Sunday Mirror (Northern Ireland)
There’s no room for love in Graham’s life... fame will always come first
EX TELLS HOW NORTON’S SUCCESS DROVE THEM APART
HE is one of the biggest names on television and radio.
But a former partner of Graham Norton today believes he sacrificed love for success - and fears he may never find true happiness.
Scott Michaels tells how he had hoped to spend the rest of his life with the presenter. Their five-year relationship saw Graham soar to become the toast of the showbiz world before they split.
Today American Scott, 52, shares some of his favourite pictures of Graham, which show their happy times together before he reached the height of his fame. Scott said: “Graham and I were the loves of each other’s lives. I was very serious about him and I know he felt the same way.
“I am happy that Graham has the success he wanted but I do feel sad he hasn’t found love.
“He might find someone he likes but the difficult part is finding someone who will fit into his lifestyle.
“I don’t miss being in Graham’s world but I have no doubt his determination to be famous ended our relationship.”
DRUNK
Graham, 54, has told how he does not have time for love after splitting with marketing guru Andrew Smith over a year ago.
And the star has also told in his 2004 autobiography, So Me, of having sex with Scott in an alley on the day they met in 1996.
Scott, who was on holiday in London at the time, recalls: “We were introduced in a bar by mutual friends.
“He was cute. I said to him, ‘Are you drunk?’ He said: ‘No’. I said, ‘Do you want to be?” He said, ‘Yeah! So we just got hammered and copped off together. It was great.”
Scott, who runs tours of celebrity graves and murder scenes in LA, added: “I had to go back to the States but there wasn’t a day go by that we didn’t speak. It was the days before mobile phones and he once ran up a £300 phone bill so we bought fax machines as a cheaper way to keep in contact. Back then I was making the money so I would save up to pay for his plane ticket to LA or I would head to London every six to eight weeks.
“Here in the States we’d go to visit the grave or death sites of famous celebs like
Karen Carpenter.
That’s my thing because of my tour and it was fun to do. It got to the stage where it seemed crazy to keep doing that so I moved to the UK on a temporary visa and we lived in a poky bedsit in Shoreditch.”
After Scott’s six-month visa ran out, he and Graham applied to have their relationship recognised by the Home Office, to allow Scott to live and work in the UK indefinitely.
It took 18 months to happen and they had to provide evidence of their love, including testimonials from friends and family. Graham could only produce paperwork from friends as he had not then come out as gay to his parents.
Scott explained: “Gay marriage wasn’t a possibility at that time. We were in love and we wanted to be together. After 18 months I was given indefinite leave to stay. My job was to drive him around to little pub gigs.
“It felt like I was contributing to his dream and our life together. I always thought he would make it. He was hard-working and very confident.”
They enjoyed boozy nights but Graham remained professional. Scott continued: “He’d restrict himself to
one glass of wine before a show, then afterwards it was no holds barred. One time we were out with Neil Tennant from the Pet Shop Boys and Graham fell asleep standing up. That was one of his things.”
But as Graham’s career took off, they hit the rocks. Scott said: “I got upset that he was the one being loved by everyone and getting invited to exciting things. There were long days and nights when he just wasn’t around.
“There were more and more people taking up his time – business people, managers, friends, fake friends. I was surplus to requirements.
“There were two different worlds, ordinary and famous, and I was in the ordinary world.”
Scott persuaded Graham to have couple counselling. He said: “I was desperate. I’d moved to another country for this guy after all. It was like he never wanted to be the bad guy and tell me to get lost.
“He had to push me enough for me to say, ‘F*** this, I am done’. And at that stage, I was done.” But Scott has no bad feelings and wishes Graham well. He adds: “I just hope he is happy.”
He was touched when Graham recently emailed him after learning his mother had died. He says it shows the caring side to the star which he fell in love with and will never forget.
Graham wrote about their split in his autobiography: “The bald facts were that Scott and I were madly in love at the beginning and then I was too busy for him.”
Afterwards, Graham remained friends and even helped negotiate a kiss and tell deal worth £7,000 for Scott.
When asked why he did that, Graham said: “For fun. Not enough people have sold stories on me. They should, because there are some awfully good ones out there.”