Graham Norton: Fizzing on life
The hugely popular talk show presenter talks to Jonathan Dean about the perils of the modern chat show, cancel culture and why he can’t find right-wing guests
Graham Norton’s red sofa is the glittering red carpet of chat shows — how else to describe the weekly galaxy of stars sitting there? He stands alone at the top of the UK chat show league, yet what do we know about the man himself ? He is 59. His show has lasted for 30 series. He hosts Eurovision. He has a show on Virgin Radio and a books podcast and has written four well-received novels (one made into a TV series). Whatever the medium, Norton provides sparkle in an array of dazzling suits.
Is he that buoyant all the time? “I’m not because that would be infuriating,” he says with the laugh that punctuates most of his conversation. “But there is more light than dark in me. Why wouldn’t there be? My life is f ***ing lovely.”
He is dressed in a T-shirt, having biked to meet for coffee. A deep tan betrays a summer spent in France. He has a little beard. This is Norton at his most relaxed — at the centre of attention rather than facing someone like Adele or Tom Hanks on his couch.
Was his life always this fun? Has he ever felt lost? “Only in my adolescence or 20s, when heartbroken,” he says with a sigh before the fizz returns. “But it is great to be devastated. That’s a nice thing about getting older. You look back and go, ‘It was worth it.’ Carrie Fisher used to talk about the meal and the bill. The good times are the meal. But you know the bill is coming, so you put yourself out there. That’s a really good way to look at life.”
Norton never met the Queen, but as an Irishman in Britain for nearly 40 years, found it humbling to watch the nation mourn. “It’s gorgeous to see the way people respond,” he says. “It’s not rational. But it’s genuine.”
Norton’s life is split in two. For six months he does his chat show in London, while the rest is largely spent in Cork writing novels. His first, Holding, was published in 2016 and he is relatively new to this latest career. There are no unread manuscripts from his 20s because he was too busy having fun, working so he could afford to have fun, or hungover.
His new novel, Forever Home , is about a middle-aged woman cut adrift by her partner’s children. Like Richard Osman’s books, it is cosy crime with wit, pain and heart. “It’s like spreading someone’s ashes,” Norton says of his book. “It is upsetting, but it’s also funny. I’ve spread ashes three times and you end up covered in your loved one. Or you eat them. It’s hilarious and heartbreaking.”
What can we glean from the novel about its author? I mention Killian, a gay character who marries his partner and proclaims that gay marriage is great because it shows that the nation doesn’t hate all homosexuals. Congratulations are in order: Norton married his partner, Jonothan, in the spring and I suggest Killian sounds like Norton.
He muses: “At my age, there’s a nostalgia for when [being gay] was worse. When clubs were down weird alleys. But that’s ridiculous because it was s***. You were beaten up, but it felt special. The two givens were that you weren’t getting married or having children. Being clandestine was exciting and fun.”
Also in Forever Home everybody hates their family. “So, yes, you are right to assume, ‘Graham, do you hate your own family?”’ he says with a laugh. “I really don’t.”
Norton insists he does not mine his life for fiction. “Look,” he says. “The bad bit about being me is that my name on the cover gets in the way, and a reader thinks, ‘Oh, this is what Graham did.’ But the bonus is that I get a book deal.” How fantastically self-aware.
When he wrote the novel during the pandemic he wobbled about bringing something light into this dark place. “But it’s all stupid and meaningless when the future of the globe is at risk. I’m not writing a stateof-the-nation novel. I tell stories. There were stories at the beginning of the world and there will be stories at its end too. And this is one of them.”
If he were a guest on his TV show as an author, what would he ask? “Well, the number of novelists we have on is actually minuscule,” he says with a laugh. “It is hard to interview someone about a novel.” That ends our book chat.
On to his TV show. Norton is a celebrity, but to his great amusement he is seen as a journalist by many of his guests and success lies in making them comfortable, not wary.
“The most fun I’ve had on a talk show,” was Matt Damon’s verdict — and fun is why Norton lands the big names. Over the years there have only been a few he thought were “actively dicks” and he probably means Mickey Rourke.
Still, cancel culture makes these testing times for a show that gives celebrities a platform and some may refuse to go on if they must share a sofa with certain people. In 2017 Norton asked Mel Gibson about his fall from grace amid allegations of antisemitism and domestic violence. Gibson gave a “waffling answer” and it pleased nobody. “Our show is riotous; it doesn’t have the room for a confessional and a lot of sage nodding.”
From Johnny Depp to Arcade Fire, artists get accused of many things, but if they haven’t been found guilty it leaves TV producers deciding whether to invite them on or not.
“If I didn’t talk to people I do not like, my show might be quite underpopulated,” Norton says. Would he still invite people who have been cancelled? “It all depends. If they really want to come on, we could navigate a way through, but what’s interesting is cancel culture is heavy on culture, but not so much on the cancel. Harvey Weinstein is in jail — he’s cancelled. But everyone else is working away. They have a quiet six months but keep working.”
“And anyway, who am I?” he continues, a little flustered. “Am I suddenly the f ***ing moral arbiter of the world who says who can be on TV or can’t? No. People will be on my show and I’ll laugh with them and that will annoy some people, but not having them on seems just as bad.”
Last month, for instance, he had JK Rowling on the radio despite the author, as he says, having “problematic” views. Although he has not talked to her about the transgender issue, he imagines they would disagree. “So I wouldn’t have her on to air her views. But she has the right to still wang on about her crime novel. The easiest thing would be to not have her on, but that didn’t seem right.
“We should talk to people we disagree with and I would not further any cause by not having her on. She will still sell a gazillion books. Also, I got an insight into her when she talked about enjoying the pub brawl aspect of Twitter. I thought, ‘Oh, now I get it — you enjoy this’.”
So how does he pick his guests? Because they all come from the arts, 90 per cent seem left-wing, when the BBC is meant to be impartial. “It’s very hard to find a right-wing guest and, if you do, the audience probably don’t want to see them,” Norton says. “I can’t think of any off the top of my head, but we never talk politics.
“We do talk about gender and race, but that’s not from the BBC. It’s an internal thing [the show is made by his company] because we want the show to look like the world.”
Yet some would say you are pursuing a liberal agenda. “I guess it is a liberal agenda, but reflecting the audience back at themselves doesn’t seem wildly liberal unless you only want to see yourself staring back at you from the TV. But it’s important, and what’s good now is that it is easier to do. There was a time when you would scrabble to find a non-white actor the audience would recognise. That’s not the case any more. Whatever the guest has done has been popular enough to get them on the sofa, and you want the world to be reflected.”
Nobody has more access to the famous than Norton. He says he reads up on his guests and spots the decisions they have taken that ordinary people would not. Many dropped out of school and forced their parents to move to LA, “which is great if you make it … but what about moronic parents who sold everything and moved with their kids and now live in a caravan going, ‘Oh, you! You wanted to be a star!”’
Norton puts success down to alchemy, luck and not giving up. And his own route to stardom was slow. From County Cork, he moved to London to study drama, but it took years to be noticed as a stand-up and, eventually, appear on TV (with a stint on Father Ted).
Decades later, he is still learning. During the 1990s and 2000s his comedy was nastier — the fashion was for insults. There’s a clip of Norton on the documentary Amy calling Amy Winehouse a “mad person”. He admits his jokes about the singer stopped being funny when it was clear she was struggling with her health.
“If I did a comedy of cruelty-style monologue like that now, the audience would not find it funny,” he says. However, if you look at social media today cruelty is still rife.
Norton nods. “By moving away from the comedy of cruelty we’ve ended up with just plain old cruelty. Now there is just abuse. And it isn’t even funny.”
Spending an hour with the brash, convivial Norton shows why he attracts the A-listers and why other hosts have to make do with Dancing on Ice also-rans. He’ll go on for as long as the BBC wants him and he can keep writing novels. He’s been at the top for far longer than he expected. And if it collapsed tomorrow? “I won’t give a s***!”