Craig Ferguson Biography
Craig Ferguson is a comedian, actor, writer, and television personality of Scottish descent. He is best known as the host of the CBS late-night discussion show The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, for which he received a Peabody Award in 2009 for his conversation with South African archbishop Desmond Tutu. He also presented Join or Die with Craig Ferguson on History and the syndicated game program Celebrity Name Game, for which he won two Daytime Emmy Awards. Couple Thinkers, a six-episode online program he co-created with his wife Megan Wallace Cunningham, was launched in 2017.
Craig Ferguson Age
Ferguson is 59 years old as of 2021. He was born on 17 May 1962 in Springburn, Glasgow, United Kingdom.
Craig Ferguson Height
Ferguson stands at a height of 6 feet and 1 inch (1.87 m).
Craig Ferguson Citizenship
Ferguson, who had only British citizenship at the time, used The Late Late Show to pursue honorary citizenship from every state in the US in 2007. He was “commissioned” as an admiral in the tongue-in-cheek Nebraska Navy and earned honorary citizenship from Alaska, Arkansas, Indiana, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and Wyoming. Governors Jon Corzine of New Jersey, John Hoeven of North Dakota, Mark Sanford of South Carolina, Mike Rounds of South Dakota, Rick Perry of Texas, Sarah Palin of Alaska, and Jim Gibbons of Nevada all wrote him letters designating him as an honorary citizen of their states.
Various towns and localities, including Ozark, Arkansas, Hazard, Kentucky, and Greensburg, Pennsylvania, bestowed similar honors on him. Ferguson became an American citizen on February 1, 2008, and his citizenship exam and swearing-in were televised live on The Late Late Show.
Craig Ferguson Family
Ferguson was born in Stobhill Hospital in Glasgow’s Springburn neighborhood to Robert and Janet Ferguson. He and his family relocated from their Springburn flat to a Development Corporation house in the adjacent New Town of Cumbernauld when he was six months old, where he was “chubby and bullied.” They lived there at a time when Cumbernauld was rehousing many Glaswegians fleeing the city’s bad housing conditions and World War II destruction. Ferguson went to Cumbernauld High School and Muirfield Primary School. Ferguson dropped out of high school at the age of 16 and began an apprenticeship as an electronics technician at a local Burroughs Corporation facility.
In January 2006, Ferguson paid tribute to his father Robert on an episode of The Late Late Show. Following the loss of his mother Janet, he spoke on the air about her and ended the show by playing her favorite song, Boney M’s “Rivers of Babylon.”
Ferguson has two older sisters and a brother. Lynn Ferguson Tweddle, his younger sister, is a comedian, presenter, and actress who played Mac in the stop-motion animated film Chicken Run in 2000. Until July 2011, she worked as a writer on The Late Late Show.
Craig Ferguson Wife
Ferguson has had three marriages and two divorces. From 1983 until 1986, he was married to Anne Hogarth, and they lived in New York at that time. He married for the second time in 2001 to Sascha Corwin, with whom he has a son. He and Corwin split care of their son and lived in the Hollywood Hills close to each other. In 2008, Ferguson married Megan Wallace-Cunningham, an art dealer, in a private ceremony on her family’s estate in Chester, Vermont. In 2011, they had their first child, a son.
Craig Ferguson Celebrity Name Game
Ferguson was announced as the presenter of the syndicated game show Celebrity Name Game, produced by Coquette Productions, beginning in late 2014, in October 2013. Ferguson has been involved with the project since it was first developed and piloted as a CBS primetime series in 2011. The series got an original order of 180 episodes as of April 2014. On September 22, 2014, the syndicated series premiered. Ferguson received Daytime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Game Show Host in 2015 and 2016 for Celebrity Name Game. The series was declared to be cancelled after three seasons on December 2, 2016. Ferguson was cast as Prentiss Porter in The King of 7B, an ABC comedy pilot, in 2015. The show, however, was not picked up.
Craig Ferguson The Late Late Show
Ferguson was announced as the successor to Craig Kilborn on CBS’s The Late Late Show in December 2004. On January 3, 2005, he made his debut as a regular host. The show was distinctive in that it lacked “human” sidekicks like Ed McMahon on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson or Andy Richter on Conan O’Brien’s Conan. In 2010, he introduced a remotely controlled robot skeleton named Geoff Peterson and two silent performers dressed in a pantomime horse costume. In contrast to Johnny Carson’s great distance from the camera and audience, his monologues were delivered within a few feet of the camera.
In 2007, The Late Late Show had an average audience of 2.0 million viewers, compared to 2.5 million for Late Night with Conan O’Brien. For the first time since the two shows went head-to-head with their respective hosts in April 2008, The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson won Late Night with Conan O’Brien in weekly ratings.
Craig Ferguson beat Jimmy Fallon in the ratings in March 2009, with Ferguson receiving a 1.8 rating/6 share to Fallon’s 1.6 rating/6 shares. Ferguson’s ratings had plummeted by 2014, with an average of 1.35 million viewers versus 2.02 million for Late Night with Seth Meyers. Ferguson stated on April 28, 2014, that he would be leaving The Late Late Show at the end of the year, with the final show airing on December 19th. His contract was due to expire in June 2014, but CBS agreed to a six-month extension in order to give him more time to recruit a replacement presenter. Because he was not chosen to replace David Letterman on the Late Show, he reportedly received $5 million as part of his deal. Ferguson made his choice before Letterman’s announcement but agreed to wait until the outcry against Letterman’s decision calmed down before making his own public.
Following the announcement, CBS Entertainment Chair Nina Tassler said Ferguson had “filled the broadcast with incredible energy, original comedy, smart interviews, and some of the most poignant monologues seen on television” throughout his decade as host. With James Corden as the new host, CBS continued the franchise.
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