From the archive (season 4): Graham Norton

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:07Hello friends and buckle up Because we have a little treat for you at the end of what has been an absolutely banging season of guests An autumn mini-series of five of my old favourites So, as autumn turns to winter, snuggle up, settle in and wallow in this little selection of the most cocklewarming interviews. Here's my chat with the sovereign of the sofa. It's Graham Norman, who came over back in 2023 to chat all things food. It's an overused phrase, but honestly, I think that we're in national trash territory here, arriving through that very front door in a moment we have graham norton he's coming over for a good old chat not before i fuel up with a snack look i'm on the last of the crimbo ferrera roches i'm gonna make it into a hot chocolate it's a little trick i've been microwaving them and pouring milk stirring and basically just mainlining them just pushing them into my face as quickly as i can i love a ferrera rocher

1:36graham norton is an irish actor comedian commentator and presenter he's best known for his five time BAFTA award-winning chat show, The Graham Norton Show, which has seen him invite celebrity guests onto his couch for over 15 years. He's an author with four novels to his name, and before all that, he acted in three episodes of Father Ted.

2:10Graham is such a staple on our TV screens we all feel like we know him don't we but there are layers of mystery that I want to uncover not least I want to know what this media maestro is munching on when the TV set is shut up for the day and he's back at home on his own couch okay it'll be here soon but first just a little sip of this

2:42this is why people see me as a pioneer in food

2:53graham norton welcome to comfort eating thank you very much grace look right now i am dressed up to the nimes. I've got some jewellery on. I've got my makeup on to welcome an esteemed guest into the house. The truth is I am feeling a little exposed though because we go to the same gym. I know. That is embarrassing. And not long ago, you witnessed me with a rather sweaty boob cleavage midway through doing six Bulgarian split squats. Right. And I just think there's something very vulnerable about being seen in very tight lycra. I am so with you. Whenever I see someone in there, I hope, I think to myself, that looks like Grace Dent, but hopefully it isn't.

3:40And then I'll be saying to my trainers, we're kind of pushing something. I'm going to go... And then you've got to say hello. But equally, it's weird. It's like we owe each other money or we've had sex or something. It's that vibe. Graham Norton. this is a point in the show where you introduce me to the snack that makes you happy. I do not know what is under this tea towel. It smells quite nice. There's something, there's a nice aroma. Do you want to unveil your snack for me? Well, all I'll say is I listen to this podcast. I think some people try very hard. You kind of think, oh, come on. But this is genuinely, this is genuinely something if I'm in the supermarket and I'm coming home and I just want a bit peckish, I know what I'd love.

4:31And it is this. It is a very simple Scotch egg. Waitrose Scotch egg. None of your fancy. Because waitrose have overcomplicated the Scotch eggs. There's now kind of sort of Indian summer and weird ham weirdness. This is your plane. and just have a little bit of ketchup. And I like, I mean, today it's your cutlery, but I like to serve it on a small plate with a small knife and fork. So it feels like a tiny feast. It's even. You got me a small fork. Thank you very much. So you feel like you're like a little Lilliputian. Yeah. First Lilliputian. I'm not sure I can eat this whole egg. It's so big. Alan Jugga has the small fork diet.

5:19No. Yeah, it's how he lost weight. He invested in a small fork. So he takes smaller forkfuls and I think gets bored eating. And you know, you can laugh at it. It worked. He did lose weight. Anybody who's thinking that this is like a tiny picnic egg would be mistaken. This is a big, brassy, I'm going to say balls out scotch egg. I'm sensing it's warm. Is it warm? It's been microwaved for about 40 seconds. Oh, heavens above. You've microwaved it. For 40 seconds. 40 seconds precisely. Well, you don't want to, because if you do it too long, it gets soggy. But you just want to take the room chill off it.

5:59Am I just, do you half it? Well, you know, you literally get the scotch egg with your knife and fork. I don't think anyone's in the history of Scotland. Yeah, and then I would normally quarter it like that. So then you end up with a, you know, a feast. a little bit of ketchup and then you just dip and then you go. Look at your face of absolute joy as you put that into your mouth. I'm delighted. It's the fact that the pork's grey. Is that grey? It's not brown, is it? Well, no. It's not pink either. So you're safe. It's like, I think a scotch egg feels, in theory, it should be nice. Oh, but in...

6:39It's the fact the breadcrumbs aren't crisp. The pork no longer tastes of pork. how long's that egg been in there though who knows fascinates me and how do you cook one like i like buying them and eating them but how do you hard boil an egg do you then put it in raw sausage meat it can't be it must be cooked sausage meat and then you deep fry it or fry it or something i don't know how you make it well i know that if you go to a gastropub then the middle is lovely and runny now how you do that i don't know and actually there are some other supermarkets who i've forgotten that they do a runny one but they're quite hard to eat on the go the thing is i can shovel one of these in my mouth as i'm cycling oh that's a really erotic thought actually just you you with the uh you with the traffic lights yeah slightly sweating eating a eating a scotch egg like an apple keep it keep my head down to no one recognizes me how long have you been eating scotch eggs for oh a long time i think though there are a since i came to england thing i i don't remember ever eating a scotch egg in um in ireland growing up that's when you knew you'd got to the big city this is sophisticated this is sophisticated this is like wow i'm living abroad look what i'm having your first postcard home yeah eggs yeah scotch egg of course i know It is a Scotch egg.

8:05That's where they're from. Yeah, that's where they're obviously from. Yeah. Let's go back to those days in Ireland. You were born Graham William Walker on the 4th of April 1963 to parents Billy and Rhoda. You grew up in the town of Bandon in County Cork, along with your older sister Paula. Take us back to those early years of your youth. What did Bandon have to offer to Graham? as a young boy? I mean, very little, to be honest. It was just, it was, it was like a waiting area. It was like a departure lounge is what it was. And it was as much fun as a departure lounge. I really was just waiting to go.

8:51You know, I would watch telly and that was my departure's board. That was where I was heading. If there was one show playing on this television in this imaginary departure lounge that made you want to leave? What is the show? In a way, it could have been anything. Because I watched whatever was on. We only did one channel and I watched it all. But I suppose the big hitters would have been things like Charlie's Angels, Chips. I remember Chips because that was two absolutely gorgeous men on motorbikes, wasn't that? And then Charlie's Angels, just gorgeous women being gorgeous and fabulous. And of course, it's that funny thing.

9:35When you're in Ireland, you think you're watching American television. And it's only when you get to America, you realise, oh no, it's California. Yes. This is where they make everything. What were your mum and dad like when you were a little boy? They were kind of getting on with it. They were kind of making sure that me and Paul were being, you know, clothed, watered and fed. Did they both work? No, my dad worked for Guinness, the brewery. He started off as a service rep and then he was a sales rep, moved around a lot. And here's the weird thing. Now that I'm 59, I think he took early retirement at 50.

10:13I mean, I can't imagine just packing up tools at 50. And he didn't really have any hobbies or anything or interests, it seemed. yeah so I think it was quite hard for my mother after that did they know you were going to go from when you see you're a little boy and you say you're waiting in the the departure lounge did they encourage that or did they try and I think they tried to manage my expectations you know in I would say it and this sounds like they were bad parents and they really weren't this was all done with love um I think they they sort of bred us for failure because that way that way you would never be disappointed or upset.

10:57Mealtimes back then when you were a little boy, were they a family affair? And what was on your plate? They were very much a family affair. It was all, you know, the four of us sitting down together. And I was kind of growing up in, you know, coming to that, being aware of what I was eating, sort of late 60s, early 70s. And so there was a change. so you know we did have yeah there was lots of traditional stuff you know like the boiled hams and my mother was great with offal she'd stuff a heart she'd do something with liver and you know she'd do all those things but equally we're beginning to get the i can't remember what they called vesta vesta vesta chow mein and stuff in the box with the those little noodles that You'd fry in the pan and stuff.

11:45We'd get all of those. And that just seemed impossibly exotic and crazy. But my poor mother, so she would make one of those meals for all of us. My father, and he was not a demanding man. He was so sweet and gentle and not this guy at all. There had to be potatoes. It was not dinner unless there were potatoes. See, I thought this was a myth of our island, that there was these men that were passionate about potatoes. I feel I might be one of them. I often, I often in a posh restaurant will go, this is delicious. And I'm looking around like a dog. Anyone? Is everything on the table now? Is that all that comes with this?

12:34Look, are you saying that your mother, when you were a little boy, used to stuff a heart and serve it to you. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. I don't know about the heart of what. What would it have been? A lamb heart? It must have been a lamb heart. It must have been a lamb heart. I mean, a cow heart would be the size of a turkey. I mean, she'd have had a couple of people to carry. Now, it feels quite macabre. Yeah, a lamb heart. I mean, back in the 70s, I definitely remember going to the shops to buy pig's hearts. Oh, maybe it was a big side. Yeah. Little. These were little. What did she stuff it with? Stuffing.

13:14You know, some sort of bread crummy, sage, onion-y. It wasn't like a Christmas stuffing. It wasn't like sausage meat stuffing. It wasn't. It was something else. I don't know what was in there. I just can't imagine a little boy sitting there with his knife and fork, tucking into the valves and things that were... No, I quite like that. See, that is why you're okay about these Scotch eggs. Anything from then on, there's no arterial bleed or anything going. No, exactly, yeah.

13:50Our teenage years are a time of expanding horizons, pushing boundaries. Did the confines of rural West Cork offer much in the way of self-discovery and adventure? A little bit. There were kind of exotic people who'd come to West Cork, you know, potters. And I remember Fred Astaire's grandson was at our school. I remember after he left, my mother bought his trousers in a second hand uniform sale. I know me with my hips. I managed to go to them. Who were you running with? No one really. Very few people. I was friends with a few girls in my year and that was about it. I was, you know, I don't think I was particularly antisocial.

14:37I would chat to anyone and, you know, I would say the odd funny thing in class and stuff. So it wasn't like I was just moping. But equally. You had one eye on the door already. Awful aside, did you start to get adventurous with your palate in your teens? Did you have any really eye opening moments around this point? The big eye-opening thing in my teens was when I went on a French foreign exchange trip. I went to a little town near Toulouse. And Gilles, he came to Ireland first. And so my mother was peppering about this because there was all these horror stories about these French kids coming to your thing.

15:22And they didn't eat anything. And they went home emaciated and ill. And there were angry letters. So my mother was terrified. But anyway, Gilles arrived. Now, God loves Gilles. He ate everything, right? He really never complained. And, you know, some of the stuff he was having, you know, he was eating his instant whip and, you know, stuff that would make French people cry. but he had it all and I remember when we were at the airport and we were all flying off to France into the wild blue yonder my mother, I don't think she did this but I remember it as if she held my shoulders and she just looked me in the eye and she went, eat everything you're given, like I was eating for Ireland, you know the pride of the nation relied on me and and and it was as if the french family had heard her because oh it was like i'm a celebrity get me out of here i mean they really tried they pushed me and i never ever said no i edit all okay i'm thinking tubie sausages oh yeah yeah yeah all the pissy sausages yeah and what uh lights a lot of spleen they like a they like a kind of like a spleen aligning that's what they like the worst one was uh for breakfast this was a thing called tete de veau yeah and it's basically sliced up calf's head floating in aspic so you're like you're cutting it in and you're like clearly that's a nostril like i'm we can't even pretend that is just a nostril you know at least courtesy to mince it up and wrap it around some egg and deep fry it.

17:05But no, just a nostril. I ate that. Here's the thing. I'd never eaten cheese before I went to France. I was about 16, maybe 17, did not like cheese. But it was great. It opened up all of these tastes to me. And it made me, you know, because I think when you're kids, all children are conservative with a small C. And it knocked that out of me really early doors.

17:37you grew up with a pen pal very glamorously called david villipando i know one summer whilst at university you traveled to america on a student visa to visit him in california how did this very wholesome summer jaunt end up being over a year long Well, what happened was, I mean, David Filippando, so I had lots of, this was back in the late 70s. Everyone had pen pals and I had loads of them. Indonesia, you know, Australia, Canada, everywhere. But the one I settled on was David Filippando. And we sort of came out to each other in our letters. But of course, I'm living in Bandon. He's living in Los Angeles, California.

18:29Yeah. So... How did the conversation even come round to this in the letter? Because my experience of pen pals in the 70s was that you just almost bored them to death. But those are the foreign ones. Did you not have any American ones? Because you could actually have conversations with them. Whereas if you're talking to France or Germany or somewhere, it is very much kind of like... Je jouie or Bobbyfoot. Yes, and we do two years of exams before we go to university. yeah but with with david villipando it went from that to okay and then it went to and then it went to he was doing things about it so it was like little uh pale blue airmail porn would arrive every couple of weeks uh with his adventures so it was very exciting so when i was getting out of dodge there's this j1 visa you can get if you're in ireland which means you can work in america so i went there and like this oh no it was the early 80s but even so i went with i think 200 pounds and that was going to last me for a month while i got myself settled yeah well i mean it was gone in 10 days tops and i had a rambler bus ticket the bus ticket ran out in san francisco as luck would have it.

19:51So I'm now in San Francisco. He's in LA. And this is the bit of the story where I do not come out of the story well here. I sort of forgot all about him then. So I never met him. Oh my God. And as an adult, I've tried so hard to find him. I don't know if he's still in the land of the living, but I have emailed a lot of David Villabandos and never got a reply. What happens next? Why didn't you go home when the money ran out? And I got a job because I was able to work. So I got a job in a French kind of sandwich shop. It was called Ville de France. And I enjoyed it so much, met lots of great people there.

20:31And then I was living in this hippie commune because it was cheap rent. And then that was a totally different experience. It doesn't feel like you were a hippie at this point. No. You weren't a hippie in Ireland. You were quite a straightforward person. And then suddenly you're in San Francisco. Well, I suppose because it made economic sense to be a hippie. So if that's how you get a cheap room, yes, I'll do this. Did it have a name? It was called Stardance then. It's called something else now and I can't remember what it is. But it's still there. I mean, I've got to ask, what's the food situation like in a hippie commune?

21:12A, do you all have to eat together and pretend to like Moonbeam or whatever your neighbor's lentil dal? And is it always dal? Do you know what? It was never dal. Dal every day, but never dal. And it's where I kind of learned to cook. So now I cannot cook for one or two. I mean, if I make a meal, six people could easily show up every time. Now, sadly, I eat that. That's the problem. That is the problem. But I just, I worry about quantity. So there was, I was cooking for like 12 or 14 people. And I mean, when you say dread the night, I mean, the nights that my name come up on the chore wheel for dinner, they must have gone, oh no.

22:04it's him and yet when i went back uh there was a reunion kind of 25th anniversary or something a few years ago and i went back and i met one of the women there called erica and she went oh graham we still make your soup we call it graham soup i'm like what what what soup and of course you will roll your eyes it was a leek and potato soup oh and and i don't know how i knew to make that i mean And imagine, I imagine Erica taught me how to make it. And now I've given it back to her as my soup. So in a hippie commune, was it all about free love and free expression? There was some free love. But I remember even as that young kid resolving to not come back to Ireland and laugh at them.

22:57because by the end of that year, I had such respect for them and their beliefs and the fact that they're still, you know, out there. They're still kind of protesting for change and, you know, trying to lead by example in a way that I wish I had those sorts of principles. It's kind of one of the biggest regrets of my life is that I don't live my life like that.

23:38like so many people arriving in london in the 80s bright-eyed bushy-tailed your 20s were spent working in restaurants were you a good waiter oh you see now i started off as a really good waiter I was very keen I wanted to be able to have a nice time I was very enthusiastic but I was Irish so like I think back now things like you know at the end of the meal I'd bring over the dessert menus and go would you like dessert and people would go no thank you and I go are you sure like Mrs Doyle from Father Ted because in my head that was just that was etiquette you know you forced dessert on people because it was their job to say no and then it was your job to go Ah, you will.

24:21Ah, go on, go on, go on, go on. And people must have just thought I was the pushiest waiter in all of London. And then over the years, boy, did I fall out of love with it. And after about eight years, it's really lucky I was able to get out. Or there might have been a fatality. I don't know. I might be in prison now. One of the places you worked, which kind of blows my mind a bit, was the Eagle. Yes. In North London, which is regarded as the first gastropub. Yeah. You know, downstairs, you'd be found pulling pints. But in the end, it was the upstairs room that changed your life. It was. Because I left drama school and wasn't working.

25:10And then, but still wanted to show off. So working in restaurants, I developed this stupid thing of when I was, you know, polishing glasses. and we're all standing around just gassing before we open for the day. We have polishing glasses and I would put the Irish linen tea towel over my head and I would do like an impression of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, which is funny for about 20 seconds, maybe 15. I would start every show with, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, the unborn. So she was kind of, is there a lot of hand wringing? Yes, a lot of hand wringing, but she would do things like she would demonstrate the Holy Trinity through using Tupperware because you know they'd go three into one.

25:55Father, Son, Holy Ghost. So it was clever stuff. Right. But there was an hour of it. Anyway, I said can I use the gallery upstairs to put on a little show. They said yes. Then people started saying to me oh I hear you're doing a show you know in a couple of Thursdays time. Yeah. And that made it happen because you know I wasn't really going to put on a show in the gallery because come to it I'd have to write one but now it was happening so I did it and I was I'd sent out all these press releases and things and little bits of Irish tea towel stuck to card like a relic and and people came and Emma Freud from Radio 4, Luce Ends she came and And a woman called Judith Dimmond, I think Judith Dimmond maybe came because she heard it on loose ends.

26:48And she was involved in the Pleasance up at Edinburgh. And there was a cancellation. And so I got straight in to do kind of two weeks at midnight in the Pleasance. I mean, that's scary, though, because you went from, I mean, essentially fannying around in a kitchen to at the Pleasance with two weeks to fill. Yes. Really quite quickly. It was very quick. You know, on paper, great that I've got this kind of high profile entree into the world of comedy and the Edinburgh Festival. It doesn't pay any bills. And it took me a couple of years to figure out that Mother Teresa was quite a niche act. It was never really going to go anywhere.

27:36I was never going to do the comedy circus as Mother Teresa. So then I did some kind of other comedy characters. And then finally, I kind of bit the bullet and went, look, this is stand up. So I'm going to just call it stand up. And that's when I started making a living. So Graham Norton, your first eponymous show starts airing 1998. It is a heady mix of chat show, sexual innuendo and audience participation. Often all at the same time. having a TV show named after you, it must feel normal now because you've been on our screens for 25 years. It feels like your career, though, really turned a corner at this point.

28:19Is there a specific moment that you thought, holy hell, I'm really famous now? Ooh, I remember there was a... We were only five nights a week by now and Big Brother was on at the same time as us and it was a Thursday recording and we had Dustin Hoffman on and we did a sketch where he was impersonating people from the Big Brother house and it had gone really well and Dustin Hoffman had been this great guest and myself and Yvonne Magnussen the series producer and Graham Stewart the executive producer we went out for dinner and we were in the Oxo Tower, you know, right next door to the studios there.

29:04And we were up on this, it was a lovely night, it was a balcony looking out over London. And I remember that night feeling like we were at the centre of something. It felt very now. The success of our show, the huge success of Big Brother, those guests were in London town. We're literally sitting on top of it. and it's rare that you get, normally you get to appreciate that in retrospect. Normally you look back and go, God, do you remember we were kind of the thing then? But we were able to appreciate it while we were in it.

29:51Of course, you're now most often seen on our screens hosting The Graham Norton Show on BBC One. your chat show, which sees you and the great and good of Hollywood pop mega stardom and society at large sitting on the sofa, having a natter. Like one of my favorite things about the show is this intoxicating mix of people. You get on together people who would never have crossed paths otherwise. So you've got Arnold Schwarzenegger, Miranda Hart, Ronnie Corbett and Usher. all sat next to each other which is incredible so this sofa it reads like someone's fantasy dinner party lineup whose chemistry has really surprised you oh a lot of people's chemistry has surprised me where they they just they have a kind of inner confidence that i didn't expect them to have or sometimes it's a serious actor who turns out to be a clown like dustin offman was one where I was like, I was sort of dreading having him on because I just thought this is going to be such hard work.

30:56And then he showed up and he was just an absolute hoot and a holler and a laugh. And then these younger people like Chris Pratt from all the Jurassic World movies, he's so great. He's a revelation, isn't he, Chris Pratt? Now, doesn't he really love The Only Way is Essex? He does and does a really good Essex accent. It does an amazing Essex accent. And then, you know, then there's people like Miriam Margulies who, her thing doesn't surprise me. Because, you know, I know Miriam and you know what you're going to get. But what she brings to the chemistry experiment of the couch is pretty special. And it's so great because you see the Americans sitting beside her and they think, oh, I'm sat beside some dear old grand dame of British theatre or something.