I was very aware that I should have been finding the whole process daunting and nerve-racking, and maybe once we started actually making the shows for America I would, but I have to admit that at that time I was just finding the whole experience exciting and surreal. I was well aware that I might be just another in a long line of British performers to fail miserably in the US, but that really didn’t bother me. As my experience with the hippies taught me all those years ago, the only true failure is not making the attempt.
The last show ended with no great fanfare or fireworks. I simply thanked the viewers and Channel 4 and signed off for the last time. We had another goodbye party. I was still finding it hard to believe that I wouldn’t be working with the people I’d grown to know so well over the last six years at 4. Katie Taylor, who had been our constant contact person and champion at the Channel, had never seemed like ‘one of them’. She’d always fought for what we wanted and was the poor person who had had to defend us every time we crossed a line or broke some regulation or other. She was also the best present-buyer I’d ever met. Although we’d been at endless parties together over the years, it seemed really sad that she couldn’t be with us for our last ever Channel 4 wrap party when we had it in New York because she had to go to her parents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary. And yet she’d still found the time to send us gifts. A real class act.
In the midst of all our American excitement we would occasionally remember that we were actually supposed to be thinking up a new show to do on the BBC. At the time of writing we still have no idea what it is, but hopefully when this book is published it’ll be on the air and not a complete disaster. In Jon and God we trust.
Looking forward seems like a very natural and almost healthy thing to be doing at this stage, having spent so many months delving into my past as I’ve worked on this book. I’m very struck by how I haven’t lived my life in a straight line, but in fact I think we all do this – we’re constantly passing Go and starting again. We may not pick up £200 each time, but we always seem to collect some more emotional baggage or, if we are very lucky, a little bit of wisdom. There have been so many beginnings and endings in my life so far, and where I’m at now is simply the start of a new round.
Earlier this year I went back to attend an anniversary party at Stardance in San Francisco. Maybe if I hadn’t been writing this book I wouldn’t have bothered, but I’m so glad I did. Everyone was there – Erica, Geoph, Mindy, Jem, Obo, even a heavily pregnant Faith Shines Help. We looked at old photos, I admired the new basement, we laughed about my cooking . . . but what struck me was that none of them remembered, because they had never known, how important they had all been in my life. To them I was just some clueless Irish boy who had passed through the house along with countless others, but to me it had been a major turning point after which, I had always believed, I became a very different person. As I picked at the vegan buffet and chatted about a new retirement home that was opening for activist pensioners, it dawned on me that in many ways I was wrong. Despite all the lessons and memories I had taken away from Stardance, I had been a fish out of water then, and, in very simple terms, I was still.
After the end of the filming in New York, I packed my laptop and headed off to Cape Town for some sun and one last burst of writing. I got back this morning, and as I write this I’m sitting tanned but tired, surrounded by boxes and dust in my new London house. I have been trying to finish this book for months, but now that I’m finally at that point I find I’m not sure how to. There isn’t a single certainty in my future, and yet I feel very calm. Perhaps the American show will fail, maybe the BBC will hate everything I do for them, but how bad can that be? Hopefully nobody will get hurt in the process and I will just get on with doing something, anything, else.
Writing the story of my life has been hugely enjoyable for me. Like everyone else I can find things to moan about, so it was wonderful to look back and see that I’ve lived the life of my dreams – and not many people get to say that. Yes, there has been some rain along the way, but mostly, overwhelmingly, it has been sunshine. I’ve won awards, I’ve been turned into a waxwork in Madame Tussaud’s, I’ve leg-wrestled John Malkovich, been slapped by Sophia Loren, danced with Tony Curtis. I’ve loved and lost and hope to love again, and now, it seems, I’ve written a book.
Thank Yous
THIS BABY HAS TAKEN ME a bit over nine months to produce, but like all babies it didn’t just pop out on to the shelves all by itself. Huge thanks to my übermidwife Katy Follain from Hodder & Stoughton for her incredible patience and encouragement. I’m also very grateful to Rowena Webb and all the other doctors and nurses at Hodder for the design and marketing and all the other jobs I didn’t even know they were doing.
Melanie Coupland, who held my hand and yelled ‘Push!’, not just while I was trying to finish this book but also during all my working life; Dylan and Tracy, and everyone at TalkBack – thank you.
Graham Stuart and Jon Magnusson, my showbusiness husbands: without you work would be work; with you it is the greatest fun in my life – well, apart from wanking.
Thanks to the legions of researchers, associate producers and producers who have given up so much of their time, energy and passion just to try and make me look good. A special thank you to my assistant Alex – it’s a lonely, dirty, thankless job, but, as they say about oral sex, someone’s got to do it.
My friends – old ones like Niall, Mike, Helen, Nicky, Maureen, Stephan, Gill and Darren, and new ones like Maria, Carrie, Carl, Daz, Tim, Daniel, Dennis, Jamie, Leslie, Louise and Craig and so many more – I don’t know why so few of you ended up in these pages. You are really important to me, just not when I’m writing a book, it seems.
Scott – for being there even when I thought I didn’t want you to be, thank you.
And finally, the biggest thank you of all must go to all the people who have watched the show over the years. Without you there would be no book and certainly no readers. Stay tuned!
Graham Norton
Born in 1963, Graham Norton was brought up in County Cork, Ireland. He was nominated for the Perrier award in 1997, when he also appeared as Father Noel Furlong in Father Ted. He then got his TV break on Channel 5’s Bring Me the Head of Light Entertainment. In May 2000, his show So Graham Norton received the first of four BAFTA awards for Best Entertainment Performance. His next chat show V Graham Norton was on five nights a week with three million viewers every night. After bringing The Graham Norton Effect to the USA and BBC3 in 2004, he has made a new show for the BBC, Strictly Dance Fever.
So Me Page 27