Joy, a Podcast. Hosted by Craig Ferguson - Confessions of a Fake Mole Hunter

Episode Date: September 9, 2025

This week Craig comes to you from England where he's currently on set recording the new season of Scrabble. But fear not, for he is answering some questions from the fans. Yep, some good ol' Tweets and emails. Have a question for Craig? Drop him an email at [e-mail], send him a message on social media, or drop a comment below. _______________________________________________ Craig is also on the road. Dates and tickets can be found here https://www.thecraigfergusonshow.com/tour _________________________________________________  Find Craig: Website - https://www.thecraigfergusonshow.com Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/craigyferg/ TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@craigy_ferg X - https://www.x.com/craigyferg Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/thecraigfergusonshow

Hello everyone. Welcome to the Joy podcast. My name is Craig Ferguson. I am the host of the Joy podcast today. Now, I know what you're thinking, Craig, uh, where are you? Because this doesn't look normal. Well, I mean, it does look normal. I don't know if you can see. I don't want to do it because it's very sunny outside and it'll blast. But what's happening is I'm in, well, it's not that bad actually. I could open the curtains of it. I'm in London. I don't know if you can tell. Look, see, as you can see, chimney sweeps, singing Victorian urchins.

I'm in London, England, and I'm going to be here. I'm working on a comedy thing in London, England, and I'm going to be here for a couple of weeks. And because I'm in a different time zone for guests, guests and everything else and i'm also very busy very busy i've got other curtains still i'll open these curtains as well so as you can see both sides are london um i'm very busy and i don't really

have time to fit in the podcast the way i would like to with the right guests and all that kind of stuff so what i'm going to do is uh for today and maybe another a few weeks what i'm going to do I'm just going to turn my computer on. What I'm going to do for the next few weeks is I'll do tweets and emails editions of the podcast. So if you... I'm terribly sorry. Are you all right? So if you have a tweet or an email or something you would like me to answer,

like we used to do in the old late night show. You know, is it Twitter me this. Twitter me that tweets and emails things. What we used to do on the old late night show, show is people would send in tweets or emails. Back and then we call them tweets. Nowadays, of course, they're, I don't know, they're exes, twixes and Instagrams. Twitter was a thing back in the day, but it's not even called to her around. I don't even know. Look, what I'm saying is send in a correspondence of some kind using the internet and if I get to it, I will answer it.

It's kind of like a Reddit ask me anything except it's not on Reddit and you can't ask me anything but other than that it's exactly like it but what i'm doing is because i know you'll probably say well great what are you doing in london it can't really tell you right now it's a super secret comedy thing i'm recording something but um i uh i will do the tweets in the emails if you send me in things to the website i guess uh which is the craig fergusonshow.com and if you do that send it in that'll be fine. I feel like it's very sunny here and I probably look a bit under the bed.

I'm jet-lacked because I've just got here. And I've also got, because I'm reading the tweets and the emails, a thing is going to happen now that I am going to have to read off of a screen. And in order to do so, I'm going to have to put on my reading glasses. Now, I know this may be alarming to some of you, but I'm getting older. It's certainly alarming to me.

And because I'm getting older, I have to use reading glasses sometimes to read. I mean, like most people, I don't read much anymore. I just scroll my socials. I don't even know what that means. But it's like a sex thing. You want to scroll your socials. But I have to put my reading glasses. So please don't be alarmed.

Young people, you may want to look away now if there are any young people there because I've got to put on my reading glasses. are. And they make my eyes look big, which I, uh, which is not really something I was going for. There's not, there's something like, um, there's something unnerving about reaching a point in life where you put on your reading glasses and make your eyes look big. But I also think because I'm in London, it makes me look like one of the Cray twins. The Cray twins, of course, were gangsters in London in the 1960s and one of them had glasses and one of them didn't. Ron and Reggie cray and they were they were tough guys and one of them they were played by tom hardy in a film he played

both of them he's a terrific actor um he can play a guy with glasses and a guy without glasses it is amazing he's actually a very good actor uh but i can only do me with glasses and me know so there are some the reason i'm looking here there are some tweets and emails uh already in because we uh you know i scrolled on the comments um which is something i don't normally do it, but people tend to ask questions on the comments. And I think that that's a handy way of going about things. So if you want to ask a question, you could probably go on to the YouTube channel and you're probably on it right now because you could be on it right now. I don't know. You could be listening to the podcast and some other way. But if you're on YouTube,

you can go to the comments and ask me a question and someone will pick it up and ask me that. I'll get that question, perhaps, perhaps not. Let's see. All right, so you're there. This is from London 28. Now, that's quite interesting because I'm in London. I wonder if this person is called London or is from London. London, of course, let me just give you a warning, by the way, about London. Britain in general, really. I like to think the United States is still at the forefront of technology and is, you know, we're still, you know, advancing. We're still innovative. We still have NASA and all that kind of stuff.

But I have to say this. The potato chip or crisps, as they are known here in Britain, game is far in excess of anything we've got in the United States. The potato chips in Britain are, they're nothing sort of wonderful. They've left us in the dirt, really, potato chip wise. Look, I'm not trying to talk down Doritos or, hot nachos or anything like that, or indeed Cheetos, which are, of course, the gold standard of the cheesy puff. But the potato chip game in Britain is beyond comprehension.

I have been here maybe 12 hours and I have gained 50 pounds. They're just delicious. The potato chip game in Britain, in London in particular, you know, you can get, you know, steak and kidney pie and potato chips. It sounds like they wouldn't be good, but they're great. Who I'm saying is, come on, America. Get your finger out, and let's get, improve our particular chip game, is necessary. Anyway, London said, why did I think Craig Ferguson was Gabriel Byrne? I used to get that, actually, back in the day.

People used to say, you look like Gabriel Byrne. And I imagine, I mean, I don't think I do any more. I think I just look like an old guy with big, big eyes, with his glasses on. But maybe Gabriel Byrne looks like that now. I haven't seen him for a while. Gabriel Byrne, the actor, of course, memorable and great, Miller's Crossing and the usual suspects.

He was fabulous in both. He's fabulous in any film. I've seen him and he's a terrific actor. Gabriel Byrne is Irish, of course, and I am Scottish. And look, I'm not going to lie to you. There's a bit of a genetic crossover between Ireland. in Scotland, there seems to be, there are lots of people who kind of look Irish and kind of look Scottish and they're kind of from the same thing. I also get every now and again, by the way,

Italian. People say, think that I'm Italian, which I've never done a 23 in me or an ancestry.com, but I suspect I might be a bit Italian. You know, Italian's got around back in the day, still do. Anyway, what I'm saying is this. People used to say to me, look like Gabriel Byrne and and I could see it and then one day in Hollywood as these things happen I was introduced to Gabriel Byrne and he didn't know who I was which was nice and and but I knew who he was he was very nice and I was very friendly but I am happy to report the following he's a bit shorter than me ha ha ha ha so Do I look like, so if you thought, if you see someone who looks like me but is a bit shorter,

it might be Gabriel Byrne or it might be me because you've imagined me taller than I am because I will say this to you as well. People say to me a lot, oh, you're taller than I thought. You know, if they haven't seen me before and they recognize me or something. And then I say, well, how big is your television? Because, you know, I'm the same size as I always am. But if, like, for example, if you're watching this on a phone, you might think I'm a tiny little person.

I used to be six foot two, and about six foot two and a half. And I was measured at my most recent medical. And I was, I wasn't even six foot two. I'm like, oh my God, it's happening. I'm getting shorter. And I have to wear reading glasses. They make my eyes look big. I think in about 10 years, I'm going to look like a mole.

Which I have to tell you, it brings up a story, which I have to tell you. I don't have to tell you, but I'm going to tell you because I said the word mole. This is true. About, oh, I don't know, it would have to be about 35 years ago. I've been sober for 33 years. So this was about 35 years ago. I was living, for some reason, in a tiny village in England, on the Suffolk Coast, which is in the East Coast, a very rural village in England.

And the village had a population of about, I don't know, 25, 26 people. It was a very small village and I had a pub, as these villages do. It had a little pub and I used to go out at the pub a lot and I was drinking back then. This is important for the story. I was drinking back then and I used to drink this warm beer that they had in Suffolk. It was called Adnams. Adnams ale, a beautiful, dark warm beer, bits of mouse floating in it. and stuff like that, and crisps, those delicious British crisps floating in the beer.

And in this lovely old pub, and it was hardly anybody in this pub. So I would go in, and I would, because I was kind of new to the village and I was from out of town and hadn't grown up there, that was kind of something of a celebrity in this village of 27. You know, the people would ask me things about Scotland and ask me things about, you know, what it was like to be on the telly, because I'd been on the telly a couple of times. And telly is British television, by the way.

The, like crisp potato chip or fanny, fanny. Fanny, fanny are two words that are, like in America, if you say fanny, it just means, you know, like your tush, like a little fan, like a patent fanny or something. But in Britain, if you say fanny, it means it's near the tush, but it's much, it's a much tougher word to say. For example, I'm in London now and I've said the word fanny and I imagine there's probably police nearby

coming to arrest me. Local bobbies for saying the word fanny because it's very rude word in Britain but not rude at all in America. Anyway, look, I used to go to this pub every night because I was drinking back then

and I kind of enjoyed myself there and I was there one night And now the reason I'm talking about this is because I mentioned the word mole. So I go in one night and there was a guy in there and he was wearing fabulous trousers. So this soft, soft fur trousers. And he was a very definitely a local celebrity and everyone was talking to him. And it turns out he was the mole catcher. He was the local mole catcher and he was regaling them with stories of the adventures of, you know,

trapping these, you know, vermin, they call them. I don't know, I think they're rather adorable, really, but they would, they catch moles because they make little, they destroy lawns and stuff, I suppose. And so he, um, he was very popular in the pub and he was kind of stealing my thunder. You know, and I was jealous. I'm not, I'm not ashamed to admit.

Well, I am ashamed to admit it, actually. I was jealous. And I was, I was a different man back then. I was drinking and I had a couple of drinks and I noticed how popular this guy was. So I butted into the conversation and said, you know, after I'd had a few drinks and said, you know, I've done a bit of mole catching in my time. And they were like, no, you haven't surely, you know, from Glasgow. They weren't from the north of England.

They had accents, but they weren't like mine. Like, no, you haven't, you haven't done mole catching. You haven't done mole catching. You have from Glasgow. There are no moles in Glasgow. I said, no, I have done mole catching, and I made up this whole fictitious life about myself as a mole catcher, you know, talking about, oh yeah, you need to look out for the, you know, some deadly variants in Scotland, the, you know, the Glasgowian attack mole, or the Edinburgh Nipper, the Dundee, you know, viper mole, none of which exist, to my knowledge. I mean, again, I'm not a mole catcher. the um so uh i made a fool of myself basically because i was drinking now that's not the worst thing i've ever done but i thought it was i thought it was kind of one of the more pathetic things

that i ever did when i was drinking is that i invented a uh a life for myself a pretend life for myself where i was a mole catcher but i've never i wouldn't know one mole from another i wouldn't know Norwegian blue from a Patagonian red. I don't know moles at all. And the truth is, I'm a soft-hearted man, really, and I feel like if I caught a mole, I probably let it go. So I hope that's answered your question about do I look like Gabriel Byrne. Anyway, let's have a look at glasses on to read the next one. This is from True Tate Hunter. Will you please do a tour date in Utah? Well, this is a constant for people that are in my line of work who tour like when you tour a lot when you do stand-ups around the country people will often say particularly when you announce a date

for a tour people say come and play and they'll insert the name of local town and and i've nine times out of ten i've just played there and this is no exception i played salt lake city within the last year I've played Salt Lake, I'm sure, because I remember there's a very nice big hotel in town and a fantastic Mexican restaurant in Salt Lake City, which it's kind of a thing that I... Joe Bolter, who's my writing partner, who on the old late night show,

was the front end of Secretariat, the horse. You may be familiar with Joe. Joe's my good friend. He's a lovely man. He produces Tom Papa's... podcast about bread. It's not about bread, but, you know, it's called Breaking Bread with Tom Papa,

who's a very lovely man and bakes bread and talks to people. I mean, he's not sitting in an Airbnb in London talking to his phone, like some people, like Mr Molecatcher here. But anyway, Joe has this thing about Mexican restaurants, and I've kind of picked up on it, that wherever he goes in the world, he will try and go to a local Mexican restaurant

because most towns in the world have a Mexican restaurant. Joe's a, you know, California, and so he grew up eating Mexican food, and he always goes to Mexican restaurants. And you know what? They're always pretty good. It's a fairly good bet to go to, but the one in Utah, I can't remember the name of it.

I'm sure in Salt Lake City, it's fabulous. I'm sure somebody could put it into the comments. A really, really good Mexican restaurant in Salt Lake City. So it's in my mind. I tend to do it a little bit different in the sense of wherever I go in the world, I look for a Thai restaurant, a Thai restaurant because I feel like most times when you go to a Thai restaurant, whenever I've got to a Thai restaurant, it's Thai people who are working there. So, or certainly who own it.

And so I like going to Thai restaurants because I love Thai food. And the best one I've come across so far now, I know this will ignite a firestorm on the internet. There's the controversy. It'll go mad around here. But I'm going to say the best one I've been to so far is, again, I kind of remember the name of it, but it's in Ottawa, Canada. I know. I mean, there are great Thai restaurants that I like. There's P-My, it's Thai in Los Angeles, up on Fountain.

No, not Fountain. I don't know. Fairfax, I think. It doesn't really matter to most of you, I'm sure. But P-My, it's Thai in Los Angeles is a really good one. And then there's a really good one in Maine. But the best one I've been to is Ottawa, Canada. I can't remember the name of it, but I do like it.

Now, I hope that tells you that I'll be playing Utah soon. As you can probably tell from the way things are going at the moment, it's going to take me a while to get through all of the questions. I don't know if you guys can tell. This is the surface right here of my computer, where I'm reading the tweets and emails from. I have a computer. And glasses that make my eyes look big.

So, you know, it's going well for me. All right. This is from Madame Rell. Would you go back to late night? No, this is not. That's from MK, MK-45. Would you go back to late-night TV if offered the opportunity for a prime slot? Well, this is a complicated answer.

Let me give it to you in as concise a way as possible. No. No. I loved doing the late-night show. that many of you did too. I feel I'm very proud of that show. I feel like it was something a little bit different than what was offered at the time or even as being offered now. It's a good show. It was mental. I loved it and I'm very proud of it. But it's a lot to do the same job over and over and over again. And I loved the show, but there was a point where I thought,

I don't know how much more I can do this. And that was about three years before I quit. So I loved it and I'm very proud of it and I'm glad I did it. And I'm glad so many people like it and remember it fondly. And let's do that. Let's remember it fondly. So the idea is, so the answer to the question is, no, I don't think I would ever do late night again unless I was offered her a great deal of money, obviously.

And then I'd give it some thought. I'm just laughing because over there, And this is something you definitely won't want to see. Mrs. Ferguson has just come out of the shower and is getting ready. And it's quite a show, I have to say. Something pretty special for an old mole catcher like me. I told them the mole catcher story. It's a sad, sad story of a pathetic man trying to be something that he isn't.

Anyway, this is from Madam Rell. Will you eventually write another novel? Yeah, it's hard. Novels are hard. I mean, I will write another one. I've started one. And I'm kind of about 100 pages into it. A follow-up to a novel that I wrote a long time ago,

a novel called Between the Bridge and the River. I will write another novel. I like doing it, but it's funny how time, and I'm sure many of you feel the same way, Finding time to do everything you want to do is extremely difficult. And writing novels, to me, I've only written one. But it's such an all-consuming thing. It requires so much, like your whole concentration has to go into it.

And I don't seem to have the time to do that right now. But I will, I fully intend to finish the one I'm writing. Peter Cook, who was a great British comedian and a mentor of mine back in the day, he used to say, he told me this, he said, whenever people say to me that they're writing a book, he would always say to them, neither am I, which is kind of where I'm at at the moment. All right, this is from Devil Bev.

Please state some of your favorite fiction books, fantasy ones would be awesome. I don't read anything. At the moment I'm reading, a friend of mine, Denise Mayna, has written a book called The Good Liar, which is a crime novel set in London. And I'm about, I don't know, I've started reading it. It's set in London and I'm in London. I hope that doesn't mean I'll be involved in crime. I really hope not because there's a brutal murder at the start of this book.

And I'd really like to be, and I know this is controversial, I'd really like to not be brutally murdered. if possible. Anyway, I'm reading right now The Good Liar by Denise Mina who's a fabulous crime author. But let me tell you about a series of books that are about to be released in America.

Oh gosh, I'm very excited about this. They're written. It's about the crime books. I do love crime books because they're a way of... I don't know, I enjoy the play. I know many people do. I just like them. There's a series of books.

books written by a British author called Tim Sullivan, who I'm trying to get onto the podcast because he lives in London. So that's a guest I'll be able to get on the podcast in London. Actually, I had dinner with him the other night and I said, will you do it? And he's quite a grumpy man, but I think he will do it. Anyway, his books are about to be released in the United States. And there's eight so far. And they're about a detective called George Cross, who works in Bristol. This is fabulous stuff. it's the detective George it's quite controversial because George

the detective George Cross is on the autism spectrum and so he's a very and quite deep into it I don't know the medical terms or descriptions for autism but he's in there and part of the condition makes him an extremely relentless

and fabulous detective and it's a very odd take and a very interesting take on the detective novel and like all detective novels it creates a world which you go into and you meet the characters. There's George Cross and the people that he works with and the Bristol Homicide Department. And it's fabulous.

It really is fabulous. So that's what I've been reading a lot. The first one is called the dentist. And it's about the brutal murder of a dentist. I've tried to persuade him to do the mole catcher, which is about the brutal murder of a mole catcher. But he doesn't seem that interested in doing a mole catcher. novel yet, but there's the dentist, the politician, the other one, I don't know, they're all named after the poet, I think, is one of them.

They're all named after usually the person that gets murdered is named in the title. So the first one that gets murders is the dentist, which is not a bad star, if you ask me. Not that I'm against dentistry, it's just that I've had, in fact, the opposite, I'm very for dentistry. but the amount of dental work I've been going through recently good Lord I don't know if you have any of you have had implants done I'm talking about dental implants the it's a long process I'm getting three done on this side of my mouth and it's going on forever you have to they have to put the thing in and then let that heal and then put in the scaffolding goes up and then a guy comes across the mole catcher goes in and looks for moles. It's a mess.

Anyway, so what I'm reading at the moment is Denise Miner and Tim Sullivan, two great British writers, which is probably appropriate given that I'm in London at the moment. All right, let's see what else. This is from Darth Steak. He said,

Who is your favourite superhero? Now look, this is going to be controversial again. Not as controversial as my stance on crisps or potato chips, obviously. which is hugely controversial. But this is controversial in the sense that I don't really go for superheroes.

I don't really like it. It seems like cheat to me. It seems like a plot cheat to me. Like you can have a superhero, like he has a special power, so that if ever you get stuck right in the story, you go, oh, he has the magical power of, you know, mole catching.

And suddenly he can do a thing that... Now, I know this is an over-success. simplification and certainly I was very fond of and became friendly with Stan Lee who wasn't who wasn't immune to creating superheroes I think he created Spider-Man and a bunch of other ones and Stan was a lovely man very very funny very bright and he was very involved in the superhero world and I remember talking to him but I wasn't really into superheroes and he was very gracious about it I realize now that's probably like saying to a mole catcher, I don't like your trousers. By the way, what I probably neglected to tell you in the mole catcher story,

that the trousers the mole catcher was wearing were made of mole skin. Mole skin. You know how many moles you have to skin? The moles are about the size of a mouse. You know how many moles you have to skin to make trousers? And I don't even eat meat. I can't wear mole-skin trousers. I'm against it.

I'm against fur coats and mole-skin trousers. There, I've said it. Another controversy, I'm against people wearing fur. I'm against, although I have got a couple of leather jackets. So that makes me a hypocrite, I suppose. So I'm against me being a hypocrite. I'm against mole-skin trousers. And I have a controversial stance on British versus American potato chips.

And I know I'm not wrong in this. All right. I hope that helps. All right, we do one more and then I really have to go to work because it's the morning here, and that's probably why I look so much like shit in this, or maybe it's just age, who can say? What is something that currently brings you joy? That is from Astachow 30. Well, that's a fair question given the name of the podcast is joy.

I think what brings me joy, Like most parents is my children. And even though they're not that young anymore. And Peter LaSalle, who was my boss in Late Night, the legendary Peter Lassali, who was a, you know, he was Johnny Carson's producer for 35 years. He produced David Letterman when the show went to CBS. He produced Tom Snyder's show, a Craig Kilburn show.

He worked with John Stewart, he worked with all the big names in late night. He was a fabulous, still is, a fabulous gentleman, a great producer. And he said to me about happiness once, because, you know, when you work with someone very closely like that, and someone is as important and as wonderful as Peter, and Peter had a heck of a story, I mean, Peter was a, you know, a concentration camp victim, he was captured by the Nazis. He was actually a schoolmate of Anne Frank and was captured by the Nazis and went through the concentration camp experience. He's a Holocaust survivor. Peter said about happiness to me once. It was when my kids were very young. His kids are obviously

older than mine. His kids are grown up. His kids have kids. That you are only as happy as your least happy child, which I thought was a very astute thing to say. So in order to be joyful in my life, it's kind of, it's a weird codependence, I suppose, but I think anyone who's a parent probably understands it, that I can only really be as happy as, as my kids. So I feel like in a general term of like kind of baseline happiness, what I try and do to be happy is to make sure the kids are all right. And if the kids are good, then I tend to be okay. Another thing I will say about joy is this. I have a friend recently who went through a very difficult health journey, cancer with, you know, going through all sorts of stuff. As you go older, you know, obviously you see

that more and more in your group. And I feel like I experience in talking to him about his journey. he's all right now but talking to him about his journey I realized that I can get an immense feeling of gratitude just feeling physically okay because you know what it's like whenever you're sick wherever you're ill it's just fucking awful so I try to experience joy by the manufacturing of gratitude whenever I can I think gratitude my friends is the magic bullet and I know that's it's easy for you to say and I know I'm and I know I know I'm very grateful for my life and I'm very grateful that I'm able to walk around and I'm very grateful that I'm not sick today and I'm very but if I can even when I'm not feeling so good or even if I

things are not so bad somehow if I can figure out a way to grasp onto some gratitude that that opens the door for me to feel okay. And if I feel okay, then I can experience joy. What gives me joy? You know, the happiness of people that I love, honestly. The happiness and well-being of people that I love. To experience, you know, existential joy in the world in a singular sense, if it's not kind of rammed into this codependence of being around other people,

I would say, honestly, it's the, it's the trite old things. It's the, it's the sunset. It's the snap of a mole in the trap. I made myself laugh. I would never, I would never trap a mole. I don't even know if moles get snapped in traps. Anyway, what I'm saying is this. You know, the beach, the sunsets, the sun rises.

Last night in London, there was a blood moon, eclipse. Blimey, that's a thing to see. You know, the life stuff. Anyway, I hope that helps. Now look, it's early here in London. I have to probably go and brush my teeth, which are steeping gently in the... I've got to go to work,

but I hope that's okay. You were my guest today, and for the next few weeks, you will be my guest on Joy. I hope you're okay with that. Write your questions, send on your questions. I'll do what I can, and I'll be here every Tuesday morning as usual, every Tuesday as usual, to bring you joy.

Ah, that sounded professional. That'll do it. All right, talk to you soon, my friends. Bye-bye. Thank you. Thank you.