NIGHT owls thrive in Edinburgh during August. The Fringe is a favourite haunt of the naturally nocturnal, happy to postpone sleep in the hope of chuckling into the early hours.

It’s an aspect of the annual event that hasn’t changed in the 24 years since Craig Ferguson’s last visit. What has changed is his relationship with performing after most people’s bedtime, having spent 10 years as after-dark host on The Late Late Show.

The Glasgow-born comedian is returning to headline Gilded Balloon’s new venue for 2017, the Rose Street Theatre. The Craig Ferguson Show has a relatively short run of 10 nights, from 11pm to 1am, all to be broadcast live to the US on Sirius XM radio for his weekday 6pm to 8pm slot.

“I can’t believe it’s 24 years. The last time I was doing The Odd Couple with Gerard Kelly, God bless his soul, then a stand-up show at night called Love, Sex, Death, and the Weather.

“I haven’t deliberately stayed away, but it’s been impossible to even visit in August, as that’s when the US TV schedules start. With the radio show we thought we could give commuters sitting in their cars on the journey home a taste of Rose Street at 11pm during the festival. It will be much more than a radio show of course.”

Even though he has a short stand-up tour in North America in July, the format didn’t feel like the right thing for Edinburgh.

“I’m not saying I won’t do any – it’s a place and time when you can get drawn into things – but there are no plans. I’ve never played the Gilded Balloon, but Karen Koren gave me one of my first ever gigs, even before she had the Gilded Balloon. It was some kind of sh***y cabaret place that businessmen frequented. I was doing Bing Hitler at the time, and she paid me £40. I think she’s paying me £40 for this too actually…”

Ferguson recalls that during his last appearances he felt a little displaced at the Fringe, not really “part of it all”. He mentions the number of English comedians there at the time. It was only fair to put him wise that since his last appearance there’s been a global invasion. We agree that as an international festival, comedians of all nations should we welcomed with open arms – handy seeing that Ferguson has been a US citizen since 2008.

“That Fringe and The Ferguson Theory show for BBC Scotland was the last time I did any real work there. The move to America happened just after that. It wasn’t a strategic thing. I was contacted by talent people in Los Angeles, who asked me to go over. Initially it was for two weeks. Then I got a deal to go there for six months; that became a year and then I got The Drew Carey Show, which was a huge hit. Once that happened, that was it – it drew me in.”

He likens it to the spirit of many Scots who have headed west to make their fortune. Ferguson had many qualities that endeared him to the American public and not just the Scottish accent. In fact, throughout his eight years on The Drew Carey Show, he played Nigel Wick with a plummy English accent (with the occasional Sean Connery impersonation).

Being tall, dark, and photogenic, combined with a humour that could swing from what they might call zany to more topical, led him to his own show, and ultimately 2058 episodes of The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson.

Something strange happened, however. In among the sketches and daftness, there were opening monologues paying tribute to his parents when they died. Another looked at celebrities who were clearly troubled and whether they were justifiable targets for ridicule. A special show with Archbishop Desmond Tutu in 2009 brought him a Peabody Award for public service in television.

“I was lucky,” he says. “In the 1990s, CBS wanted David Letterman so badly that he owned two hours of late-night TV. So, I never really worked for CBS, I worked for Dave. I could do pretty much what I wanted to do as long as I didn’t piss Dave off – and he really wasn’t paying attention!

“Now anyone who works in late night is forced into the viral thing. Dave thought all that was vulgar so I never had to do anything like that. Had I worked for CBS directly I would have probably been fired in the first couple of months. Then, when the show became successful they didn’t want to do it anyway.”

By the time he left for the US, his initial stand-up creation Bing Hitler, a wild-eyed character who simply ramped up the decibels when the jokes weren’t hitting the spot, had been banished. He had been put to bed in a show called Mental: Bing Hitler is Dead, which became a successful album that included everything from an exploration of a Compendium of Games to Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon-Tiki expedition where he crossed the Atlantic in 1947 – something that Ferguson likened to crossing the ocean on a rafia mat.

“I’ll tell you something, I was in Norway last week and I forgot to go and see that f***ing boat. I saw loads of Viking boats but I didn’t see the Kon-Tiki, after talking about it for years.”

He agrees that the start that many young comedians get today on panel shows wouldn’t really have been right for Bing’s hysteria.

“I don’t really think Bing was for TV at all. It got a wee bit of telly, Saturday Night Live and a few others, but this was the day of four channels. The Kaiser was still riding his penny farthing and massing his forces on the German border…

“I never really thought it worked, and I’m still dubious about whether stand-up comedy works on TV. It’s a live thing, like music in many ways. Stop Making Sense is an incredible concert movie but I would have much rather been at the Pantages Theatre that night. The skill of a good stand-up is the creation of intimacy. I think Dave Chappelle is great and I could watch him all day, but in general I don’t love it. A lot of people seem to like it and of course I’m grateful for that. It’s a bit like snooker for me – I’d rather play it than watch it.”

The end of the late-night show came with a resurgence in his writing, following the novel Between the Bridge and the River in 2010 and the American on Purpose autobiography, also from that year.

One book is about to delivered to Penguin for publication next year, and he is finally “getting to grips with a novel” he’s been wrestling with for a couple of years.

“I’ve always written, but the late-night thing is such a beast – it’s five hours of television a week. There’s a myth that all American TV shows have a massive team of writers feeding you material. It’s not like that. There were five writers on the show and I was one of them. [His sister Lynn Ferguson was also part of the writing team for several years.] We had to batter it all the time, so there wasn’t much time to write anything outside of that.”

The three years since giving up late-night TV has been filled with The Name Game, a syndicated game show, a series that discussed moments in history called Join or Die with Craig Ferguson for the History Channel, and the Sirius radio show. There are a couple of TV projects pipeline. One for the UK is a small thing but, “one of the funniest things that anyone’s written for him” – alas there’s a confidentiality agreement in force on that one.

“I’m 55 years old now so the energy is different. When I was in my 30s it was all about getting ahead and doing stuff. I don’t really feel like that anymore. It used to be that I had to do the stuff that wasn’t interesting to earn a living, but it’s a wee bit different now. It’s been a case of 'right place at right time' for me, I have no doubt about that.

“Who knows? Maybe if I’d stayed in Scotland I’d be a TV detective by now.”

The Craig Ferguson Show is at the Gilded Balloon Rose Street Theatre, Edinburgh from Monday, August 7 to Friday, August 18 (not Saturday 12 or Sunday 13).

www.edfringe.com