THE new host of CBS’s “Late Late Show,” Craig Ferguson, has a knack for finding work, but even when he’s not looking, work has a way of finding him.

Take the way he won the job as Craig Kilborn’s successor on the post-David Letterman late-night show produced by Letterman’s company, Worldwide Pants.

In the months since Kilborn signed off Aug. 27, Ferguson, who was then best known as Drew Carey’s department store boss on “The Drew Carey Show,” was one of many substitutes. And he admits he wasn’t thinking all that seriously about taking on the gig permanently.

Despite that, he wound up being offered the job after guest-hosting just seven shows. His new job begins Monday.

“I think that if there’s a reason I got this job, it’s because I really didn’t try,” said Ferguson, 42, who speaks in the accent of his native Scotland.

“You have to be natural in this environment,” he said, “because with the sheer volume of work of doing five shows a week, you’re going to get found out anyway, so you might as well be yourself.”

In an interview in a suite at the Rihga Royal Hotel on West 54th Street, Ferguson is disarmingly honest about aspects of his life and career.

A native of Glasgow born May 17, 1962, Ferguson dropped out of high school when he was 16 and has had no formal training as an actor.

He admits he fell into acting when a theater director who frequented the Glasgow pub where Ferguson tended bar suggested he try his hand at stand-up comedy on open-mike night.

From that he became an actor.

In 1996, a year after he moved to Los Angeles, Ferguson went to Warner Bros. to audition for the role of a Hispanic photographer on “Suddenly Susan.”

When it became clear that his Scottish accent disqualified him for the role, a casting executive mentioned he might be right for a role on “The Drew Carey Show,” which was going into its second season.

With nothing better to do, Ferguson accompanied the exec to the “Drew Carey” set, met Drew Carey, and was hired the next day for a job that lasted nearly eight years.

Ferguson, who is currently single and lives in Los Angeles, has been married and divorced twice, and has a little boy – Milo, 3 ½ – who lives three blocks away with his mother, with whom Ferguson is on “friendly” terms.

Perhaps fitting for a new talkshow host, Ferguson is an articulate conversationalist whose talents

extend beyond acting.

He has written several screenplays including “Saving Grace,” released in 2000, in which he starred with Brenda Blethyn, who played a woman facing financial ruin who turns to cultivating marijuana.

And he’s just recently finished his first novel, titled “Between the Bridge and the River,” which took a year to write

and for which he has no publisher yet.

“I’ve got a feeling I’ll be able to sell it a bit easier now than I would before I got this gig,” he said.

Ferguson wouldn’t say how much his new job pays, but said it’s “not bad. It’s not prime time, but it’s OK.

“It’s a good living, but I was doing OK before,” he said.

“I did eight years on ‘The Drew Carey Show’. I’ve been through the new-car, new-house thing – and the divorce!”

As for what he’ll do on “Late Late Show,” he insists he has no concrete plans yet.

“It will evolve over time,” he said.

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THE LATE LATE SHOW WITH CRAIG FERGUSON

Monday-Friday, 12:35 a.m., CBS

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“I’ve been through the new-car, new-house thing – and the divorce!”

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