I Am Graham Norton...
Graham Norton’s unique style of cheeky, camp comedy, filled with more innuendo than you can shake a stick at, is what has made him a favourite amongst TV viewers, from adolescents to the elderly. He made his first big break in the hit comedy series Father Ted, playing Father Noel Furlong. Although only starring in 3 episodes of Father Ted, television executives were so impressed that they offered him his own chat show and thus So Graham Norton was born. From there it has been nothing but up for the former commune dwelling Irishman, who earlier this year took over from the legendary Sir Terry Wogan as the host for The Eurovision Song Contest. He can currently be seen hosting Totally Saturday on BBC One, 7.30pm on Saturday nights.
heat: Who are the most influential people in your life, who are really important?
Graham: Influential people, I think everyone must say parents, unless you don’t have parents… unless you’re an orphan. But I’m not. So my parents were very important, growing up. Then there was a couple of English teachers, Kate Callaghan and Niall McMonegal, I’m still good friends with Niall, and they kind of influenced me. Then there are friends who I trust, who I would constantly ask for advice or constantly sound things off, and then there are other people who along the way were quite pivotal, they were around for pivotal moments.
I lived in a hippie commune in San Francisco for a year, and to begin with, because I was twenty, twenty-one when I was there, you just laugh at them [hippies]. They’re just stupid hippies, but they did kind of make me think, “Oh you know what? You can do what you want with your life.” I wanted to go to drama school, wanted to be an actor. I thought, I can’t do that - as it happens I was right - but they were of a mind to, you know, just do it. The worst that could happen was just that you could fail, whereas that kind of growing up in Ireland, it was very much, “Be sensible, make a sensible decision”, rather than an emotional decision, so the hippies were very influential, and I suppose in a way, still are, I still make decisions based like that.
h: Is there someone who’s constantly been there, right from when you were a child, right up to now?
G: I would say no, I would say different people along the way. Obviously my mother’s a constant, but I wouldn’t turn to her with everything, because there are things that would just freak her out and worry her. I would tell her everything eventually, I think that’s a good way of coping with parents, don’t tell them before you do things, tell them after you’ve done things and then they’re fine because you’re fine, so they don’t worry.
h: You moved around a lot when you were younger due to your father’s work, how did that affect your childhood?
G: I suppose it made me quite an isolated child in a way, but I never felt lonely. From the outside looking in, I was probably kind of a lone child, but I had my sister some of the time - mind you we didn’t get on - so if she wasn’t there I was quite happy, and I really enjoyed spending time with my parents. But because we moved round, I didn’t make great friends when I was a kid and I didn’t really have any real memory of people I met in primary school. There are some people I know from secondary school, but very few. Often we’d live in the middle of nowhere, so television was my friend, it really was.
I loved television, because back then in Southern Ireland, there was only RT1, and it used to come on about 5 o’clock in the afternoon, and you’d come home from school and just wait for telly to begin. It didn’t really matter what was on, because you couldn’t flick, there was nothing else to watch, so I would watch Mart and Market, which was a programme where it was literally the price of cows and then there’d be a very exciting filmed report from one of the markets where it was literally footage of cows walking in a circle! I would watch it, because it was on television.
h: Did you think you still listened to music when you were a child at all, was there anything you used to listen to?
G: I remember us getting a record player, and the sort of records that I wanted to buy when I was a kid were obviously Christmas records, novelty records. My mother wouldn’t let us buy them, because “we’d grow out of them”, so we had to buy music that we could convince her about the music. I remember I think the first single I ever remember buying, was [sings] “I’ve been through the desert on a horse with no name”, do you know that song? Don’t remember who sings it, can’t imagine why I bought it, but I did.
My father would come up with weird albums. Sandie Shaw’s Greatest Hits was in the house, which now I think would be fabulous. [It had] a wonderful cover of her in a basket swing chair. You know one of those basket chairs on a chain, with some doves flying around? My musical taste has always been very influenced by people I’m just hanging out with, so I would listen to what people at school were listening to. They’d have their cassette tapes and they’d choose what cassette to play and I’d listen to that. I remember listening to a lot of The Eagles, Supertramp - still very fond of the Supertamp - and then as I got more into my teenage years, lots of kind of boo-hoo singer songwrite-y people. Who’s the one who wrote ‘At Seventeen’? It’s not Carole King, but it’s somebody like that, it’s one of those American writers, not Carly Simon, someone like that. Because the first concert I ever went to was her. She played City Hall in Cork, and we went, and in fairness I didn’t know another song but she did eventually sing that which delighted us all.
h: Janis Ian! Did you used to go to school discos?
G: We did. Because my school was on a farm, we used to have ‘a thing’. We used to be forced to help with the potato harvest and our reward for helping dig the potatoes was they’d have ‘a thing’, literally it was called the ‘spud hop’!
h: Brilliant, school disco Graham Norton style! You dedicated your first BAFTA award to your father, was he a really important figure to you in your life?
G: Well I think everybody’s father is, you know it’s your father… yes, he was important, and, I suppose because I was only mid-thirties when my father died - that’s kind of early - so his death in a way was kind of influential. His legacy was that it made me and my mum and my sister much closer, because we’d been through this awful thing together and also because he’d been ill. He was suffering from Parkinson’s, so you lived through a kind of degenerative disease. It was like he got much older than the rest of us in a really short space of time. It was kind of Reader’s Digest grief, and it also meant that when he went, there was a relief in a way, because he wasn’t suffering anymore. His biggest legacy was that we’re a really tight knit little group now.
h: Do you have any music that reminds you of your family, any family occasions where there was a song that was played, or anything that your mum or father used to really like?
G: My mother was more interested in music than my father. If my father never heard a song, I don’t think he would have shed a tear. Music wasn’t really played in the house very much. The radio would be on a bit, but not much.
h: So, you dropped out of university in Cork and went to live in a commune in San Francisco. Why did you decide to go and do that?
G: Well, clearly I was running away! I’d been to England, [but] England didn’t seem very, you know, running away! England was a bit different to Ireland, but it still had hedges and similar weather, and the same cars. Whereas America; that was exciting! Also, growing up, we didn’t get that much British television, we got much more American imports, so my window on the world was a window that faced America. So, for running away purposes, it seemed much more natural to go there. I felt like I could get away more there because the ties to home would be far looser. Also I suppose as an Irish person, back then you didn’t really feel like we’d be that welcome in Britain because we were exploding bombs, so the welcome mat wasn’t really out; it made much more sense to go in the other direction.
h: What was it like in San Francisco, do you have any memories of that time?
G: I do remember arriving at San Francisco because I arrived and you hear all the stories about San Francisco; you know [it’s] this wild town and very gay. Within minutes of getting off the bus, I was looking for the youth hostel to go and stay in, and a truck came careering round a corner with all these drag queens on the back of it! I thought “God, what a cliché!”. But what I hadn’t realised [is] I’d arrived on gay pride, so they were just obviously late for the parade or something! Then I just followed that, and my first day in San Francisco was spent watching the gay pride parade. I remember being so excited to see Grace Jones on the back of a flat bed truck singing away! That seemed the most exotic thing in the world. I kind of love that it came full circle, in that she was then one of the first guests on the chat show, on Channel 4. It was just so cool that now I could talk to her.
h: So you came back and you attended Central School of Speech and Drama. How and why did you decide to turn your attention to acting?
G: I always wanted to be an actor, but the big thing in Ireland was, “That’s a hobby, that’s not a job”. Also, there were no drama schools in Ireland, there was no way to do it. The only person I knew of who’d done anything back then was Fifi Wilson. She went to University College, Cork, and now she’s Fiona Shaw. She’d left Cork and gone to RADA. So that was the only thing I knew you could do. Then I came to London and discovered there were all these other drama schools. I did apply to RADA, didn’t get in there but I got into Central.
h: So what was drama school like?
G: Well drama school was a great thing, because you wake up [and think], “What will I do today? I know I’ll think about myself, I’ll talk about myself, you know, that’s it!” It’s just the most indulgent thing in the entire world, so what’s not to like? However, some of them, they’re actors so they’re not very good at being happy. There were a lot of people running to the toilet crying, but I never really got involved in that.
h: Did you all used to go out partying?
G: We did go out, we mostly just went to the pub and occasionally there’d be a party, it was very house party-ish. What was I even listening to? Tina Turner was big back then, wasn’t she, Private Dancer and all of that, maybe a bit of George Michael, I seem to remember having him on my walkman.
h: How did your parents feel about you becoming an actor?
G: When I came back from America, in my mind, I’d totally moved on, I knew what I was doing, but I hadn’t told them. They assumed when I came back that I was going to go back to university, which came as a huge surprise to me. I think they were annoyed that I wasn’t going to go back, because I hadn’t been clever enough to get a grant, so they’d paid for the first two years of university. But I was determined that I wasn’t going to go back, and I never asked them for any more money. They didn’t give me any money to get to London, to start up, to go to drama school, I did it all myself. They were kind of like, “Well you know what, he’s removed our opinion from it, he’s living his own life now.” They must have been very worried for me, because I worked in restaurants and did odd jobs. I basically didn’t earn a bean until I was 33, that was when I remember having some money. I’m glad my dad lived long enough to see me working on the telly, so he didn’t go to his grave worrying what the hell was going to become of me.
h: Was he really proud of you? What was their reaction when they first saw you on television?
G: It was weird, because I come from a very small town in Ireland, so I think there was a slight sense of, “Isn’t it great that someone from Bandon’s on television, but did it have to be him?” But when I brought my dad to the show, [he] must have been a bit proud, because it’s a whole television studio, and a whole audience, and it’s all about the job your son is doing. So yeah, I think they were proud.
h: How did you get in to comedy?
G: When I stopped getting acting jobs, I sort of still wanted to show off and didn’t know what else to do, so I started writing little skits. I wrote one about Mother Teresa of Calcutta, comedy gold. My friend Mike Belben owned a pub called The Eagle in London and there was a room above it, a little gallery space, so I asked him if I could put on a show there. I did a lot of things to make it not like a comedy show, there was a lot of candle lighting and Bulgarian nuns singing and things, but somebody saw it and liked it and offered me a midnight slot at the Pleasance in Edinburgh and I did that one year, and I went back to Edinburgh every year for about twelve years. About halfway through that, I realised that I didn’t need to write these characters and didn’t really need to write these little stories, I could just stand there with a microphone and tell my own stories and chat with an audience.
h: When you were in Edinburgh doing your stand up, was there a piece of music that you remember from that time?
G: For my curtain call when I came back on, I used to play Morrissey -The More You Ignore Me The Closer I Get, which amused me! I used to walk on to Prince – Controversy.
h: Who or what inspired you to go into comedy?
G: Growing up, the things that made me laugh were nearly all American. The people I loved were Lucille Ball, Bob Hope, Flip Wilson - I don’t know whatever happened to Flip Wilson, even Americans don’t even seem to know! I think he must have made one series, it got sold to Ireland and that was it, I don’t think even Americans watched it, but he was very funny, he used to dress up as a woman called Geraldine. It’s like I’m making this up, it’s like I’ve dreamt it, but I swear to god this show exists and it is funny. Lily Tomlin I love, Bette Midler I love, I like funny women, Joan Rivers I love.
h: You’ve interviewed quite a lot of people on your TV show, have you ever interviewed any of your heroes?
G: Joan Rivers I met - she’s a much bigger hero to me now than she was before. I liked her and admired her before, but actually working with her and seeing her work with an audience, it was just fantastic. You meet her and you realise, you’re a famous comedian because you’re funny, you are a funny person. She has funny bones, she knows it’s funny, and also given her history, her legacy, she’s got no interest in any of it, she’s only interested in the next gag. If you try to talk to her about working with Lenny Bruce or her early days on The Ed Sullivan Show or Johnny Carson, she has no interest in talking about it; she just wants to get to the next joke, the next kind of milestone.
h: I read that you were attacked, that you were stabbed in 1988 - that must have been a really difficult time for you.
G: Well, it wasn’t great!
h: How did you manage to recover and come back from it? Did it affect your confidence?
G: Weirdly, the stabbing did affect my confidence, but in kind of the opposite way, in that it made me much braver. because you think, what the hell have I got to lose? I lost over half of my blood and I think the same people who did me, they stabbed somebody else the week before, the week after and they didn’t make it. Now in my life, if I’m doing something and I’m nervous about it, or I’m taking a risk, I talk through what is the worst case scenario here? What’s the worst that can happen here? And you think about it and you kind of go, you know what, that would be okay too, and then you just get on with it.
h: How difficult did you find it to come out as a gay man to your friends and family?
G: Well I never did really; it just kind of drifted out. I knew that I had gay feelings, but in Ireland never really did anything about them, because what are you going to do? I could just stare at a tree as a gay man, that would be about it, you needed some other gay people to be properly gay, otherwise it’s academic.
Then I went to San Francisco, had some sexual experiences with men there, but then ended up dating a woman there. Then when I came to London, everyone just assumed I was gay and then at the end of about a year, de facto I was. If I met people, “This is my gay friend Graham,” I didn’t contradict anyone, it was true. Similarly with my parents, it just became a thing, it was never addressed, it was just always okay. Because talking about sex, particularly with your family, even as a straight person, it’s not something you really want to do, and I think that’s the weird thing when people talk about coming out, that’s not the point really, it’s just you don’t really want to talk about that stuff with your parents. I remember when my sister had been married a year and she came in and announced she was pregnant with her first child, and although we were all thrilled for her, there was also a slight sense of embarrassment that she must have ‘done it’ then, they’re not just holding hands. So that’s why that subject never really came up, and even now I don’t talk about my sex life with my mother, who does?
h: Not many people.
G: And if they do, they should stop!
h: Have you found that your celebrity status has affected your personal life? Was it initially easy to meet people but now is it quite difficult with the media glare?
G: Well, a bit of both. You meet a lot of people. If I go to a bar, someone will come up and say hello, who wouldn’t have come up to say hello. I think it’s maybe harder to maintain relationships, because people have expectations of what my life might be like. Now, either it’s not like that or it is the life that they thought it would be, but they thought they’d like it, and it turns out they don’t.
h: Have you got any music that reminds you of the past? Falling in love, or is there anything that has helped you get over heartbreak?
G: Falling in love? Very little falling in love music that I can think of!
h: Anything that’s helped your break ups? Songs that make things a bit easier?
G: I think that is when I like music best, when it’s really kind of emotionally indulgent and helps you to cry. In fact, my record collection is mostly, a lot of sad songs, a lot of sad songs. In terms of getting over relationships, what would I listen to? I remember when I broke up with my first serious boyfriend, a guy called Ashley, that Tracy Chapman album was everywhere and I listened to that endlessly because it was very sad. Ooh, and do you know the soundtrack from One From The Heart? It’s a Francis Ford Coppola film, and it’s Tom Waits and Crystal Gayle sing the soundtrack, and when you’re not in a relationship but you’re yearning to be in love I would listen to that a whole lot. There’s a really sweet, sweet, tiny little song in that called Take My Hand, it’s really pretty.
h: You’ve just done Eurovision, what was it like?
G: I loved Eurovision! Because I’d never been before, so it was like I’d won a competition, you know, “You get to go… wow!” And of course I was there with Andrew and Jade, Arlene Phillips was there, so that was all very exciting. The event was just mind blowing, and even to Eurovision veterans, they were going, “We have never seen anything like this.” The Russians really did throw everything at it, it was enormous.
h: What was it like stepping in to Terry’s shoes?
G: I was fine about it, because I was busy. Then in the couple of weeks leading up to it, suddenly there was so much fuss about it, and I was like, “Oh this is actually quite a big deal!” And then the great man himself phoned me a couple of days before Eurovision, to wish me well. So yeah, it was very daunting. Once I went to Moscow, you feel very removed from Britain. It was just me and the Executive Producer in a little booth, and you’re just chatting really and it’s very hard to think, millions of people in Britain are listening to this right now! So it was strange, but I’m very, very, very relieved it went as well as it did, because people seemed to have liked it.
h: You recently starred in La Cage aux Folles - what was that like being on the West End?
G: I loved it. I was really proud of myself, because it was such a mountain to climb in that, you know, can’t sing, can’t dance, all of that, and there was the drag element, there was the make up. It was just a huge mountain to climb, and by the end, you know, it had gone really well and audiences liked it. Personally it’s one of the most fulfilling things I’ve ever done as a job.
h: Do you have a favourite song from a musical?
G: From a musical, I would say Rose’s Turn from Gypsy, or it could be called Mama’s Turn. And preferably the Broadway recording featuring Patti LuPone.
h: Do you have any sort of motivational songs for when you get out of bed in the morning?
G: Not really, I mean there are some songs, you can’t resist them. S Club 7 – Reach - I think it’s very hard to resist that! Dolly Parton’s 9 to 5, I just saw that on Broadway and that song, it’s a genius song, it’s very good. In the musical, there’s a new version of the song about the sad secretary, she sings a song called From 5 to 9 and those are the saddest hours of her day because she’s not in the office and she’s all alone with her cat - a very moving ballad.
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