And, unlike some other hosts, Ferguson isn't always looking for the next joke. "My feeling is, I get 10 minutes to come and do my little thing at the start of the show. And after I do that, it's not about me, it's about them. If I say something funny during an interview, great. But it's not my agenda. I'm not there to do that — score point off my guests. They're my guests."

Which is not to say that he doesn't add witty comments to the interview segments. But he has conversations sort of the way Tom Snyder used to — only funnier. "Saying to somebody you're funnier than Tom Snyder, that's like — 'You're more delicious than haggis,' " he joked self-deprecatingly.

But after just days on the air, "The Late Late Show" started booking celebrities it had never been able to get before. "We noticed immediately that the guest bookings became much, much easier," Yasui said. "And I think what happened is, the first couple of nights, publicists saw the interviews he did . . . and they realized what a great interviewer he is."

Ferguson hangs on every word of his guests. He's spontaneous because he can't do it any other way — he has note cards with prepared questions but he loses his place when he tries to read them. "I'm much more interested in talking to the person. Most of these people are very interesting. I mean, they're really interesting. That's why they're on a talk show. . . . They come one and you talk to them. It's a great job, I think."

He also has a pretty good idea of what his job is. "I think the job description is all in the title — you're a host. And what I think a host does, is you try and make your guest feel welcome. . . . That's all I'm trying to do is be a host in an environment where the viewer is welcome and the guest is welcome. This ain't CNN. I'm not trying to forge to the real hard stuff."

It's hard not to like Ferguson in person, and his charisma radiates from the small screen. Watching "The Late Late Show" is like visiting an old friend. "I think that bringing a bit of your life to it works, doesn't it? The more I kind of feel comfortable out there, the more I say, 'Yeah, let me tell you what happened to me last night,' I think that's what the folks want in late night. I don't think they like someone yelling."

While he's quite obviously a Scotsman, it's not like he seems at all foreign to American viewers. "I think of myself as American by choice. I chose to be here," said Ferguson, who added that he's in the process of seeking citizenship — something that will play out on the show. "I've got a feeling with CBS behind me, I can grease a few palms in Immigration and get in there a bit quicker, but maybe not.

"I've been in this country 10 years now and I think of this as home. . . . I'm originally from somewhere else, but that's the story of Americans, isn't it?"