Graham William Walker (born 4 April 1963), known professionally as Graham Norton, is an Irish comedian, broadcaster, actor, and writer. He is best known as a chat show host, having presented The Graham Norton Show since 2007. Norton has won the British Academy Television Award for Best Entertainment Performance a record six times and has an additional BAFTA win for producing. He has been noted for his innuendo-laden dialogue and flamboyant presentation style.
In addition to hosting his chat show, since 2009, Norton has served as the BBC's television commentator for the final of the Eurovision Song Contest, and co-hosted the final of the 2023 edition of the event. From 2010 to 2020, he presented the Saturday-morning slot on BBC Radio 2, and from 2021 to 2024, he presented a weekend show for Virgin Radio UK. In 2019, Norton became a judge on the reality competition series RuPaul's Drag Race UK.
In 2012, he sold his production company So Television to ITV for around £17 million.
Norton was born Graham William Walker on 4 April 1963, at 48 St Brigid's Road, in Clondalkin, County Dublin, Ireland, to William "Billy" (died 2000), a sales representative for Guinness, and Rhoda Walker. He has an older sister, Paula (born 1959). Because of his father's job, he and his family moved around Ireland throughout his early childhood; they lived in Tramore, Waterford, and Kilkenny, before settling in the town of Bandon, County Cork, where he grew up. He was raised in a Church of Ireland family, and has said that he felt somewhat isolated growing up as a Protestant in the predominantly Catholic south of Ireland. His father's family were from County Wicklow, while his mother is a native of Belfast. He discovered during a 2007 episode of the genealogy series Who Do You Think You Are? that his father's direct ancestors were English, having originated in Yorkshire before emigrating to Ireland in 1713. Norton was educated at Bandon Grammar School in County Cork.
In 1981, Norton began studying English and French at University College Cork and was featured in an episode of Radio and Television of Ireland (RTÉ)'s Youngline, participating in an audience debate about underage teens attending discos.
In 1983, he had a nervous breakdown, refused to leave his flat, and stopped his studies. (He received an honorary doctorate from the university in 2013.) He travelled to San Francisco where he lived for a year in the "Stardance" hippie commune house on Fulton Street and worked as a waiter. In the late 1980s he moved to London to attend the Central School of Speech and Drama. He again found work as a waiter during that period. Upon joining the actors' union Equity, he chose Norton (his great-grandmother's maiden name) as his new surname, as there was already a comic-actor called Graham Walker (died 2013), represented by the union.
In 1992, Norton's stand-up comedy drag act as a tea-towel-clad Mother Teresa of Calcutta in the Edinburgh Festival Fringe made the press when Scottish Television's religious affairs department mistakenly thought he represented the real Mother Teresa. His first appearances in broadcasting were in the UK, where he had a spot as a regular comedian and panellist on the BBC Radio 4 show Loose Ends in the early 1990s, when the show ran on Saturday mornings.
He was one of the early successes of Channel 5, winning an award as stand-in host of a late-night TV talk show usually presented by Jack Docherty. This was followed by a comic quiz show on Channel 5 called Bring Me the Head of Light Entertainment, which was not well received as a programme but enhanced Norton's reputation as a comic and host. In 1996, he co-hosted the late-night quiz show Carnal Knowledge on ITV with Maria McErlane.
Between 1996 and 1998, Norton played the part of Father Noel Furlong in three episodes ("Hell", "Flight into Terror", "The Mainland") of the Channel 4 series Father Ted, which was set on the fictional Craggy Island off the west coast of Ireland. Father Furlong was often seen taking charge of the St Luke's Youth Group.
After this early success, Norton moved to Channel 4 in 1998 to host his own chat shows, including the weekly So Graham Norton (1998–2002), followed by the daily weeknight show V Graham Norton (2002–03). In 2001 he hosted Comic Relief on BBC One.
In January 2003 Norton was listed in The Observer as one of the 1,000 funniest acts in British comedy. (Though Norton is Irish, the bulk of his television career has been in the UK.) In January 2004, he was named the most powerful person in TV comedy by Radio Times.
Also that year he was the subject of controversy in the United Kingdom when, on his Channel 4 show, he joked, "I bet Maurice Gibb's heart monitor was singing the tune of 'Stayin' Alive'", referring to the recent death of the Bee Gees singer. Gibb's brother Robin described Norton as "scum", threatened to "rip his head off" if he saw him, and demanded an apology from him, the show's producers, and Channel 4. After receiving complaints, the Independent Television Commission investigated and Channel 4 made two apologies: one in the form of a caption slide before the show, another from Norton in person.
In the midst of controversy surrounding the February 2004 Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson's Super Bowl performance, Norton was wary of moving into the American television market, but The Graham Norton Effect debuted on 24 June 2004 on Comedy Central, and was also broadcast in the UK on BBC Three.
In 2005, Norton moved to the BBC and began hosting the Saturday evening reality TV series Strictly Dance Fever on BBC One, as well as a new comedy chat show, Graham Norton's Bigger Picture. He also read stories some nights on the BBC children's channel CBeebies as part of Bedtime Hour.
In 2006, Norton hosted the BBC One series How Do You Solve a Problem like Maria? in which Andrew Lloyd Webber tried to find a lead actress for his West End version of The Sound of Music. Norton presented the three follow-up series: in 2007, Any Dream Will Do, in which a group of men competed to win the role of Joseph in the West End production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat; in 2008, I'd Do Anything, in which Lloyd Webber seeks to find actors for the parts of Nancy and Oliver for Sir Cameron Mackintosh's West End production of Lionel Bart's Oliver!; and in 2010, Over the Rainbow, to find a new Dorothy for a Wizard of Oz West End production.
Norton hosted various other shows for the BBC during this time, including When Will I Be Famous? (2007), The One and Only (2008) and Totally Saturday (2009). Since 2007, Norton has also been a regular host of The British Academy Television Awards. On 7 July 2007, Norton presented at Live Earth and undertook a trip to Ethiopia with the Born Free Foundation to highlight the plight of the Ethiopian wolf – the rarest canid in the world. In the same year, he was the subject of an episode of the BBC1 genealogy documentary Who Do You Think You Are?
Norton's chat show, The Graham Norton Show, began on 22 February 2007, on BBC Two. The format is very similar to his previous Channel 4 shows. On 6 October 2009, the show moved to BBC One, in a new one-hour format.
In May 2010, Norton stood in for Chris Evans' breakfast show on BBC Radio 2. Later that month, it was confirmed that he would be replacing Jonathan Ross's Saturday morning slot on the same station.