Graham Norton quotes:
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All my day is spent dealing with other people. When I come home I like it to be empty. The presence of others in my house kind of annoys me. I love coming home and shutting the doors. I feel brain dead. I'm relatively available, but not to live with.
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Some people think they're depressed and they go to the doctor and want pills. And you just think: 'You hate where you live, you've lost your job, your boyfriend has dumped you, could all this be why you're depressed?'
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I loved Lucille Ball growing up.
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My ambition was to stop waiting tables. That was how I measured success: finally, I was able to stop waiting tables, and I was able to pay the rent, and that was by being a stand-up comic. Not a very good stand-up comic, but good enough to make a living.
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I am camp. Lots of gay men can't cope with their campness. They are in denial about it.
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Straight men just can't imagine the bliss of being in a relationship with someone who finds farting as funny as they do.
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I do get pleasure from very inconsequential things, like shopping for clothes.
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Because society places a value on masculinity, gay men aspire to it. If you go to a gay club and the doorman says, 'You do realise this is a gay club, don't you lads?' you get all excited because you think, 'Wow, he thought I was straight!'
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If you'd told the young Graham Norton that I'd one day have this amount of money, I'd have assumed it would have come from a lottery win.
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My mobile rang around lunchtime one day, and it was George Michael. He wanted to come in on Friday. We were like, 'okay, if that's what you want'. And he was a very good guest. That's a real exception to the rule.
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You don't want to be hard to look at. Plain very good, hard to look at bad. The plain shall inherit the earth; time is our friend.
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Forty freaked me out. I didn't see it coming. My life was in a state of chaos - I was moving jobs and moving house - and it just hit me like a ton of bricks.
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It's lovely to get one successful show - the chances of finding a second one are not so hot.
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Occasionally the state of the planet can knock me off my perky perch.
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I don't think you should have to try to be nice, I think most people are nice. I think being cheerful and nice is just a politeness.
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My parents grew up working class, but in that way that working class families do, they spent a fortune on education to better me.
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I have nothing to say about my childhood. It was a perfectly pleasant upbringing - it's not like it was unhappy or anything.
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All my interesting stories are from before I was on television. Nothing interesting has happened to me since then. Maybe it's because the most interesting thing in my life is the show and that's on telly.
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In terms of language, yeah we get bleeped and blurred and things, but in terms of content, I would probably say we're getting away with more here than we could get away with in Britain. And that surprised us so much!
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The BBC is a victim of its own independence.
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Well, certainly I think American television is - that's proper TV.
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It's amazing how I can just ramble on for hours, isn't it? And so unentertaining or uninteresting. But I can ramble on for hours. It's a sort of terrible gift, isn't it?
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I'm actually quite self-sufficient, so it might look as if there isn't room for anyone in my life. That isn't entirely the case.
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Basically, I'm a really bad interviewer. I love meeting celebrities, but then I get a bit bored. Once you meet them you thing, 'really, what an ordinary person'.
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I am very quick to judge.
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I always say I'd rather be miserable by myself than unhappy in a relationship.
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Do I have more depth than I'm given credit for? No!
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I've so exceeded what I ever wanted to do.
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Where I get bored is when I show up for a shoot and they want me to wear a feather boa. Too obvious a thing for a poof on the telly to do.
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An awful lot of female celebrities are very beautiful whereas a lot of male celebrities are not so hot.
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I don't think I've got bad taste. I've got no taste.
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A comedian's a comedian. They're a very kind of cynical bunch. I guess that's why I like them.
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All these people I interview are worth ten times what I'm worth.
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Britain's such a twisted, weird little place.
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I am really bad at actually interviewing people.
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I bet Maurice Gibb's heart monitor was singing the tune of Stayin' Alive.
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I don't think anyone wants to be gay.
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I think the word is adult!
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I was a failed actor but I still wanted to show off, so I ended up doing live comedy.
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I'd like to retire at 50 but I don't want to sell papers in the middle of London on a Zimmer.
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If it was possible for me to adopt, I probably would, but no one's going to let me adopt.
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I'm often dating people, but I don't say it because you sort of know it won't last long.
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In my experience the difference between a straight and a bisexual is about four pints
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It sounds deeply shallow, but for brief spells every member of the public can be fascinating.
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I've heard other gay people say when they were growing up they felt 'foreign.' Growing up, I was able to label these feelings as: 'I'm a Protestant.' It wasn't until I left, I thought: 'Oh, those weren't Protestant feelings.'
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One of the great things about being gay and out is that the papers couldn't care less about your love life.
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The higher your profile becomes, the more aware you are that people out there might hate you.
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The only people who are desperate to go on the show are people we're desperate not to have on the show.
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The only time I took Ecstacy was years and years ago. It was absolutely amazing.
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Those years between drama school and getting onto the stand-up circuit were pretty lean.
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Tolerance is forced on people in London.
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You don't want money to make you a social freak where you can only hang out with rich people.
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A good rule to remember for life is that when it comes to plastic surgery and sushi, never be attracted by a bargain.
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My life could have been so grim really, really grim.