Norton - The Life and Loves of a He Devil.A Memoir

So Me

Graham Norton is one of the UKs most treasured comedians and presenters. Born in Clondalkin, a suburb of Dublin, Nortons first big TV appearance was as Father Noel Furlong on Channel 4s Father Ted in the early 1990s. He then secured a prime time slot on Channel 4 with his chat shows So Graham Norton and V Graham Norton .

Known for his quick wit and flamboyant style Graham began hosting a variety of talent shows on BBC1 from Strictly Dance Fever and Andrew Lloyd Webbers How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria? to The Eurovision Song Contest and the BAFTAs. Graham was soon approached by the BBC to front his own self-titled chat show The Graham Norton Show in 2007.

Graham Norton has won 5 BAFTAs for Best Entertainment Performance. He presents a show on BBC Radio 2 every Saturday and also writes, as Agony Aunt, weekly in a column for the Telegraph .

www.hodder.co.uk

First published in Great Britain in 2014
by Hodder & Stoughton
An Hachette UK company

Copyright Graham Norton 2014

Illustrations Clym Evernden

The right of Graham Norton to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

ISBN 9781444790276

Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

338 Euston Road

London NW1 3BH

www.hodder.co.uk

For Rhoda the be all and end all

Contents

I t started with a bad oyster. Weeks of planning lay in ruins as I hugged my toilet, hoping that the great god of food poisoning would just put me out of my misery.

The preparations for my fiftieth birthday had got a bit out of hand. What I had imagined would be a drink with a few friends had somehow grown into an enormous gay wedding where I would declare my undying love for myself. Caterers had been booked, menus tasted, cocktails selected, flowers were being unloaded out of the back of white vans, k.d. lang was booked to perform. Now it appeared that unless the whole shindig was relocated to my bathroom, the only thing that would be missing was the host. Too late to cancel, I pressed my face against the cool porcelain and prayed I might feel a little better by that evening. Too sick to present my Radio 2 show that morning, word was spreading amongst the guests that something was up. It is more difficult than you might imagine to write upbeat texts reassuring people that everything is still on, when lying on the floor with stomach cramps and a vomit-stained dressing gown.

By the time the sun had set and I needed to get ready, I had at least stopped being violently ill. I would go to the ball after all. Feeling like an understudy for the real me, I sat very carefully in the back of a taxi as it found its way to Covent Garden. The party organisers had done an extraordinary job and the venue looked amazing. I felt I had cheated the flowers they should have been at the Oscars or at the announcement of a Nobel Peace Prize, not the birthday bash of some television presenter. Even the guests as they walked in looked as if they were going to something a lot better than my birthday party.

Looking back, I can finally find it in my heart to say thank you to that oyster. Thanks to that dodgy bit of shellfish I can remember the whole event, didnt embarrass myself and ended the evening tucked up in bed with a mug of peppermint tea. It wasnt how I had imagined my fiftieth birthday would be, but actually I had a fabulous night.

Stone-cold sober, I had stood on the stage to introduce my favourite singer of all time. Almost thirty years earlier some Canadian friends had dragged me to see her perform in a pub in Putney. I had fallen in love with k.d.s voice that night and soon afterwards, the rest of the world had too. Now she was singing to me for my birthday; in the crowd were the same friends who had introduced us decades before. I looked out at the 300 faces and saw my life reflected back at me. People I liked, people I loved, people I had shared half a century with. My mother and sister, school friends, people I had worked with in restaurants, the gang from drama school, friends from radio and TV, theatre folk, a smattering of chat-show guests, and the friends I get drunk with. All the stories of my life were together in that one room and it made me very happy.

The idea of this book began to grow.

It had been ten years since Id last written a book and I knew I fancied writing another one. The first had been a fairly straightforward autobiography following the and then this happened pattern. I knew I could have written about the last decade but, looking around the room at my party, I saw what my life really was. It was made up of my passions: Ireland, which I had fallen back in love with; all the people who had helped build my career; my friends from New York who had flown in specially; the men I had loved and lost; the music that had shaped my life; and the booze that was flowing freely. The only thing missing was my dogs.

It seems to me that we are all made up of the things we adore, and by telling my stories through the prism of my passions I hope you will get an insight into my life.

It is a weird experience writing about yourself and while this book is definitely all about me, I was able to pretend while writing it that I was really dealing with a variety of topics. For me this book has been an eye-opener in a way that a simple autobiography never was. I see so many more patterns in my life this time strange connections and often mysterious bookends emerged as I linked various phases of my life through the things I love.

In order to get some of the dates and facts for this book, I sometimes had to refer to various websites that record aspects of my career and life. There I found the lists of shows Ive done, where I was born, who I had dated, the awards Ive won and the money Ive earned, but that wasnt my life. I didnt see myself in those lists of details. We live in our stories, and the best stories go on. Funerals see the end of a life but at the party afterwards, it is like a form of resurrection: the person we have just said goodbye to is back in the room as people share their tales.

The stories in this book are a mixed bag. Fingers crossed youll find some of them funny, but there are tears along the way as well. I hope that youll also share some of my passions. They are a fairly broad spectrum of things so even if one doesnt really float your boat, hopefully youll find another that puts wind in your sails. In an ideal world youd like dogs, booze, men, divas, Ireland, New York and work as much as I do but, most of all, I really hope you like this book.

D epressed? Feeling down? Got the blues? Before you head off to the man in a white coat to get a fistful of happy pills, why not consult Dr Norton? Heres my prescription: take two dogs, add a deserted beach on a gusty winters day, and then unleash the hounds. Watch them galloping towards the waves, ears flapping in the breeze, tongues hanging out of their mouths like pink socks on a washing line, and while it may not cure everything that ails you, things will feel a great deal better. Tears shed into warm fur, a sofa alive with the soft buzz of animals snoring dogs take you out of yourself and remind you how simple life can be. Complicated feelings rarely are, and nothing underlines that more effectively than the cool draught of a wagging tail.