We're huge fans of the Graham Norton Show here at Yours. With all the hugely famous faces on his sofa every week, and the hilariously funny moments, he really does bring out the best in his guests.
As the new series returns to TV, we caught up with Graham to find out his biggest lessons in life.
Don't quit the hit
'The late Dale Winton said that to me years ago and it really resonated. It makes so much sense. You see actors and pop stars leave their jobs when they get very famous and it doesn’t always work out for them.
'When my chat show returns each year, I’m always grateful and even though we’re in the 29th series I still get excited. Obviously there comes a time when the BBC won’t want the show and it’ll be ‘Taxi for Norton!’ but for the moment, I’m still amazed at the calibre of guests we get on the show.'
Less talk, more action
'You know those people who always say, ‘Gee, I wish I’d learned to play piano’? Well, here’s a thing you could do – you could go learn to play piano. If you really wanted to do it, you’d be doing it. It’s the reason I wrote my first novel, Holding, at the age of 53. I’d bored my friends over the years talking about wanting to write a novel and I didn’t want to be one of those people who talked about it but never actually did it.'
I don’t have a bucket list
'I feel I do most of the things I want to do, or maybe I’m just not very ambitious. I suppose now that my dogs Madge and Bailey are gone (Madge died at Christmas 2019 and Bailey in July 2020) I’d like to do some travelling. The dogs were such a tie I never really felt able to. I’d like to see South America and bits of northern India and southern China. But they feel like hard places to go as a tourist, so maybe I need to get myself a travel documentary and let them organise it!'
Laziness spurs me on
'If I’m feeling a bit down, I get lazy. I indulge it for a while, and then one day I go, ‘Right! I can’t sit looking online for another 24 hours, I must actually do something!’ The guilt of sitting around doing nothing spurs me to be productive and get back to the work, get back to the gym, all those things that I haven’t actually been doing.'
How to avoid fame’s downsides
'I consider myself a public figure who likes to be private, so that means I can easily avoid being papped by photographers. I won’t go to the restaurants or openings where I know they will be, I rarely Tweet, I don’t do reality shows, I don’t invite magazines into my house and I don’t talk about my personal life. It’s not that hard. Also, my life is not that interesting!'
What advice would you give to your 18-year-old self?
'‘You’ve got more time than you think.’ When kids fret over their school results I want to say, ‘Don’t worry! You’ve got plenty of time ahead of you. You can switch paths like I did.’ I was an unsuccessful actor for many years before I became a stand-up and then a chat show host. Then I went back to acting [in La Cage Aux Falles in 2008] and realised it wasn’t my dream anymore and I wrote a novel instead. And I don’t think ‘Oh, I wish I’d written that novel when I was 20.’ I’m very happy writing novels now.'
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