An audience with Graham Norton

The nation’s best-loved TV chatshow queen's part enthralling, part utterly tedious memoir
Shaggy dog story: Graham Norton’s latest memoir tells some risqué tales (Picture: Dan Burn-Forti)
Katie Law @jkatielaw30 October 2014

The Life and Loves of a He Devil: A Memoir by Graham Norton (Hodder, £20)

Have you heard the one about the famous gay guy, his dog and the condom? The guy invites another guy back for the night and in the morning he clears up before his cleaning lady arrives. He disposes of the used foil packet but can’t find its used contents. Two days later, while walking his dog in the park, he sees the missing condom hanging out of his dog’s bottom “like some long, thin ghostly finger”. As he tries to yank it out, he resists the urge to tell the mothers and schoolchildren walking past that contrary to what they can see before their eyes, he has not in fact been “fucking my pet”.

Whether you find this hilarious, disgusting or somewhere in between, it’s typical of the stories that Graham Norton tells against himself in his part enthralling, part utterly tedious memoir which picks up where his last one, So Me, left off in 2004, give or take some nostalgic reminiscing and inevitable repetitions of some of the key facts of his life.

Norton’s chapter headings here are Dogs, Ireland, New York, Divas, Booze, Men, Work and Things I Love to Hate, which together summarise the preoccupations and interests of the man who’s made millions being the nation’s best-loved TV chatshow queen. It’s his mix of camp, cosy bitch and his ability to push innuendo just so far when he interviews the celebs that has made him so successful and it’s what propels the book too. He can be both craven and nasty, suck up to people and look down on them while being disarmingly funny and charming.

If you don’t mind the endless name-dropping and snide remarks, there’s lots of revealing stuff to be entertained by, just like his shows. He’s always felt like an outsider — the lonely gay Protestant boy growing up in Catholic Ireland who never made many friends. His relationships with men in adult life haven’t been much better. His lovers don’t last, perhaps, he thinks, because other gay men are too alpha to put up with his success or maybe, he concludes as he hits 50, he just doesn’t really want “happily ever after”.

He enjoys his own company, is rich and successful enough to still pull and, like many ageing gays, loves the company of his dogs. He knows he drinks too much and likes to go clothes shopping when he’s had a few, but has never been drunk on TV or sacked. He adores being the Telegraph’s agony uncle — because, touchingly, other people’s plights move him.

He worries that his TV career might end abruptly and he’ll be reduced to appearing on Celebrity Big Brother. He’s furious to be snubbed by Claudia Schiffer at Elton and David’s wedding. Jon Voight cries on one of his shows and the scene is cut. A woman behind the checkout till in a US supermarket tells him she doesn’t like his show and he’s annoyed. Interesting that he minds enough to think this worth recording.

The person he wants on his show more than anyone is Madonna and, when she eventually agrees, it’s all a blur and she’s ice cold. He’s desperate for Cher to like him. Dolly becomes a friend. Robert De Niro on his show is a bore. Mark Wahlberg is drunk and falls asleep. At Liza Minnelli’s wedding to David Gest, he insists on having his picture taken by OK! magazine standing next to Helena Christensen, because: “I knew they would use the photo and I wanted some sort of proof that I was there”— yet says he has no interest in the whole idea of famous friends. And on and on it goes.

But unlike most of the celebs whose dreadful memoirs are littering the bookshops in the lead-up to Christmas, Norton is modest enough to believe his success has been largely good luck and intelligent enough to realise: “None of what I do actually matters, but without an audience it really would be pointless.”

Go to standard.co.uk/booksdirect to buy this book for £18, or phone 0843 060 0029, free UK p&p

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