Norton’s anthology
What’s the story with Graham Norton? The award-winning broadcaster, novelist and one-time comic actor recently penned a second novel but he tells Donal O’donoghue he is now thinking of easing back on the throttle
“One of the things that link all the bits of my life is stories,” says Graham Norton, who has to date published two memoirs as well as a brace of novels and hosts a chat show with a famous red chair that tips its occupant if their story doesn’t cut the mustard. “On the chat show and the radio I try to get people to tell me stories, in my Agony Uncle column I respond to people’s stories, and now these novels are my opportunity to tell stories,” says the 55-year-old broadcaster. “Maybe that’s a particularly Irish thing, as people will literally walk into your kitchen and ask you ‘Have you got any stories?’”
Norton’s own story is one of life lived at a seemingly breakneck pace. Friday night TV chat-show, Saturday morning show on BBC Radio 2, Agony Uncle for the Telegraph, quiz-master at his second home in Ahakista in west Cork and most recently, a second novel,
A Keeper. “I’m thinking in my head that while I enjoy all the jobs that I do, equally, I could imagine working less, not stopping, but working less,” he says. “So I suppose I’m now negotiating my way towards a semi-retirement.” Most of us hope that if he does semi-retire, he will keep e Graham Norton Show, the funniest, fastest and least a ected chat-show on the planet.
We spoke in the middle of the PR merry-go-round for A Keeper. “I should be in Ireland today but they’ve kept me here in London for e Late Late Show special,” says Norton. Even on the phone, though, he’s a tonic, his voice forever teetering on the edge of a chuckle or a witty comeback.
But then he did cut his teeth as a stand-up comic and actor, most memorably as the all-singing, all Riverdancing Father Noel Furlong in Father Ted. While he was anxious about the reception for his debut novel, Holding (“I was very nervous and unsure”), it went on to garner critical and popular acclaim and won Best Popular Fiction at the Irish Book Awards in 2016.
A er the de ness of that novel, A Keeper is somewhat clumsy in plot and prose but is a brave move from Norton, whose award-winning debut was a detective yarn with an ending that screamed sequel. It’s all change with A Keeper: the narrator is female, it’s not a genre piece (like Holding, the story was inspired by one of his mother’s stories, in this case a woman who responded to a lonelyhearts advert) and no room for a sequel. “People really liked PJ, the guard in Holding and wanted to know what happened next but funnily enough, I didn’t,” he says. “By the end of that book, my attitude was I’ve told that story and now I was o
Similar to Holding, A Keeper is also set in west Cork, Norton’s home place. A er nomadic beginnings (his father was a rep for Guinness) he grew up in Bandon, where his mother, Rhoda, still lives and he now has a house in Ahakista where he spends his summers (and Christmases too). “Every time I leave I wish I was staying for longer, but equally I’m aware that if I didn’t leave I might end up going ‘Get me out of here!’ You think it’s quiet until September hits and then you realise ‘Oh this is quiet!’”
But while you can take the boy out of the country, the country is still in him. Apart from the Irish backdrop, A Keeper also features a character who now has two dogs, Maxi and Dick. Her other pooch, Twink, was killed by a car. Was that wishful thinking? “No, no, no!” says Norton. “I LOVE Twink and I hope she nds it funny. Of course, the publishers in the UK kept sending me notes asking ‘Can you explain this?””
ere is an idea for a third novel percolating in his head. “I have some characters but I haven’t .”
come up with a story yet,” he says. Perhaps his mother might help with another idea? He laughs. “Every time this summer my mother opened her mouth I’d be taking notes on what she said,” he says. But he also has other sources. “What’s that brilliant magazine?” he asks alluding to Ireland’s Own. “at has so many good stories in it.” He goes on to relate one such true-life tale: in 1941, the listeners to a small western village’s only radio misheard that the Japanese had attacked nearby Bell Harbour and blocked the roads to stop the invaders.
Earlier this year, Norton said that “in a world going to hell in a handcart, Ireland is a wonderful beacon.” Yet when he le Ireland in 1980s, it was another country and like many of his generation he was glad to be going. “My relationship with Ireland has changed enormously but then, Ireland has changed enormously too. I hope I have more empathy and am less judgemental. And that’s what Ireland has become too; more empathetic and less judgemental. It’s very hard to unite the United Kingdom whereas in Ireland, the young people especially are getting engaged with politics and creating a republic that’s t for purpose. at is wonderful just as it is depressing to see the mess the UK is making of itself.”
He says that he doesn’t carry regrets. “In my newspaper column, people quite o en say things like ‘Oh I wish I wasn’t single’ or ‘I was this or that’ and of course, yes, you should be able to change or reboot your life but equally, you’ve also got to nd a way of enjoying the life you are living. People spend a lot of time mourning this mysterious life they wish they had but that isn’t your life: you didn’t get a degree in philosophy, you’re not teaching at Yale, you’re doing whatever you’re doing so get on with that. Regrets are a waste of energy and emotion. ere’s nothing you can do about it except to keep going and hope to do it better the next time.”
At 55, Norton is single, but not for want of trying. In 2015, following the break-up of a three-year relationship with Andrew Smith, he signed up with the dating app, Tinder. It wasn’t a success. In one instance, a nervous date kept asking him odd questions before it emerged that he was looking for a scoop for a journalist friend. Eventually Norton just quit, saying later that
“There are a lot of broken people in the world and I don’t need to meet them.” In any case, being single is a choice and he’s happy that way now, the man who once conceded that he “failed all my relationship exams.” A Keeper is dedicated to ‘Jonno’. I ask if that is Jon Magnusson, his long-term producer. “No, it’s another Jonno in my life,” says Graham and that’s that.
In his 2004 biography, So Me, Norton writes that when he nally told his mother that he was gay, her rst response was: ‘Oh, it’s such a lonely life.’ He quali es that reaction now. “It’s a completely understandable response of a mother to that news, particularly given what she knew of gay people at that time in the 1980s. If you saw a gay person on television back then they were either a serial killer or they were about to be killed.” Mother and son are close. “I love my mother simply because she’s my mother but also because she’s such good company. She’s good craic and very curious, still interested in what’s going on in the world. She’s a good lesson in how to grow old.”
Growing old is a theme that threads through
A Keeper, with one character re ecting on how “Old age was such a cruel price to pay for youth”. Yet the march of time is irresistible. “What can you do?” says Norton. “Picking a ght with age is a recipe for humiliation because you are going to lose. I see people coming on the show and
I’m thinking ‘You were once so beautiful and look what you have done to yourself.’” As for his legacy, he bats the idea to one side. “Books and television shows come and go and while it’s great if they work it’s not the end of the world if they bomb.” And what would he do if the end was nigh? “I’d kill myself,” says Graham. “Well I’d probably wait until two weeks to go but I wouldn’t wait until the last day.”
A Keeper by Graham Norton is published by Hodder & Stoughton