very strong beer, that's what I'm saying for
Bustenburg Lager beer.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
And I worked in that. I love that. Joe.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Working in that bar I think was the best training
ever for what I ended up doing later on, like
doing stand up and doing you know, the late night
show and interview shows and stuff and even game shows.
Because it was very improvisational. You were dealing with a
lot of noise and a lot of different stimulus, a
lot of different people all trying to get your attention,
(06:35):
and you had to improvise. You had to improvise a
great deal, and improvisation is fun.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
It. It was kind of like the way.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
You see young comics now they do crowd work in
clubs and they film themselves doing crowd work and then
they put it up on the internet.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
And I think that's fine.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
I'm glad I didn't do that though, because crowd work,
which basically working in a bar like.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
That kind of is crowd work. You know, you just
kind of like, hey, where are you from? Where you're
dumb or wherever? The thing is.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
That I don't know how much I would want that
recorded for later. It's one of the things I think about,
you know, with younger people now, particularly younger performers. I
think it's great that they have access to so much
media so quickly, But I also think there's a downside
to it, which is, and you know, many of running
(07:28):
too this already, that a lot of the stuff you
do when you're starting now isn't perhaps your best stuff,
or your most sensitive stuff, or your more thought out stuff.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
You know, you're more considered stuff, and you end up
it comes back and gets you later on. I mean, look,
it doesn't have to be. It doesn't have to be that.
There seems to be.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
A real thrust right now in all forms of particularly
entertainment media, which is I mean, really, what is that
but to try and find to catch somebody out at
some point in their career, and you know, and shame
shame them for a clumsy thing they said, or a
silly thing they said.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
It's time to me, it's hand to everybody.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
I think I think it's mean spirited and mean spirited
of course gets clicks. There was a project that my son,
my younger son, was given in school. The teacher gave
them he said that you have twenty minutes twenty minutes
to find a piece of good news on conventional media.
(08:27):
Go out and find a piece of good news. And
they really struggle to find it. You know, because when
you watch the news back in the day when TV
was a thing, you know, they would be all the
terrible yews about what was going on, but the end
it was always, you know, a parrot that could write,
a skateboard or a pig that could sing Dixie or something,
and it cheered everybody up towards the end of the news.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
Now, of course that impulse is.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
Taken over by I guess TikTok and Instagram, where you
see parents that can do skateboards or dogs that can
juggle or stuff like that. But but I think it's
kind of a lot of it is you can get
too much of it, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
I don't mean you can get too much good news.
I mean you can get too much of that stuff
doesn't do anything anyway. What the hell was I talking about?
Speaker 1 (09:14):
Oh yeah, what I'm saying is I don't know if
it's a great idea for young performers to have everything
out there right away, but you know, the genies out
of the bottle, that's going to happen.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
I'm glad it didn't happen to me.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
So I worked in one bar in Glasgow, which I
really loved working there. You know, if I wasn't an
alcoholic who was sober and I am still sober by
the way, thanks Internet rumors, but I've been sober for thirty.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Three years now, over thirty three years.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
It's funny how you get the sense some people would
really be delighted if I if I wasn't sober. I
don't know if I'm imagining that, if I'm paranoid or something.
You get the idea that people be like, oh yeah,
say it doesn't work.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
It works if you work it the uh. But the
idea of.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
You know, having stuff out there when you're young, I
don't know. But this is always the problem I've had
with performance. I like to perform live because when it's done,
it's done, it's over, and it's finished, and everybody goes
away and you remember it the way you remember it,
whether you liked it, you didn't like it, It's up
(10:28):
to you. But now you know the struggle. The kind
of tension I feel was is I don't really like
and I've never really enjoyed visibility. I like, obviously, you
need to have it. I want people to come to
the show, and so they need to know who I am,
and they need to know where I'm playing and what
I'm doing, and I want to entertaining people.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
I like doing it. I love doing it. It's my thing.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
But at the same time, I struggle with the idea
of visibility because.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
I don't know. It makes me feel uncomfortable.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
I feel like maybe I'm just I think it's probably
one to have your cake and eat it, which is
a phrase I've never understood anyway. I mean, what's the
point of having a cake and not eating it. It's like, oh,
he wants to have his cake and eat it. Well,
what else are you going to do with a fucking cake?
I mean, it doesn't make any sense to it anyway.
The short answer to the question hang on my nose
(11:22):
is running a bit. That's probably the cocaine A. The
short answer to the question can you name the bars
you worked in? I worked in one. It's called the
u Beiguitous Chip in Glasgow. Gosh, I mean a bear.
Try and cut these answers down a little bit.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
We're gonna be here all day and we're not Hello.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
This is Greig Ferguson and I want to let you
know I have a brand new stand up comedy special
out now on YouTube. It's called I'm So Happy and
I would be so happy if you checked it out
watch the special. Just go to my YouTube channel at
the Craig Ferguson Show and is this right there?
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Just click it and play it and it's free. I
can't look.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
I'm not gonna come around your house and show you
how to do it. If you can't do it, then
you can't have it. But if you can figure it out,
it's yours. This is from Moss Wheeling. That's a lovely name,
isn't it, moss Wheeling. It sounds like a like a
village in the middle of England somewhere.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Welcome to moss Wheeling. Joy the cricket.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Moss says, would you ever make a puppet show for kids?
The rabbit on your old show always seemed joyful? Yeah, nah, nah,
I don't want to do a publish show for kids.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
That's it. It's a nice short answer. I don't want
to do it. I want to really do a puplish show. Friend.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
I loved doing the puppets on the Late Night Show.
But the reason we did the puppets on the Late
Night Show, and I think I've talked about this.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
Before, but it was because we had no money. I
don't know.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
If you look, if you go and look back at
the countless millions of pirated clips of that my old
Late Night Show on YouTube, on the internet everywhere, you'll
see that the show that I was making at the time,
we were making five shows a week, and we had really,
honestly no money to make the show we were making it.
(13:23):
We had no band, we had very few writers, we
had very few resources a lot of the times, particularly
in the first eight years of the show. In the
last two years, we had a slightly bigger studio, but
in the first eight years of the show, the studio
was so small that if we had a guest band on,
like I don't know, Adele was on, or the Damned
(13:47):
or the sex Pistols or the buzz Coos or whoever
it was on Echo and the Bunnyman. Okay, go whatever,
you understand what band is. But when they were on
the show, we had to record the band first, play
their music, and then we had to move all their
equipment off so we could get the late night equipment on.
And then I would do the show, and at the
(14:07):
end of the show, when the band would be on,
I would pretend to introduce the band, and then we
would edit the band in. But I'd already seen them
and so with everyone else.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
It wasn't ideal, but it worked for us anyway.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
The puppet thing was we just saw some puppets lying
around the office, and we don't all try that, and
it's resonated with people. People do love puppets, I think
because puppets can say things that humans aren't allowed to say.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
That's the convention, isn't it. And I think that's true.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
The best example of that, of course, it's a former
guest on this show is a triumph the Insult comedy
Insult Dog. It was a fabulous puppet.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
But I don't think I would do a puppet show
for kids or for anyone else.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
But you know, never say never. This is from swackhar Ghosts.
I think I'm pronouncing that probably swack car ghosts see
you maybe go see I don't know, Swakhar. It's a
very nice name, so it's maybe Indian.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
I don't know. I've probably annoyed a bunch of people
by even suggesting.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
That it might not be. I don't know wherever it's from. Anyway,
It's an innocent mistake. But Swakar says, I'm getting married
in November this year. Any advice for a healthy married life. No, actually,
I think I might have some advice for the healthy
married life.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
And it's to do with this. This is coffee. And look,
I won't lie to you. I was married a couple
of times the three.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
To be honest, I was married once in the eighties
for a couple of years. That was a I mean,
look nothing about the lovely woman I was married to,
but we were both drinking a lot, you know, and
it wasn't a marriage as I understand it now. And
then I was married in nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
I got my again, and.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
That was you know, it was what it was, and
it didn't work out, but we had a lovely son
who is obviously still my son and who.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
I love very much, so that was great. And the
boon from that.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
But I've been married now since two thousand and eight,
and here's what I would say. It's coffee coffee time
because every morning, whether I'm like on the road and
away from home or in or at home, we have
coffee time.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Every morning. We sit down, we have a couple of
very good coffee, and we talk.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
And a lot of the times, I'd say maybe like
eighty percent of the time, I don't talk that much.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
I listened to a lot of thanks.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
And a lot of you know, my wife is very
is very plugged into news and current events and politics.
She pays a great deal attention to all that. I
actually don't I feel like something BIG's gonna happen, I'll
hear about it, probably from her, And that's kind of
(17:10):
where I get my news. It's a trusted source. So
we we have coffee time because news now. And this
is one of the conflicts I have about even doing
this what I'm doing right now, which is everything in media.
All media is social media. There's no you know, there's
nothing but social media. When they talk about legacy media,
you go, what are you talking about. Everything's a fucking website.
(17:32):
Everything is you know, everything everybody's got their tweets and
their you know, their instagrams and their social media. Everyone's
looking for traffic on their site, which you know, fine,
but it's but that's what it is. And and I
find that And I don't know if you guys know this,
but I find the the hyperbolic nature of reporting to
(17:56):
be exhausting, really honestly, honesty, goodness exhausting, and I find
it depressing. It's like, you go, this is a really
big thing that's gonna happen, and we should all be worried.
And then then nothing happens or something does happen. But
what the fuck did the worrying?
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Do you know? Did that help? I don't know.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
I mean, I know a lot of people disagree with me, like, no,
you've got to stay connected to what's going on, But
I'm like, I don't know, I don't know if I
if I really fucking do. I mean, especially now that
I'm married to someone who is connected to what's going on,
I'll hear it from her and that's a trusted source
for me. Like when she says, oh, guess what's going
(18:37):
on in Washington and then she tells me and I'm like, oh,
my God.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
And then the trick is to have really good coffee.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
That's what I'm saying, because then whenever you're listening to
something you know, and then.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
You taste the coffee, you're like, oh my god, that's delicious,
and then you can hear things. And I'm not saying
I'm not lessening.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
Of course I'm listening, but but I'm I'm also really
enjoying the coffee. And I think that I think that's
that's what it is for me. So a healthy married
life coffee. Now, there are considerations here. Obviously there may
be cultural or religious implications for you that require you
(19:18):
not to drink coffee. Perhaps coffee isn't isn't you know,
isn't something you enjoy or doing it. But find a
coffee substitute, perhaps water, perhaps, I don't know, scotch, whatever,
you enjoy drinking in the morning.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
I used to enjoy drinking.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
I used to people say I'm not an alcoholic, because
you know, I didn't realize I was an alcoholic until
I drank in the morning. And I certainly when I
was drinking, which is a long time ago, I did
drink in the morning. And what people don't tell you
about drinking in the morning. I'm not advocating this, but
I will say this, if you're an alcoholic drinking in
the morning, it's the best bit. That's the best bit,
(19:58):
that's the only bit that's good. At the end of it,
it's just like, oh, thank God if you can hold
it down, which is tricky a lot of the time.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
All right.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
This is from so the Kyo Good Marriage coffee or
coffee equivalent. This is from Christine krys Up. How many
tattoos do you have now? And what are the stories
behind some of your favorites. It's an interesting thing about tattoos.
I think tattoos are a bit like sex or murder.
I think that, you know, the first one is the
(20:29):
most difficult, then after that they get kind of easier.
And the truth is, the way I feel about tattoos
now is not the same as I felt when I
got my first tattoo, and I think most people with
do who have tattoos now kind of feel this way.
I think the ones I talk to you get one,
it's very significant. Oh this is a tribal marking for
(20:50):
my favorite you know saying, or this is my mom's
you know, sisters blouse that was very important to me.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
Or whatever it is.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
You get tattooed in your body, and that's very important,
and then the next one's you know, important, but maybe
slightly less important. What happens that I got my first
tattoo after my father died. My father hated tattoos, and
after he died, I thought, oh gosh, it was the
best way to commemorate a man who hated tattoos Celtic paradox,
(21:24):
get a tattoo.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
So I got a tattoo for my.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
Father, and I only got one, and then I forgot
about it for a couple of years. Then but three
years later, sadly, my mother died, and you know, I
was sad, of course, obviously. And then about a year
after my mother died, I heard this kind of voice
in my head. It was like, oh, you get a
tattoo for your father, but oh, nothing for your mother.
So I know, all right, So I got my mother's
(21:48):
family crest tager, my father's family crest tattooed, and then
I got my mother's family crest tattooed. Interestingly, father's tattoo,
the family crest of the Fergusons went on and about
you know, hour and a half two hours, hardly any
pain at all, mother's family crest two days, agonizing. I
don't know if that's significant or not, or maybe it
says something about me. So I got those tattoos. But
(22:12):
then I was talking to the guy who was doing
the tattoo at the time and he said, well, you know,
it's bad luck to have an even number of tattoos.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
I was like, is it?
Speaker 1 (22:22):
And I'm very I'm a control freak, so you tell
me anything that I could possibly throw a bit of
ocd onto and.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
Like bad luck, and I'm like, oh, I kind have
bad luck.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
So I had to have a third tattoo, and I
had recently become an American citizen, so I got, you know,
the join or Die Benjamin Franklin, I know, a tattoo
put there, and.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
That was the third tattoo. But after that you kind
of just get tattoos.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
To be honest, I don't really know how many I
have now because there's like does that count as one
or you know what about this is definitely one. But
then these little bits were added later and you know,
there's a bit around there and that guy and it
becomes I think.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
It's just something that you do or something that you have.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
And it's not that it becomes less important, it just
becomes less dramatic, maybe like a marriage, you know, or
a relationship with mankind, you know, a friendship. You know
that over time it becomes less dramatic and a little
more comfortable, and it leaves a mark, and sometimes it stings,
(23:26):
and sometimes you wish I should probably get rid of that,
you know what. I would never get rid of a tattoo.
And I'll tell you why, because I feel like it's
part of your history. You know, it's part of the
whatever marks you picked up along the way. I feel
like I have a scar on my hand if you
can see that there, there's a little a scar across
(23:46):
the back of my hand there that I got when
I was drunk. When I was about nineteen or twenty
years old. I punched a window and some great idea
I had about punching a window, and I punched the
window and I, you know, I got a scar in
the back of my hand. It was very painful at
the time, and there's a lot of blood and very dramatic.
But you know, I'm sixty two years old now and
(24:07):
I got scarre in my hand. I barely, but every
now and again I see it and I go, I'm
not blame me with an asshole or I just you know,
I have affection for you know, whatever that young man
was going through at the time, and it has a
certain sweetness to it for me, even although I'd rather
know have done it, but I did it. And tattoos
(24:30):
are a bit like that. I sometimes think grief is
a bit like that. I was talking to someone last
night at a show I do. After my stand up
shows now, I do a lot of meet and greets,
and I was talking to a woman after the show
and she was talking about she'd been bereaved recently and
she felt bad and she'd come to the show to
have a laugh and I had a laugh and that
was great, and I was talking to her a bit
(24:52):
about grief, and I think grief is a little like
a scar, you know it really, I mean, my god,
it's so pain and it never it never goes away,
but it becomes something that's part of you. And in
remembering someone, like a scar, it kind of becomes like
(25:14):
there's a sweetness to a memory if you've loved someone
and most of them that that's what I thought. I
don't know why I got into that. It's from tattoos,
I guess because I got my first tattoo through grief.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
You know, that was what my father had died. I
was bereft. I love that man.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
I loved my mother too, and and so the scar
that I inflicted upon myself was a physical manifestation of
the scar that I had in my soul from the grief.
So the scar itself is the tattoo, and every tattoo
is a scar, I.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Guess in a way. One other things, I will say
one that kind of makes me laugh, or maybe it's
an indication.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
But here's a story right there. I don't if you
can see, I have the planet Saturn. That's where I
wear my watch. Planet Saturn. That Saturn, of course, in
the is the bringer of old age. Right he also
ate his children, But you know, I don't know if
he really did that. I think that's metaphorical, but also
it's also metaphoric books planet, you know, but Saturn in mythology,
(26:13):
the idea is that Saturn is.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
The bringer of old age.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
And I thought, well, I'll get that where where my
watch is. So if I forget to wear my watch
and I look to see what time it is. I'll go, oh, yeah,
that's what time is. All right, let's see what else
we got.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
We got.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
From Robbie Winstead on Instagram. Robbie says, the last book
you read? What was the last book you read? Now,
I'm quite owed about the way I read because recently,
and this is one of the things I have to
say that I'm so grateful for about these things.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
The phones is, I've become very into audiobooks. So I
will read a book.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
At one point and it might not necessarily be the
book i'm listening to it. It's almost like I consume more.
I know it sounds kind of greedy, and I suppose
in the way it is. But the audiobook thing is
into me because I started getting into the Greek philosophers,
Greek and Roman Stoics for the most part, but also
(27:19):
Epicureans and.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
You know, go back from you know.
Speaker 1 (27:23):
From Seneca, back to Epictetus, from Epictetus to Zinos, from
Zeno to Socrates. And I've become fascinated by the audiobook
thing and what I was interested in. And I'll get
to the last book I read in a minute, because
it's none of this, but it made me think of
it is that the audiobook thing getting into the idea
(27:47):
of Socrates in particular, a lot of these guys, Epictetus
as well, they didn't write down what they were talking about.
They you know, their their their pupils did their Decipe did,
but they didn't. So the work of Socrates is all
filtered through the writing of Plato, the work of Epictetus.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
Who was a stoic of some renown.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
And I'm not an expert in any of this, but
all of his stuff was written down by one of.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
His pupils because they didn't trust.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
I think what it was is they didn't quite trust
the medium to get across the message that they wanted
to get across, and they wanted to see they wanted
to be in the room at the time, and.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
I feel a great kinship to that.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
It is an interesting thing about what we're doing right
this very second, which I'm not writing any of this down.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
I haven't prepared anything for it.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
I'm sitting in a fucking hotel room in Orange County
because I'm doing a stand up show tonight. But there
is a directness about what we're doing now, and I
don't know if you guys will respond to it. But
I'm kind of interested in what's happening. Not that I'm
comparing myself to the great Stoic minds or of Epictatus.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
Or like that. But Seneca did write stuff done.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
But but I do, I do quite like the idea
of just talking. And maybe that's an egotism, maybe, and
maybe i'm, you know, second guessing myself. I don't know,
but I guess the bottom line is nobody. Nobody makes
you listen. I mean, it's one of the things that
(29:23):
I I'm doing myself now that I don't listen to
the as much as I can avoid it. The cacophony
of the media, of all stripes, it doesn't matter if
it's left or right or red, a blue, or in.
Everybody's fucking yelling all the time, and I feel like
I can't hear anything when everybody's yelling.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
And so.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
I've become interested in audio recordings of the writing of
the great Stoics there Now. The last book I read
was a book by Robert Harris, who was a great,
a great writer. It's kind of in the same the
same thing that he wrote a trilogy of books which
(30:06):
I highly recommend, a really very entertaining and very knowledgeable
about the life of the great Roman statesman and let's
be honest, a stoic Cicero. And he wrote it from
the point of view of Cicero's slave Tiro.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
I think that was his name.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
And Tiro actually apparently did write a book, but it
was lost in antiquity, was lost in history. So Robert
Harris wrote three books about that, assuming the role of
Tiro in the writing, which is just fabulous writer. And
I think they're called Imperium, Conspirata, and Dictator. I think
that's the name of the three books. But you could
(30:46):
look up Robert Harris the Cicero Trilogy, and they are
said at the time when Rome was transferring from a
republic to an empire. Now, I wonder if you can
see we're I'm going with this that there was a
great shift in the politics of Earth at the time,
(31:08):
and Cicero was was very much complicit in that.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
He had a point of view in it.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
He wasn't ultimately victorious and how he wanted it to go,
but he was part of the movement of history at
that time, and it was witnessed expertly through Robert Harris's
character of the slaved hero at the time.
Speaker 2 (31:30):
And this is fascinating.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
It's a fascinating parallels into how the world is now
because here's for I believe, you know, when everybody says,
and this was during the election and all that, everybody said,
it's never been as bad as this, like it kind
of it kind of always has.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
It always has been like this. This is how it is.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
But what it requires of you right now is to
try and sift through the noise.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
I think it was.
Speaker 1 (32:01):
Look, I'm probably misquoting this terribly, but you know I didn't.
I don't know if well, I'm sure I'll be checked
in the comments and stuff, but luckily someone else will
read them.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
But there is a quote. I think it's an indirect quote.
Beware the man that bangs the drum of war, Beware
the man that.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
Says the enemy is at the gates, because I am
that man and I am Caesar.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
Chilling, isn't it, You know? Keep the people scared of
everything all the.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
Time, and then you know, it doesn't matter what you
what you're trying to steer them into.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
Keep them afraid.
Speaker 1 (32:35):
And by having people afraid, having people frantic, they're easier
to hurt. But that being said, I also have another
theory that kind of is in opposition to that when
it comes to the idea of you know, well, what
(32:55):
I mean is like when I talk to my wife,
she's always like she sees she's not earth the theorist,
but she sees, Oh, this is what they're trying to do,
or this is what these people are trying to do
or that, And I'm like, I don't see that way
so much because I don't think people are that competent.
You know, Whenever I've met high up people in the
level of corporate stuff or you know, governmental positions, and
(33:19):
I've met some very senior people in both of these worlds.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
I'm always shocked by how fucking dumb all over them
most of them just fucking you know, not even dumb,
just kind of like they don't have that.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
They don't have the kind of wherewithal the conspiracy together.
Hardly any of them can put a fucking golf game together.
I mean, it's it's not that golf is a sign
of intelligence, it's absolutely not.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
But uh, but it's a lovely game.
Speaker 1 (33:51):
I feel like a lot of the time the answer
is incompetence, not conspiracy.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
That's why.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
I think, of course I could be incompetent or more frighteningly,
maybe I'm part of a conspiracy, but I'm not.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
I can't join anything.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
It's one of the things that really I learned about
myself when I was doing Late Night.
Speaker 2 (34:14):
Late Night is a let's be honest, a fraternity for
the most part.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
Certainly was then of about maybe at that time it
was half a dozen guys, and I couldn't even be
part of that.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
I'm not a great joiner.
Speaker 1 (34:29):
That's why I've never really worked as a band member,
especially if you have the drummer in a band, which
is what I was. I mean, you want the drummer
to be part of things, not working on his own.
If you do that, you end up with the police.
You know what I'm saying. You know what I'm talking about?
This thing that guy speeds up all the time, all
the time.
Speaker 2 (34:47):
I hear him.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
Anyway, I got a lot have I've been talking. Well, okay,
so look here's the thing. I've got a bunch of
emails here. I don't know how you guys feel about
this format. I'm kind of okay with it. I think
it's worth exploring a little more. I'll get more specific,
and I'll stay on the keep sending the emails and
(35:10):
the tweets and stuff. I'll and I'll do some more
of them if you want it to happen. If you don't,
it's cool. I mean, I'm I'm you know, I can, I'll.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
Be all right. That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
Here's well, I'll try and leave you with something pithy
and helpful. Here's what I think is, try and have
good coffee, consider the source of your information, talk to
someone you trust and consider what that means. And also
listen more than you talk, which is rich coming from
a guy who's just talked you know and staff for
the last half hour.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
And I guess I really believe this, And.
Speaker 3 (35:45):
This is for everybody lighting the fuck up. O.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
Don't don't do
This is me, Craig Ferguson. I'm inviting you to come
and see my brand new comedy hour. Well it's actually
it's about an hour and a half and I don't
have an opener because these guys cost money. But what
I'm saying is I'll be on stage for a while. Anyway,
come and see me live on the Pants on Fire
Tour in your region. Tickets are on sale now and
we'll be adding more as the tour continues throughout twenty
(00:23):
twenty five and beyond. For a full list of dates,
go to the Craig Ferguson show dot com. See you
on the road, my DearS. My name is Craig Ferguson.
The name of this podcast is Joy. I talk to
interest in people about what brings them happiness. Hello everybody,
(00:54):
So let me begin with an old fashioned but traditional
way of starting out anything I do.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
It's a great day for America, everybody. I won't say
that a ton right now, because.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Everybody gets mad. Everybody gets mad if I say it's
a great day for America. People who think it's not
a great day for America, and they argue with people
that do think it's a great day for America. But
it's just the thing I say because you know, anyway, look,
here's the thing, this is the Joy Podcast. Normally I
(01:27):
talk to people who I want to talk to or
sometimes and I'll be honest with you, I don't really
want to talk to at all, but I think, oh well,
I'll talk to them because see if I can find
any common ground because that's kind of what I look
to do when I'm talking to someone that's finds some
common ground.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Now that's not.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
That's not hugely popular right now because common ground and
agreement isn't clickbait friendly, you know what I'm saying. It's
kind of like no one wants to see people agreeing
about things.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
So I know that. I mean not that I do
this for people to see it.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
To be honest, I do it because it kind of
it interests me to talk to people about anything, whether
they be celebrities or not, if they're just interested in
walks of life. And that was the whole idea of
doing this podcast, was to talk to interest in people
about stuff that they do. And now interesting doesn't mean
(02:22):
I agree with them, it just means interesting. I'm like, oh, well,
why tell me why you think that? But it was
suggested to me, and I kind of liked the idea of,
you know, because one of the most popular bits we
did on the old late night show was that Tweets
an Email segment when I would get tweets and emails
from people who would just send them in and I
(02:44):
never looked at them before, and I would like, get
the tweet an email and that would just talk to them.
I would answer the tweet or the email and you know,
and figure out what was going on from there. And
it was as somebody said, why don't you, Why don't
you try that on the Joint podcast. So the upshot
of it is, we are going to try that today.
So the guest on the Joy podcast today is you?
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Is You? Is You? Because I like the idea. I
like the idea of trying it out.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
So what I have here there's a bunch of tweets
and emails that people have sent and via the social
media and such. Now look full disclosure, I'm not really
on that social media much, you know, the the Instagram
and the Twitter x account or twis account that I have,
or Facebook or any of the things, or YouTube or anything.
(03:38):
I don't really look at that too much because not
for any kind of it used to be I think
a snobby thing.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
But really, really what it's about is about mental health.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
It drives me crazy if I dig into that, you know,
it makes me depressed, so I kind of stay away
from it. But Tomas, who I work with, who produces
this to Matsuzakopal, who's a lovely man from the Czech
Republic or as we must learned to call it now Checkia,
although he doesn't like saying that, but he monitors the
(04:07):
social media and he looks at it and he put
together the questions.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
For you to ask me today.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
So written a here on these is a selection of
tweets and emails that people have sent and now I'm
going to answer them and we'll.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
See where we go from there.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
So let's see, this is from email and email from
Stuart McMillan. Can you name the bars you worked in
London and Glasgow and how many still exist? Well it's
very easy one that because I never worked in any
bars in London at all.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
I only drank.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
I drank in some bars in London and I was
thrown out, thrown out some bars in London, some pretty
pretty good ones too. But I never worked in any
of them. It was really interested in supplying. I was
more interested in consuming. I did work in one bar
in Glasgow. I ex actually I love that job, but
it was in a It was the upstairs bar of
(05:02):
a restaurant called the Ubiquitous Chip in Glasgow. That was
the name of the It's a very fancy restaurant. Actually,
it's very popular. It's still there and if you've going
to Glasgow, please spend your increasingly devalued American dollar there.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
It's a very fancy restaurant.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
And upstairs they had a bar where they sold a
beer called Fustenberg. Fustenburg is a German lager beer which
they sold on tap. I think you can get it
in more places now, but in the time when I
work there, it would be the mid to late eighties,
that was the only place that I knew of, certainly
in Scotland that I knew of, that you could buy
(05:38):
Fustenburg lager beer on tap. Now this stuff is very,
very strong, and the bar itself was very close to
Glasgow University, and Glasgow University academics used to come in
and say, I'll take a lager beer, because that's how
academics talk. And I would say, well, okay, you can
have one, but you can't have any more than you
can have anyone too. They would have two of them
(06:01):
and they'd be like, what are you talking about, and
they'd have four and then we'd have to call the police.
It's a very strong beer, that's what I'm saying for
Bustenburg Lager beer.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
And I worked in that. I love that. Joe.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Working in that bar I think was the best training
ever for what I ended up doing later on, like
doing stand up and doing you know, the late night
show and interview shows and stuff and even game shows.
Because it was very improvisational. You were dealing with a
lot of noise and a lot of different stimulus, a
lot of different people all trying to get your attention,
(06:35):
and you had to improvise. You had to improvise a
great deal, and improvisation is fun.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
It. It was kind of like the way.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
You see young comics now they do crowd work in
clubs and they film themselves doing crowd work and then
they put it up on the internet.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
And I think that's fine.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
I'm glad I didn't do that though, because crowd work,
which basically working in a bar like.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
That kind of is crowd work. You know, you just
kind of like, hey, where are you from? Where you're
dumb or wherever? The thing is.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
That I don't know how much I would want that
recorded for later. It's one of the things I think about,
you know, with younger people now, particularly younger performers. I
think it's great that they have access to so much
media so quickly, But I also think there's a downside
to it, which is, and you know, many of running
(07:28):
too this already, that a lot of the stuff you
do when you're starting now isn't perhaps your best stuff,
or your most sensitive stuff, or your more thought out stuff.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
You know, you're more considered stuff, and you end up
it comes back and gets you later on. I mean, look,
it doesn't have to be. It doesn't have to be that.
There seems to be.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
A real thrust right now in all forms of particularly
entertainment media, which is I mean, really, what is that
but to try and find to catch somebody out at
some point in their career, and you know, and shame
shame them for a clumsy thing they said, or a
silly thing they said.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
It's time to me, it's hand to everybody.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
I think I think it's mean spirited and mean spirited
of course gets clicks. There was a project that my son,
my younger son, was given in school. The teacher gave
them he said that you have twenty minutes twenty minutes
to find a piece of good news on conventional media.
(08:27):
Go out and find a piece of good news. And
they really struggle to find it. You know, because when
you watch the news back in the day when TV
was a thing, you know, they would be all the
terrible yews about what was going on, but the end
it was always, you know, a parrot that could write,
a skateboard or a pig that could sing Dixie or something,
and it cheered everybody up towards the end of the news.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
Now, of course that impulse is.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
Taken over by I guess TikTok and Instagram, where you
see parents that can do skateboards or dogs that can
juggle or stuff like that. But but I think it's
kind of a lot of it is you can get
too much of it, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
I don't mean you can get too much good news.
I mean you can get too much of that stuff
doesn't do anything anyway. What the hell was I talking about?
Speaker 1 (09:14):
Oh yeah, what I'm saying is I don't know if
it's a great idea for young performers to have everything
out there right away, but you know, the genies out
of the bottle, that's going to happen.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
I'm glad it didn't happen to me.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
So I worked in one bar in Glasgow, which I
really loved working there. You know, if I wasn't an
alcoholic who was sober and I am still sober by
the way, thanks Internet rumors, but I've been sober for thirty.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Three years now, over thirty three years.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
It's funny how you get the sense some people would
really be delighted if I if I wasn't sober. I
don't know if I'm imagining that, if I'm paranoid or something.
You get the idea that people be like, oh yeah,
say it doesn't work.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
It works if you work it the uh. But the
idea of.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
You know, having stuff out there when you're young, I
don't know. But this is always the problem I've had
with performance. I like to perform live because when it's done,
it's done, it's over, and it's finished, and everybody goes
away and you remember it the way you remember it,
whether you liked it, you didn't like it, It's up
(10:28):
to you. But now you know the struggle. The kind
of tension I feel was is I don't really like
and I've never really enjoyed visibility. I like, obviously, you
need to have it. I want people to come to
the show, and so they need to know who I am,
and they need to know where I'm playing and what
I'm doing, and I want to entertaining people.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
I like doing it. I love doing it. It's my thing.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
But at the same time, I struggle with the idea
of visibility because.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
I don't know. It makes me feel uncomfortable.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
I feel like maybe I'm just I think it's probably
one to have your cake and eat it, which is
a phrase I've never understood anyway. I mean, what's the
point of having a cake and not eating it. It's like, oh,
he wants to have his cake and eat it. Well,
what else are you going to do with a fucking cake?
I mean, it doesn't make any sense to it anyway.
The short answer to the question hang on my nose
(11:22):
is running a bit. That's probably the cocaine A. The
short answer to the question can you name the bars
you worked in? I worked in one. It's called the
u Beiguitous Chip in Glasgow. Gosh, I mean a bear.
Try and cut these answers down a little bit.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
We're gonna be here all day and we're not Hello.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
This is Greig Ferguson and I want to let you
know I have a brand new stand up comedy special
out now on YouTube. It's called I'm So Happy and
I would be so happy if you checked it out
watch the special. Just go to my YouTube channel at
the Craig Ferguson Show and is this right there?
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Just click it and play it and it's free. I
can't look.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
I'm not gonna come around your house and show you
how to do it. If you can't do it, then
you can't have it. But if you can figure it out,
it's yours. This is from Moss Wheeling. That's a lovely name,
isn't it, moss Wheeling. It sounds like a like a
village in the middle of England somewhere.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Welcome to moss Wheeling. Joy the cricket.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Moss says, would you ever make a puppet show for kids?
The rabbit on your old show always seemed joyful? Yeah, nah, nah,
I don't want to do a publish show for kids.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
That's it. It's a nice short answer. I don't want
to do it. I want to really do a puplish show. Friend.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
I loved doing the puppets on the Late Night Show.
But the reason we did the puppets on the Late
Night Show, and I think I've talked about this.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
Before, but it was because we had no money. I
don't know.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
If you look, if you go and look back at
the countless millions of pirated clips of that my old
Late Night Show on YouTube, on the internet everywhere, you'll
see that the show that I was making at the time,
we were making five shows a week, and we had really,
honestly no money to make the show we were making it.
(13:23):
We had no band, we had very few writers, we
had very few resources a lot of the times, particularly
in the first eight years of the show. In the
last two years, we had a slightly bigger studio, but
in the first eight years of the show, the studio
was so small that if we had a guest band on,
like I don't know, Adele was on, or the Damned
(13:47):
or the sex Pistols or the buzz Coos or whoever
it was on Echo and the Bunnyman. Okay, go whatever,
you understand what band is. But when they were on
the show, we had to record the band first, play
their music, and then we had to move all their
equipment off so we could get the late night equipment on.
And then I would do the show, and at the
(14:07):
end of the show, when the band would be on,
I would pretend to introduce the band, and then we
would edit the band in. But I'd already seen them
and so with everyone else.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
It wasn't ideal, but it worked for us anyway.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
The puppet thing was we just saw some puppets lying
around the office, and we don't all try that, and
it's resonated with people. People do love puppets, I think
because puppets can say things that humans aren't allowed to say.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
That's the convention, isn't it. And I think that's true.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
The best example of that, of course, it's a former
guest on this show is a triumph the Insult comedy
Insult Dog. It was a fabulous puppet.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
But I don't think I would do a puppet show
for kids or for anyone else.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
But you know, never say never. This is from swackhar Ghosts.
I think I'm pronouncing that probably swack car ghosts see
you maybe go see I don't know, Swakhar. It's a
very nice name, so it's maybe Indian.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
I don't know. I've probably annoyed a bunch of people
by even suggesting.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
That it might not be. I don't know wherever it's from. Anyway,
It's an innocent mistake. But Swakar says, I'm getting married
in November this year. Any advice for a healthy married life. No, actually,
I think I might have some advice for the healthy
married life.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
And it's to do with this. This is coffee. And look,
I won't lie to you. I was married a couple
of times the three.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
To be honest, I was married once in the eighties
for a couple of years. That was a I mean,
look nothing about the lovely woman I was married to,
but we were both drinking a lot, you know, and
it wasn't a marriage as I understand it now. And
then I was married in nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
I got my again, and.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
That was you know, it was what it was, and
it didn't work out, but we had a lovely son
who is obviously still my son and who.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
I love very much, so that was great. And the
boon from that.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
But I've been married now since two thousand and eight,
and here's what I would say. It's coffee coffee time
because every morning, whether I'm like on the road and
away from home or in or at home, we have
coffee time.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Every morning. We sit down, we have a couple of
very good coffee, and we talk.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
And a lot of the times, I'd say maybe like
eighty percent of the time, I don't talk that much.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
I listened to a lot of thanks.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
And a lot of you know, my wife is very
is very plugged into news and current events and politics.
She pays a great deal attention to all that. I
actually don't I feel like something BIG's gonna happen, I'll
hear about it, probably from her, And that's kind of
(17:10):
where I get my news. It's a trusted source. So
we we have coffee time because news now. And this
is one of the conflicts I have about even doing
this what I'm doing right now, which is everything in media.
All media is social media. There's no you know, there's
nothing but social media. When they talk about legacy media,
you go, what are you talking about. Everything's a fucking website.
(17:32):
Everything is you know, everything everybody's got their tweets and
their you know, their instagrams and their social media. Everyone's
looking for traffic on their site, which you know, fine,
but it's but that's what it is. And and I
find that And I don't know if you guys know this,
but I find the the hyperbolic nature of reporting to
(17:56):
be exhausting, really honestly, honesty, goodness exhausting, and I find
it depressing. It's like, you go, this is a really
big thing that's gonna happen, and we should all be worried.
And then then nothing happens or something does happen. But
what the fuck did the worrying?
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Do you know? Did that help? I don't know.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
I mean, I know a lot of people disagree with me, like, no,
you've got to stay connected to what's going on, But
I'm like, I don't know, I don't know if I
if I really fucking do. I mean, especially now that
I'm married to someone who is connected to what's going on,
I'll hear it from her and that's a trusted source
for me. Like when she says, oh, guess what's going
(18:37):
on in Washington and then she tells me and I'm like, oh,
my God.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
And then the trick is to have really good coffee.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
That's what I'm saying, because then whenever you're listening to
something you know, and then.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
You taste the coffee, you're like, oh my god, that's delicious,
and then you can hear things. And I'm not saying
I'm not lessening.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
Of course I'm listening, but but I'm I'm also really
enjoying the coffee. And I think that I think that's
that's what it is for me. So a healthy married
life coffee. Now, there are considerations here. Obviously there may
be cultural or religious implications for you that require you
(19:18):
not to drink coffee. Perhaps coffee isn't isn't you know,
isn't something you enjoy or doing it. But find a
coffee substitute, perhaps water, perhaps, I don't know, scotch, whatever,
you enjoy drinking in the morning.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
I used to enjoy drinking.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
I used to people say I'm not an alcoholic, because
you know, I didn't realize I was an alcoholic until
I drank in the morning. And I certainly when I
was drinking, which is a long time ago, I did
drink in the morning. And what people don't tell you
about drinking in the morning. I'm not advocating this, but
I will say this, if you're an alcoholic drinking in
the morning, it's the best bit. That's the best bit,
(19:58):
that's the only bit that's good. At the end of it,
it's just like, oh, thank God if you can hold
it down, which is tricky a lot of the time.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
All right.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
This is from so the Kyo Good Marriage coffee or
coffee equivalent. This is from Christine krys Up. How many
tattoos do you have now? And what are the stories
behind some of your favorites. It's an interesting thing about tattoos.
I think tattoos are a bit like sex or murder.
I think that, you know, the first one is the
(20:29):
most difficult, then after that they get kind of easier.
And the truth is, the way I feel about tattoos
now is not the same as I felt when I
got my first tattoo, and I think most people with
do who have tattoos now kind of feel this way.
I think the ones I talk to you get one,
it's very significant. Oh this is a tribal marking for
(20:50):
my favorite you know saying, or this is my mom's
you know, sisters blouse that was very important to me.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
Or whatever it is.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
You get tattooed in your body, and that's very important,
and then the next one's you know, important, but maybe
slightly less important. What happens that I got my first
tattoo after my father died. My father hated tattoos, and
after he died, I thought, oh gosh, it was the
best way to commemorate a man who hated tattoos Celtic paradox,
(21:24):
get a tattoo.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
So I got a tattoo for my.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
Father, and I only got one, and then I forgot
about it for a couple of years. Then but three
years later, sadly, my mother died, and you know, I
was sad, of course, obviously. And then about a year
after my mother died, I heard this kind of voice
in my head. It was like, oh, you get a
tattoo for your father, but oh, nothing for your mother.
So I know, all right, So I got my mother's
(21:48):
family crest tager, my father's family crest tattooed, and then
I got my mother's family crest tattooed. Interestingly, father's tattoo,
the family crest of the Fergusons went on and about
you know, hour and a half two hours, hardly any
pain at all, mother's family crest two days, agonizing. I
don't know if that's significant or not, or maybe it
says something about me. So I got those tattoos. But
(22:12):
then I was talking to the guy who was doing
the tattoo at the time and he said, well, you know,
it's bad luck to have an even number of tattoos.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
I was like, is it?
Speaker 1 (22:22):
And I'm very I'm a control freak, so you tell
me anything that I could possibly throw a bit of
ocd onto and.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
Like bad luck, and I'm like, oh, I kind have
bad luck.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
So I had to have a third tattoo, and I
had recently become an American citizen, so I got, you know,
the join or Die Benjamin Franklin, I know, a tattoo
put there, and.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
That was the third tattoo. But after that you kind
of just get tattoos.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
To be honest, I don't really know how many I
have now because there's like does that count as one
or you know what about this is definitely one. But
then these little bits were added later and you know,
there's a bit around there and that guy and it
becomes I think.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
It's just something that you do or something that you have.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
And it's not that it becomes less important, it just
becomes less dramatic, maybe like a marriage, you know, or
a relationship with mankind, you know, a friendship. You know
that over time it becomes less dramatic and a little
more comfortable, and it leaves a mark, and sometimes it stings,
(23:26):
and sometimes you wish I should probably get rid of that,
you know what. I would never get rid of a tattoo.
And I'll tell you why, because I feel like it's
part of your history. You know, it's part of the
whatever marks you picked up along the way. I feel
like I have a scar on my hand if you
can see that there, there's a little a scar across
(23:46):
the back of my hand there that I got when
I was drunk. When I was about nineteen or twenty
years old. I punched a window and some great idea
I had about punching a window, and I punched the
window and I, you know, I got a scar in
the back of my hand. It was very painful at
the time, and there's a lot of blood and very dramatic.
But you know, I'm sixty two years old now and
(24:07):
I got scarre in my hand. I barely, but every
now and again I see it and I go, I'm
not blame me with an asshole or I just you know,
I have affection for you know, whatever that young man
was going through at the time, and it has a
certain sweetness to it for me, even although I'd rather
know have done it, but I did it. And tattoos
(24:30):
are a bit like that. I sometimes think grief is
a bit like that. I was talking to someone last
night at a show I do. After my stand up
shows now, I do a lot of meet and greets,
and I was talking to a woman after the show
and she was talking about she'd been bereaved recently and
she felt bad and she'd come to the show to
have a laugh and I had a laugh and that
was great, and I was talking to her a bit
(24:52):
about grief, and I think grief is a little like
a scar, you know it really, I mean, my god,
it's so pain and it never it never goes away,
but it becomes something that's part of you. And in
remembering someone, like a scar, it kind of becomes like
(25:14):
there's a sweetness to a memory if you've loved someone
and most of them that that's what I thought. I
don't know why I got into that. It's from tattoos,
I guess because I got my first tattoo through grief.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
You know, that was what my father had died. I
was bereft. I love that man.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
I loved my mother too, and and so the scar
that I inflicted upon myself was a physical manifestation of
the scar that I had in my soul from the grief.
So the scar itself is the tattoo, and every tattoo
is a scar, I.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Guess in a way. One other things, I will say
one that kind of makes me laugh, or maybe it's
an indication.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
But here's a story right there. I don't if you
can see, I have the planet Saturn. That's where I
wear my watch. Planet Saturn. That Saturn, of course, in
the is the bringer of old age. Right he also
ate his children, But you know, I don't know if
he really did that. I think that's metaphorical, but also
it's also metaphoric books planet, you know, but Saturn in mythology,
(26:13):
the idea is that Saturn is.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
The bringer of old age.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
And I thought, well, I'll get that where where my
watch is. So if I forget to wear my watch
and I look to see what time it is. I'll go, oh, yeah,
that's what time is. All right, let's see what else
we got.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
We got.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
From Robbie Winstead on Instagram. Robbie says, the last book
you read? What was the last book you read? Now,
I'm quite owed about the way I read because recently,
and this is one of the things I have to
say that I'm so grateful for about these things.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
The phones is, I've become very into audiobooks. So I
will read a book.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
At one point and it might not necessarily be the
book i'm listening to it. It's almost like I consume more.
I know it sounds kind of greedy, and I suppose
in the way it is. But the audiobook thing is
into me because I started getting into the Greek philosophers,
Greek and Roman Stoics for the most part, but also
(27:19):
Epicureans and.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
You know, go back from you know.
Speaker 1 (27:23):
From Seneca, back to Epictetus, from Epictetus to Zinos, from
Zeno to Socrates. And I've become fascinated by the audiobook
thing and what I was interested in. And I'll get
to the last book I read in a minute, because
it's none of this, but it made me think of
it is that the audiobook thing getting into the idea
(27:47):
of Socrates in particular, a lot of these guys, Epictetus
as well, they didn't write down what they were talking about.
They you know, their their their pupils did their Decipe did,
but they didn't. So the work of Socrates is all
filtered through the writing of Plato, the work of Epictetus.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
Who was a stoic of some renown.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
And I'm not an expert in any of this, but
all of his stuff was written down by one of.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
His pupils because they didn't trust.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
I think what it was is they didn't quite trust
the medium to get across the message that they wanted
to get across, and they wanted to see they wanted
to be in the room at the time, and.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
I feel a great kinship to that.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
It is an interesting thing about what we're doing right
this very second, which I'm not writing any of this down.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
I haven't prepared anything for it.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
I'm sitting in a fucking hotel room in Orange County
because I'm doing a stand up show tonight. But there
is a directness about what we're doing now, and I
don't know if you guys will respond to it. But
I'm kind of interested in what's happening. Not that I'm
comparing myself to the great Stoic minds or of Epictatus.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
Or like that. But Seneca did write stuff done.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
But but I do, I do quite like the idea
of just talking. And maybe that's an egotism, maybe, and
maybe i'm, you know, second guessing myself. I don't know,
but I guess the bottom line is nobody. Nobody makes
you listen. I mean, it's one of the things that
(29:23):
I I'm doing myself now that I don't listen to
the as much as I can avoid it. The cacophony
of the media, of all stripes, it doesn't matter if
it's left or right or red, a blue, or in.
Everybody's fucking yelling all the time, and I feel like
I can't hear anything when everybody's yelling.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
And so.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
I've become interested in audio recordings of the writing of
the great Stoics there Now. The last book I read
was a book by Robert Harris, who was a great,
a great writer. It's kind of in the same the
same thing that he wrote a trilogy of books which
(30:06):
I highly recommend, a really very entertaining and very knowledgeable
about the life of the great Roman statesman and let's
be honest, a stoic Cicero. And he wrote it from
the point of view of Cicero's slave Tiro.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
I think that was his name.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
And Tiro actually apparently did write a book, but it
was lost in antiquity, was lost in history. So Robert
Harris wrote three books about that, assuming the role of
Tiro in the writing, which is just fabulous writer. And
I think they're called Imperium, Conspirata, and Dictator. I think
that's the name of the three books. But you could
(30:46):
look up Robert Harris the Cicero Trilogy, and they are
said at the time when Rome was transferring from a
republic to an empire. Now, I wonder if you can
see we're I'm going with this that there was a
great shift in the politics of Earth at the time,
(31:08):
and Cicero was was very much complicit in that.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
He had a point of view in it.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
He wasn't ultimately victorious and how he wanted it to go,
but he was part of the movement of history at
that time, and it was witnessed expertly through Robert Harris's
character of the slaved hero at the time.
Speaker 2 (31:30):
And this is fascinating.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
It's a fascinating parallels into how the world is now
because here's for I believe, you know, when everybody says,
and this was during the election and all that, everybody said,
it's never been as bad as this, like it kind
of it kind of always has.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
It always has been like this. This is how it is.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
But what it requires of you right now is to
try and sift through the noise.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
I think it was.
Speaker 1 (32:01):
Look, I'm probably misquoting this terribly, but you know I didn't.
I don't know if well, I'm sure I'll be checked
in the comments and stuff, but luckily someone else will
read them.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
But there is a quote. I think it's an indirect quote.
Beware the man that bangs the drum of war, Beware
the man that.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
Says the enemy is at the gates, because I am
that man and I am Caesar.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
Chilling, isn't it, You know? Keep the people scared of
everything all the.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
Time, and then you know, it doesn't matter what you
what you're trying to steer them into.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
Keep them afraid.
Speaker 1 (32:35):
And by having people afraid, having people frantic, they're easier
to hurt. But that being said, I also have another
theory that kind of is in opposition to that when
it comes to the idea of you know, well, what
(32:55):
I mean is like when I talk to my wife,
she's always like she sees she's not earth the theorist,
but she sees, Oh, this is what they're trying to do,
or this is what these people are trying to do
or that, And I'm like, I don't see that way
so much because I don't think people are that competent.
You know, Whenever I've met high up people in the
level of corporate stuff or you know, governmental positions, and
(33:19):
I've met some very senior people in both of these worlds.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
I'm always shocked by how fucking dumb all over them
most of them just fucking you know, not even dumb,
just kind of like they don't have that.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
They don't have the kind of wherewithal the conspiracy together.
Hardly any of them can put a fucking golf game together.
I mean, it's it's not that golf is a sign
of intelligence, it's absolutely not.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
But uh, but it's a lovely game.
Speaker 1 (33:51):
I feel like a lot of the time the answer
is incompetence, not conspiracy.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
That's why.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
I think, of course I could be incompetent or more frighteningly,
maybe I'm part of a conspiracy, but I'm not.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
I can't join anything.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
It's one of the things that really I learned about
myself when I was doing Late Night.
Speaker 2 (34:14):
Late Night is a let's be honest, a fraternity for
the most part.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
Certainly was then of about maybe at that time it
was half a dozen guys, and I couldn't even be
part of that.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
I'm not a great joiner.
Speaker 1 (34:29):
That's why I've never really worked as a band member,
especially if you have the drummer in a band, which
is what I was. I mean, you want the drummer
to be part of things, not working on his own.
If you do that, you end up with the police.
You know what I'm saying. You know what I'm talking about?
This thing that guy speeds up all the time, all
the time.
Speaker 2 (34:47):
I hear him.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
Anyway, I got a lot have I've been talking. Well, okay,
so look here's the thing. I've got a bunch of
emails here. I don't know how you guys feel about
this format. I'm kind of okay with it. I think
it's worth exploring a little more. I'll get more specific,
and I'll stay on the keep sending the emails and
(35:10):
the tweets and stuff. I'll and I'll do some more
of them if you want it to happen. If you don't,
it's cool. I mean, I'm I'm you know, I can, I'll.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
Be all right. That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
Here's well, I'll try and leave you with something pithy
and helpful. Here's what I think is, try and have
good coffee, consider the source of your information, talk to
someone you trust and consider what that means. And also
listen more than you talk, which is rich coming from
a guy who's just talked you know and staff for
the last half hour.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
And I guess I really believe this, And.
Speaker 3 (35:45):
This is for everybody lighting the fuck up. O.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
Don't don't do
Host
Craig Ferguson
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