Graham Norton

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 2 May 2004

⏱️ 34 minutes

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Summary

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the larger than life TV presenter Graham Norton. He was recently voted the most powerful man in comedy with four Baftas and an international Emmy under his belt. He's been on screen recently with his weekly show from New York but he's better known to British audiences for his So Graham Norton, as well as the annoying Father Noel in the series Father Ted. After six years with Channel 4 he's been poached by the BBC to front a Saturday night light entertainment show. He's compared the two channels to the difference between a night out with your friends or a family Christmas lunch and media critics have pondered how his camp brand of adult humour will translate to mainstream TV.

Originally born Graham Walker in Dublin in 1963, he was brought up in the small town of Bandon in West Cork. As a child he loved television describing it as a 'window to life' and a world he wanted to be part of. He began an English and French degree at University College Cork but dropped out after his first year and went to America where he lived in a hippy commune in San Francisco. He eventually returned and enrolled at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London with the ambition of becoming an actor. He changed his name to Norton - as the actor's union Equity infomed him they already had another Graham Walker on their books. He moved to Channel 4 in 1998 and moves to the BBC on his return from the States later this year.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

Favourite track: Islands in the Stream Book: Mansfield Park by Jane Austen Luxury: Mirror

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.
0:05.0	For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.
0:08.0	The program was originally broadcast in 2004, and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My castaway this week is an entertainer. He's made his name in television shows which have transformed
0:35.4	silliness into an art form, a camp conduit into people's private lives and the odd things
0:40.5	that they get up to. Brought up in Ireland quick-witted and theatrical,
0:44.6	he might have become an actor, but a short spell in the profession
0:47.5	convinced him that he could never take it seriously enough.
0:50.0	Instead, he honed his skills as a one-man band, traveling via the Edinburgh Fringe and Channel 5
0:55.8	to a late night show that made his name on Channel 4, and has brought him four Bafter Awards.
1:01.6	He's recently announced he's leaving them for the BBC. Is his mischief to become
1:05.8	more respectable perhaps? He says all he wants to do is please people. I want to be part of the
1:10.8	television landscape as long as anyone will have me.
1:13.6	I can't do anything else, he says.
1:16.0	He is Graham Norton.
1:17.3	He sounds almost plaintive that, Graham.
1:19.4	It does sound very begging and pleaded.
1:21.4	Please keep me around. I can't go anywhere else.
1:24.0	The thing about not being able to do anything is true.
1:27.0	You know I have no special skills I can't sing or juggle or do. I can carry five plates still and
1:33.6	But you found it that was that's the point that's what's happened to you isn't it you
1:37.4	found yourself happily and luckily this is what you can do exactly it is happily and
1:41.9	luckily that I'm doing my dream job and who knew that it was a job?
	...

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