‘We’ve hit a home run’ - Unsigned Scots band land US chat show gig

Stand-up comedian Ferguson, who grew up in Cumbernauld and now presents The Late Late Show on the CBS network, returned to his homeland last month to film a series of episodes where his guests were First Minister Alex Salmond, actress Mila Kunis and Michael Clarke Duncan, best known for his role in The Green Mile.

Ferguson had enlisted his producers to go to Scotland to find a band “he would have wanted to be in 30 years ago”.

The 49-year-old was talking from experience. In the early 1980s, shortly before his move to America, Ferguson played drums in Glasgow band The Dreamboys, which also featured The Thick of It star Peter Capaldi on vocals.

The band he chose from the options presented by his team was melodic indie-pop quartet The Imagineers. According to frontman Steven Young, though, they still had to prove to the show that they were up to the task.

“We put on a last minute show at the Captain’s Rest in Glasgow in January for them,” he recalls. “They came to the gig and they loved it. Their exact words were, ‘we’ve hit a home run’.”

The band then recorded five songs at Glasgow’s Tron Theatre, where Ferguson interviewed his guests in front of a small audience. “We also recorded our own version of the theme tune which will be in the first 30 seconds of each show,” Young adds.

The experience of rubbing shoulders with Hollywood - and Holyrood - was one which Young describes as “totally surreal”.

“The Green Mile is one of my favourite films,” he says. “Craig Ferguson was really down to earth, really funny. We never met Alex Salmond unfortunately.”

The band also filmed a scene for the promo video on Calton Hill in Edinburgh, which aired on American TV for the first time this week.

The Imagineers website has already seen a surge in traffic, and the band members are bracing themselves for a whole new fanbase. Ferguson’s slot, which follows The Late Show with David Letterman, regularly attracts an audience of 2 million viewers.

“I don’t think you can prepare for that,” Young admits. “We’re in a good position though. We’ve worked hard to get where we are, we’ve served our apprenticeship. It’s hard to imagine how vast the audience is, and how vast America is, it’s mind boggling, but we’ll take it.”

• The Imagineers release a double-sided single on 13 May, www.the-imagineers.com. The band appear on The Late Late Show for five consecutive nights, from 14th to 18th May.