Ferguson & Fry's unusual chat show...

Scottish-born comic Craig Ferguson threw out the chat show rulebook last night, but hosting a programme with just one guest – Stephen Fry – and no studio audience.

The move was daring for America’s late-night programming, but the critic at the influential Entertainment Weekly called the special edition of Ferguson’s Late Late Show ‘one of the best hours I’ve seen in a while’.

Fry discussed everything from his work with Hugh Laurie, his cocaine use, the punk rock scene in Seventies London and Twitter.

After the show Fry, used the website to call Ferguson ‘entirely charming’, adding: ‘Most unusual Late Late Show. Him, me - no audience. There was breeze and we shot it, fat and we chewed it.’

Ferguson said he was prompted to think about his show’s format because of the ‘terrible thing unfolding on NBC’ – where Jay Leno is being parachuted back into a late-night talk-show slot, unceremoniously ousting Conan O’Brien, after his attempts to move into primetime flopped.

Entertainment Weekly’s Ken Tucker praised the ‘old-fashioned hour, in which two people conversed in an enlightening, deceptively casual way,’ adding: ‘It was terrific to see two pros like this.’

Ferguson – who was once in a band with The Thick Of It’s Peter Capaldi – began working the UK comedy circuit of the mid-Eighties as Bing Hitler, before moving to the States to become a chat show host. He now earns around £15million a year and has been tipped as the successor to David Letterman, who has the slot before him on CBS,

Published: 24 Feb 2010