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nice piece on JAM star Graham Norton in The Observer

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Dean BedfordNov 18, 2007
 

 
The name's Norton. Graham Norton.

He's the BBC's sequined agent: a celeb-baiting, Saturday-night superstar
with a killer line in put-downs. Barbara Ellen dodges the double
entendres and arched eyebrows in search of the real Graham Norton
Sunday November 18, 2007
The Observer

It would almost be nice to show a little originality and not like Graham
Norton. The chat-show host and presenter is famously likeable (he has
topped polls of people Britons would love to have around for dinner).
Moreover, while Norton has proven a great fit on Saturday-night prime
time with shows such as How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria? and the
search for Joseph on Any Dream Will Do (he has a show in the new year
featuring tribute acts), his BBC2 chat show is, if anything, getting
better.
Even my boyfriend, who, to put things into context, loathes so-called
'trash TV', is always banging on about Norton being a first-rate brain
and wit. However, it's Norton's charm that enables him to be waspish and
still keep the celebrities on side (he once said of repeat-guest Jordan:
'She's one of the most successful authors in the country - you can't
take that away from her'). Coupled with an unabated silliness, this is
what makes his chat show - that signature 'camp' ragbag of mercilessly
teased celebrity guests, audience participation and inveterate web
surfing - still feel so fresh and watchable. 'Well,' says Norton, 'I
suppose we should know what we're doing after 10 years.'
The day we meet, at a central London hotel, Norton rushes in an hour
late because of the traffic jams caused by the state opening of
Parliament. He is dripping with apologies, and sweat. The latter caused
by jumping out of his cab and running the last mile. 'I thought: Well,
even if you've gone, I've done some cardio,' he says. After being
horrified by the sight of himself looking fat on TV, Norton is now into
fitness, and certainly looks as 'buff' as anyone could hope for when
they're leaning against a sofa arm, panting for breath. 'I think I'm
having a heart attack,' he announces between gasps. 'Obviously, gym not
very good.'
Once recovered, Norton is as friendly, easy and open as you might expect
from someone who 'told all', including near-adventures as a San
Francisco rent boy, in his candid 2005 autobiography So Me (more of
which anon). Self-deprecating, he almost flinches at the idea of being
lured into an outbreak of pomposity - when the 'deep' questions appear,
as they must, his eyes twinkle and he often adopts the pose of a
chin-stroking shrink ('Hmm, interesting').
'Do I have more depth than I'm given credit for? NO!' he chuckles. 'It's
only when I'm interviewed that I get to do any thinking. It's not as if
I sit down with the postie, with him asking: "Where do you see yourself
in 20 years?"' Does Norton consider himself particularly witty?
'Occasionally I'll say something and think: That was quite clever. But
not very often. Mostly I'm thinking: I've said that before. Or it will
be: Oh my god, my brain has completely gone to mush, I must stop
drinking.'
Norton has always said his Irishness helps, simply because it renders
him 'classless'. 'The other thing about our shows is we've never been
cool. It's always been a kind of guilty pleasure if it's been a pleasure
at all.'
What about the ongoing debate about the squillions he is paid for his
'golden handcuffs' deal with the BBC (rumoured to be £5m over three
years)? Along with Jonathan Ross, Norton, though not paid nearly as
much, is always in the line of fire when it comes to moans about
misspending public funds. Norton says it's long surprised him to realise
how 'accountable' the BBC has to be. 'It's a very vulnerable
organisation, which I don't understand, because you look at the BBC and
you think: You're huge, you're this monolithic thing, just go fuck off.'
In this way, there's a 'world of difference', Norton thinks, between the
BBC and other channels: 'Peter Fincham [the BBC controller forced to
resign over the Year with the Queen fake-footage scandal] has lost his
job; ITV has stolen nearly £8m, and all those legs are still under the
table. That makes no sense to me at all.'
Later, Norton says, 'What I'd love [the BBC] to do one day is just say
[he looks solemn]: "You're right, we're stopping." The director general,
Mark Thompson, just goes: "Let's just stop the BBC. You happy now, Daily
Mail? It's gone!"'
How about the cyclical attacks on Norton's own contract? 'Listen,' he
says. 'That salary is a miracle. I don't know how I get it. But if the
BBC has decided that's my market value, then what kind of moron would
go: "No! Please take half of my salary and invest in Saturday-morning
children's programmes!"'
Does he think people have a tendency to overreact about him? 'Yes, I
do.' Norton flops on to the cushions with a wry grin. 'Jesus Christ,
it's only television.'
Norton, 44 (his real surname, Walker, was changed for Equity purposes),
was raised in Bandon, Country Cork, in a Protestant family in a Catholic
district. His late father, Billy, was a Guinness rep; his mother, Rhoda,
worked for the local Mothers' Union. In So Me, he confessed to wetting
the bed until he was nine or 10 and 'cross-dressing', wearing his
sister's clothes. 'I did wet the bed, and people tried to read something
into it,' says Norton. 'I'm like: I did stop - I don't wet the bed now.'
As for the cross-dressing, he doesn't think too much should be made of
it: 'I was a tiny cross-dresser, under four, and my sister had prettier
clothes - I was just trying to cheer up a dull outfit.'
Norton's childhood, though not unhappy, did seem to suffer from
'small-town' malaise. 'Hurrah for telly, movies and magazines,' he says
with feeling. Joking apart, he did sound a bit sad and isolated - how
much of it does he think was to do with his sexuality? He shrugs: 'I've
heard other gay people say when they were growing up they felt
"foreign". Growing up, I was able to label these feelings as: I'm a
Protestant. It wasn't until I left, I thought: Oh, those weren't
Protestant feelings.'
There was an adolescent encounter with a male foreign-exchange student,
but Norton found he couldn't tell his parents he was gay and eventually
ended up more or less 'coming out' on TV, simply because his behaviour
was so obvious. 'Which I don't recommend to anyone.' His mother's
reaction was: 'It's such a lonely life,' and his family, whom he
describes as 'quite Fifties', were to prove more relaxed than he could
have hoped.
In those early years, was it that Norton didn't want to be gay? There
was a fling with an older woman, a tutor, and another year-long
relationship with an American girl. 'I don't think anyone wants to be
gay,' says Norton. 'For a cosmopolitan child living in London, on the
right side of town, maybe it wouldn't cost them a second thought. But
when I was growing up, it did cost me a second thought. I thought I'd be
a social pariah. Back then, if you saw a gay man in a film, he was the
baddie, or he was going to be killed, or he'd kill himself.' He smiles
wryly. 'You knew it wasn't going to end well for the gay character 100
per cent of the time.'
Another frustration was that Norton wanted to be an actor, but back then
drama courses weren't readily available. 'It's not like now, when anyone
can be a failed actor.' He ended up having a kind of mini-breakdown at
Cork University, feeling very low and collecting dead insects, though he
pooh-poohs the notion of genuine depression - after visiting Paris and
London, he thinks he simply became disenchanted with Cork. 'Some people
think they're depressed and they go to the doctor and want pills. And
you just think: You hate where you live, you've lost your job, your
boyfriend has dumped you, could all this be why you're depressed?'
In the end, he fled to San Francisco to live in a hippy commune. It was
here that, skint and sexually curious, he answered an ad to become a
rent boy, backing out at the last moment when he was asked to 'perform'
for the pimp.
'It's probably one of those stories that needs to be taken in context,'
says Norton with some understatement. 'You had to be Irish, you had to
be 20, you had to be in San Francisco, you had to be trying to be gay,
but not knowing how to be gay.' Norton reflects that, in terms of Aids,
he had a lucky escape. 'This was 1983, when San Francisco was a gay
Disneyland. At the time, I was thinking: I should be having lots of sex,
what's wrong with me? But looking back, it's like: Thank God!'
Back in England he joined the Central School of Speech and Drama, and
realised his talents lay in being funny rather than dramatic. Another
lucky escape - surely better to end up as a chat-show supremo than just
another actor? Norton isn't so sure. 'You'll always feel a failed actor
before a success at anything else.' However, around this time Norton was
violently mugged, stabbed in the street, which helped put the
'greenhouse' of drama school into perspective. 'Afterwards, I was like:
I'm playing the servant in The Cherry Orchard, fine, who gives a fuck?'
That was 18 years ago - how does Norton feel now about his 'near-death
experience'? He laughs at the term, though concedes it was serious - he
lost a lot of blood. 'It was interesting because when you're losing
blood it really is your life force going out of you. And what's nice
about it is that it's only a little bit panicky and then you're just
really tired.' He remembers an elderly couple came to help him. 'The old
lady was there in her dressing gown, God love her, with someone bleeding
on her doorstep, and instinctively I asked to hold her hand - which I
think is a kind of human thing, where you don't want to die alone.'
The mugging proved to be the wake-up call Norton needed. Though there
were still gruelling years waiting tables, he started doing radio and TV
(he was Father Noel in Father Ted), and performing stand-up shows at the
Edinburgh Festival (The Mother Teresa of Calcutta Farewell Tour; The
Karen Carpenter Bar and Grill). Nominated for a Perrier, he stood in for
Jack Doherty on his talk show and was voted best newcomer at the British
Comedy Awards, the first of many gongs (he has since won several Baftas
and an International Emmy).
Norton joined Channel 4 for So Graham Norton and V Graham Norton, at one
point going out five nights a week with a high-octane mix of prank
calls, audience interaction and probes into internet fetishism. Norton
ushered in the new millennium with a woman shooting ping-pong balls out
of her vagina. He also got Cybill Shepherd to talk about 'where' Elvis
kissed her, Dustin Hoffman to tell a dirty joke about Brigitte Bardot's
'muff', and Mo Mowlam to marry two dogs.
Things haven't always gone to plan - Norton ended up calling Raquel
Welch a 'grumpy old bitch' and pulling the plug on their satellite link;
Harvey Keitel hated the experience so much he tried to talk Dennis
Hopper out of doing the show. Perhaps more damaging, later, when Norton
first joined the BBC, was that peculiar 'lost period' when he
disappeared off to do a New York cable show (this may have had something
to do with his then-beau, singer Kristian Seeber).
On his return, it was as if Norton was on 'mute'. He didn't want to
launch straight into another chat show, and ended up hosting lacklustre
series such as Strictly Dance Fever, which is when people first started
carping about how expensive he was. However, soon enough, he was back on
form, first with Graham Norton's Bigger Picture, then with Maria and
Joseph; he and Andrew Lloyd Webber proved to be an inspired pairing -
the Two Ronnies of musical theatre - though to Norton's disappointment
(and mine), plans remain shelved to find a lead for Jesus Christ
Superstar. 'A shame,' muses Norton. 'Finding Jesus would be such a great
title.'
So is Norton worth that fat-cat salary? I'd say so - the on-screen
combination of warmth, wit and cheek is rare, and that man grafts.
There's a telling moment when Norton says one reason he enjoys doing the
'big shiny Saturday-night floor shows' is that it's 'not all about him'.
Unlike, he means, the chat show, which he admits is designed to be
'guest proof': 'We've had American guests and they've said: "I really
liked doing that. On other shows, there's a real pressure to tell funny
stories." And I'm like: Now you tell me - I was only doing all those
jokes because you didn't say anything!'
What about the 'camp' thing? 'What about it? I am camp,' says Norton
simply. Though he says he has bridled on occasion; especially when the
Channel 4 show was five nights a week. 'And there was no time to step
back and go: "Wait a minute - didn't we do lots of
getting-fucked-up-the-arse jokes yesterday?"
'Camp is a weird thing,' says Norton, suddenly reflective. 'Because I
think it's harder to accept being camp than being gay.' He remembers
seeing some gay teenagers interviewed about him on TV. 'They said they
thought the show was funny but hated how camp I was. Fine. Except these
teenagers were the campest teenagers you'd ever seen.
'It broke my heart,' Norton continues. 'Because I would have been them.
I used to look at Larry Grayson and think: Oh my God, is that the
future? I don't want to be that person. And now they're looking at me,
thinking: I don't want to be camp like that.' Is camp a culture? 'Not a
culture, just a manner, a way of being,' he says. 'Some gay men you
meet, you think: Jesus, how did you develop into this? And that's how I
feel about it. I act it up, and I arch it out, but not 24/7.'
For such a colourful TV personality, Norton certainly manages to live
life 'off the radar', dividing his time between his homes in Wapping and
County Cork, and walking his dogs, Bailey and Madge. He feels he has
sidestepped becoming a tabloid creature mainly because he's always been
'out' and uses his foibles as part of his act anyway.
Norton has even made peace with Ireland, the torture chamber of his
youth, his affection in part re-ignited by how beautifully he thinks the
local community handled his father's death seven years ago. 'You think
you won't like that kind of thing, but when you lose your dad it's
lovely everyone coming around and bringing cake or a bottle of whiskey
and telling you nice things about him. You think: Oh, that's why they do
this - it's a really good idea.'
Romantically, things seem more vexed. Early on, there was an Australian
called Ashley, who seemed to affect Norton to the point where he didn't
fall in love again for seven years. His next relationship, with American
Scott Michaels, disintegrated just as Norton found fame. Most recently
there was Seeber, who moved to Britain to be with him. Now this, too,
has ended.
Norton has admitted he is probably a hard person to live with, needing
control over his environment - what is his take on relationships? 'When
they're good they're great; when they're not, they're unbearable.' He's
not interested in marriage and kids. 'I don't think I could do children.
They're hard work, and what if you fuck them up?' What about being part
of a gay power couple (I'm thinking Elton and David)? 'Oh no, that would
annoy me,' Norton says with a glint. 'I'm far too competitive.'
I ask if he's a romantic. 'I suppose I am. Then you meet other people.'
You're referring to 'movie love', where you're bound to be disappointed?
'Yes, because movies end, books stop, songs finish, but you've got to
keep going. And no one wants to think about the bickering at the end of
When Harry Met Sally, or him fucking somebody else. Why would they?
'But there's a lot to be said for having your other half,' Norton
continues. 'It's the difference between going on holiday with someone or
going by yourself. It's all about how an experience shared is an
experience enhanced. You've got to believe that sharing your life is
worth it in some way.'
As for fame, Norton thinks it affects relationships only in the sense
that everything does. 'Clearly my job repels some people and attracts
others. And some people it attracts I won't like because that's all they
see - but whoever I'm with, even if it doesn't attract them, they're
going to have to live with it, and it must be quite boring being the
other half of that.' Could Norton be the other half? Another glint: 'I
could. For a while.'
As the interview winds down, we discuss ageing. Rather ludicrously,
Norton refers to himself as 'now in spitting distance of 60 - I always
say I will end my days sitting in bed with my Baftas, dribbling soup
down myself, which my dogs lick off, watching daytime telly,' he says.
'Which is probably the reality, but if I get it in first, it's funny
rather than deeply sad.
'The good thing about me,' says Norton, 'is that, if it came to it, I
could live on Dairylea Triangles. Maybe get some dog food in as well.
Perhaps I could share that.' You could 'do' poverty? 'Yes, I could exist
on quite little. Whereas if someone was with you and it's all, "Isn't
this marvellous?", and you said: "I'm stopping and there's no more
money," essentially they'd go off and I'd be...' Norton raises his arms
imploringly: '"No, stop, this dog food is delicious!"'
Instead of going on something like I'm A Celebrity, Norton says he'd
much rather end his career on a late-night talk radio-type show: 'That's
my ambition, you know. [He heavy-breathes] "Next caller, please."' Other
than that, he'd be happy enough pottering around, doing a bit of acting
and writing.
But wouldn't he miss it all - the roar of the chat-show crowd? Ask
Norton what he gets out of his job and he smirks self-mockingly: 'Well,
it's very hard to beat 500 people laughing. That's a huge validation.'
And this is what he believes everyone is in it for: 'It doesn't matter
how serious an actor is - they're doing it because there's some sort of
vortex of need there.' Celebrity is effectively something wrong with a
person? 'Well, there's something missing, isn't there - otherwise why
not go into business?'
According to Norton, his anonymity in America taught him he wouldn't
miss fame. In the back of his mind, he is always aware that it could all
end tomorrow. 'I could walk out of here, get one phone call, and it
could all be over,' smiles Norton. 'And once you accept that you're one
big flop away from being unemployable, nothing can scare you any more.'

 
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