An ‘American Shaolin’ in the presence of the unbelievably charismatic Craig Ferguson

“A walk by the Niagara Falls seems to have inspired my hair to unruliness.” Ten months after “The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson” concluded its Emmy-nominated, nearly decade tenure on CBS, the “How to Train Your Dragon” voice actor and naturalized U.S. citizen captured this iPhone selfie on October 24, 2015, while in town to do a stand-up set at the Seneca Niagara Casino. Image Credit: Craig Ferguson’s official Twitter

Craig Ferguson hosted CBS’s The Late Late Show for nine seasons. In spite of low ratings, the follow-up to The Late Show with David Letterman was a critical darling that netted an unprecedented Peabody Award for the Scottish comedian’s razor wit conversing with Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a South African human rights activist. As a three-time author — Between the Bridge and the River [a 2006 novel], American on Purpose: The Improbable Adventures of an Unlikely Patriot [2009], and Riding the Elephant: A Memoir of Altercations, Humiliations, Hallucinations, and Observations [2019] — Ferguson is among the rare breed of TV hosts possessing a legitimate rapport with writers.

In the second installment of a thorough profile — access “Steve McQueen and Bruce Lee: Complicated Tinseltown Frenemies” to catch up — Bruce Lee: A Life wordsmith Matthew Polly engagingly relives his sole late night appearance. Understandably scared to death having never been in front of a national audience before, Polly was asked to participate because of the buzz surrounding the impending publication of American Shaolin. The martial arts sage’s debut tome amusingly detailed the two extraordinary years he spent studying kung fu under the tutelage of Shaolin monks in Henan, China, during the early ‘90s.