The Scottish Way

It's a good time to be Craig Ferguson. While the ex-pat Scots comedian will see his hairdressing mockumentary The Big Tease open in London this Friday, his second comedy as co-writer and star has just triumphed in Park City, Utah. Saving Grace, which co-stars Martin Clunes and Leslie Phillips, took the Audience Award for Best World Cinema movie at the Sundance Film Festival last week. Compared by industry bible Variety to Ealing classic The Ladykillers, Saving Grace, directed by Nigel Cole and co-written by Ferguson with producer Mark Crowdy, sees the six-foot plus comic play a gardener who comes up with the bright idea of growing marijuana to assist the eponymous heroine (played by Brenda Blethyn) with her beleaguered finances. American distributors New Line paid between $3.5 and $4million for the domestic rights to the comedy, which opens in the UK on April 21. Currently working through a development deal with Paramount, Ferguson, a regular on the phenomenally popular Drew Carey Show in the US since his move to Los Angeles five years ago, cagily revealed to Empire Online what his forthcoming projects are to be. "There's a romantic comedy, set against the world of ship-building and merchant banking, which I really want to do," he says. "I've finished the script for it, and I'm really proud of it. I'd like to do that next year." He's also working on the second draft of a screenplay, from an idea by, of all people, Mick Jagger - a man, according to Ferguson "sings in a beat combo you may have heard of - he's not bad".