Graham Norton’s career has taken him from standup to rubbing shoulders with showbiz stars on his eponymous chat show. He’s also an accomplished author whose fifth novel hit the shelves this week. Hilary Barry caught up with Norton to talk writing, his chat show, and the anecdote-sharing Kiwis who regularly park their derrière in his notorious red chair.
In the old days of television, interviewing stars overseas meant costly satellite bookings and a team of technicians to ensure the connection was clear and the pictures and sound were in sync.
Since the pandemic, we’ve moved to Zoom, an easy means of communication and a cheap way for journalists to interview people on camera anywhere in the world.
‘Favourite chat show host’
I was left to my own devices, grappling with my device to sort out the technical side of recording to interview Graham Norton.
He’s been my favourite chat show host since Oprah retired and, like her, knows how to be a great guest to other (far less experienced, small fry, only fair-to-middling) TV show hosts in far-flung regions of the world (New Zealand).
Norton joined the meeting a few minutes early and appeared mildly amused as I frantically looked for the right buttons to push to make the microphone work and the recording commence.
Congratulations on the new book. I read it over the weekend and loved it. Can you give us a quick summary of its content?
“Frankie, when we meet her, is in her 80s and living in East London. She’s hurt her leg, and she gets a carer. That carer is a young man called Damian; as luck would have it, he is from the same little bit of Ireland that she is. And that sparks Frankie to start telling the story of her life.
“So we go back to Ireland in the late 40s, then to London in the swinging 50s, then New York in the 70s and 80s, and it’s the art scene, the restaurant world. It’s the story of a life and all the lives she touches, and it’s how anyone’s life will tangentially cross over other lives, and I really enjoyed writing this one.
“I do like writing fiction, but for some reason, this one just flew.”
Was Frankie someone you knew?
“Not really. There’s often an old woman in my books, and people often say, ‘Oh, is that your mother?’. And they’re not my mother, but they’re mother adjacent.
“They’re not far off because there’s a kind of steeliness to Irish women of a certain age, where they have no time for what they consider indulgence or anything. They’ll show love by doing.”
It’s not your first novel. What do you love about writing?
“This sounds like such a stupid answer, but working in television, you will know what I mean; it’s the one job I have that doesn’t involve meetings.
“Everything else I do may say the Graham Norton Show, and my name is over the door. I’m sitting in the chair and asking the questions, but so many people make that show, and they all have input and suggestions, and often they’re right.
“I mean, the show is only as good as it is because of those people, so it’s in my interest to collaborate with them. But it is lovely to sit in a room by myself, and I can make the characters do things, and there’s no one chipping in and going, ‘What if?’
“No, no, this is what’s happening, I’m in charge. If it was for my whole life, I think I’d go crazy, but as a reaction to everything else in my life, I love it.”
‘Never quit the hit’
Is this a segue into a life away from the Graham Norton Show, heaven forbid, after so many seasons?
“I mean, it’s certainly something you can do when everything else has dried up, but I’m under no illusion. The Graham Norton Show —that’s my real job. Everything else I’ve got going on, the books, the wine, radio things, Drag Race, all these other things are thanks to that chat show.
“There’s the old adage, ‘Never quit the hit,’ so I’m in no rush to leave the chat show, and I still genuinely enjoy it. We go back into the studio at the end of September, and I genuinely can not wait.
“I’m looking forward to it, and so long as I feel like that and there’s an audience to watch it, why stop?”
And the audiobook is coming out in January. Is reading the whole thing out loud an ordeal?
“It’s humiliating. This is my fifth novel. You’d think by now I would have learned that I will have to read this, but you don’t. And then when I come to read it, somebody walks in, and I stupidly say something like, ‘Oh, they’re from Switzerland’, and then I turn the page and go, ‘Oh dear God, they speak.’ And I don’t know what someone from Switzerland sounds like.
“I have spoken to professional actors, and they do lots of research. They have little coloured Post-it notes throughout the book. They’ve got a graph with the voices. Not me. So you get what you’re given, essentially [my] voice with slight variants.”
I had your voice in my head as I read it, which is not something that I recommend, particularly when you get to the sex scenes. When you get to those bits in the audiobook, do you blush?
“Well, this time wasn’t so bad because of how the studio was set up. I was talking to a wall. Previously, there would be a bit of glass in front of you, and you’re in the middle of doing something like that, you’re just getting through it, and you look up, and there’s some big bald, sweaty guy with a moustache staring through the glass at you.
“And you’re thinking, ‘This is all shades of wrong. I feel like I’m working in Soho. This is horrible’. But this time, not so much.”
‘Writers are a different breed’
In the acknowledgements, you thank your editor, Hannah Black, saying she makes you feel like a novelist rather than a chat show host with notions. I thought that was so lovely. Can you expand on that a little?
“Writers are a different breed. I think writers are people who [writing] was their first impulse. That was the thing that drove them. That was their first ambition, and it wasn’t mine.
“I think that sets writers apart from people like me who come to fiction a different way. I get lumped into book events with what I would call actual writers, and they are so nice to me, generous and supportive, and it’s like they’re pretending. [It’s] like they know I’m not a real writer, but they pretend I’m a real writer.
“Hannah is great because she treats me seriously. She takes the book seriously because I really do take the book seriously. She takes me seriously as a writer, which helps because you feel like someone is paying attention rather than just going, ‘Let’s get the man off the telly to scribble a few words down, and we can sell them.’
“It’s the one thing in my life that I can’t pretend I don’t care about. With a chat show, you can say, ‘Oh well, we’re doing another one next week; it doesn’t matter.’ [Writing] matters because even if it was just the word ‘and’ written endlessly for 300 pages, that took a lot of time, so you can’t pretend you didn’t try.
“This is the best book I could write. So if you like it, great. If you don’t, I’m so sorry.”
Norton discusses his new novel, Frankie, with Barry, and shares his true thoughts on the string of Kiwis who have ended up in his infamous red chair. (Source: Seven Sharp)
‘Is there anyone in New Zealand?’
It’s a national pastime to watch the Graham Norton Show in New Zealand, and I’m sure you know that from the number of people who get to London and try to jump on the red chair. It’s a mixture of cringe and pride as a New Zealander. We all stay for the show’s end, listen for the accent and say, ‘Oh God, it’s a New Zealander!’
“Honestly, some weeks, I think, ‘Is there anyone in New Zealand?’ because they are apparently all in my studio audience. It’s like the national service: You’ve got to go abroad and tell a story on the Graham Norton Show, and then you’re allowed to go home.”
I want to ask, and you don’t have to name names because I don’t want to get you into some tricky legal situation, but do you have, either yourself or your producers, a blacklist of people you won’t have back?
“I mean, you’ll know what this is like, we do, but then some weeks they’re off [the blacklist]. Some weeks, you go, ‘Oh God, we’re going to have to do it, aren’t we?’ We literally cannot find anybody else. Someone off the blacklist is coming on.
“With any of these guests, you never say never because some weeks you might want them, and sometimes people surprise you. Sometimes, people were on, and they just weren’t very good. Sometimes, it’s about what they’re talking about.”
“You know when an actor’s in a movie that they’re embarrassed by and wish they hadn’t made, they’re not going to be great on the couch because they’re sort of like, ‘Oh God, are we talking about this?’.
“And then they come back with a project they’re passionate about, and you notice the glow-up then. Suddenly, they’re chatting and engaged; they can look you in the eye because they believe in the product.
“The great guests can be like that even when they know it’s a pile of old doo-doo and no one should be going to see it.”
The mixture of guests you have is magic, too. I’m thinking of Miriam Margolyes, who we love on our show Seven Sharp. We’ve interviewed her a few times. She always brings something special to the show, doesn’t she?
“She does. What I love about Miriam is that you’ll know in advance she’s got some story to tell, something rude and outrageous. Often we’ll place it in the show and do it later so the children have gone to bed.
“But sometimes something strikes her, and you can see a little twinkle in her eye, and you think, oh, here we go. What I like most about her stories is there’s often an American sat beside her who thinks they’re just sat beside some old British actress, a Judi Dench or something, you know, she’s done a bit of Shakespeare, a bit of Dickens.
“And they’re being very reverential, and suddenly out she’ll come with one of these stories, and I love the look on their faces, like, ‘What the hell was that?’
“It never gets old. I love it.”
