Craig Ferguson

Ferguson was a Glaswegian comic and actor long before American audiences met him, and his first substantial job in the United States was Nigel Wick, the ghastly boss on The Drew Carey Show. Around that period he wrote and starred in three films, The Big Tease, Saving Grace and I'll Be There, directing one of them, and he has published two books, the novel Between the Bridge and the River and the memoir American on Purpose. He became a United States citizen in 2008.

The Late Late Show, which he hosted from 2005 to 2014, is the real legacy, and the shape of its recognition tells you what he was good at. The Peabody he won in 2009 was not for a comedy bit but for an interview, with Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Ferguson was a genuinely curious talker who preferred a conversation to a segment, which made him an odd fit for a format built on promotional appearances and much better company than most of the people who fitted it.

On screen he is usually hired for the accent, and once in a while somebody uses him properly. Gobber in the How to Train Your Dragon trilogy is the exception that justifies the rest: a Viking blacksmith short a hand and a leg, played as cheerful gallows humour rather than comic relief, and warm enough to carry the emotional weight the films keep handing him. He is Lord Macintosh in Brave, Owl in Winnie the Pooh, and the robot vampire NOS-4-A2 in Buzz Lightyear of Star Command, which is exactly as enjoyable as it sounds. He now hosts a revival of Scrabble on The CW.