So Me (21 page)

A phone call out of the blue. I hardly needed to pick up the receiver Melanie was so excited. I had been nominated for a comedy award. How thrilling! What for?

‘Best Newcomer for
The Jack Docherty Show
.’

‘Who am I up against?’

‘Phil Kay and, well, this is the slightly awkward bit . . . Jack Docherty.’

It took a moment or two for the news and its significance
to sink in. Melanie went on to explain that I should have been nominated for
Bring Me the Head of Light Entertainment
but someone at Channel Five had ticked the wrong box. Oh well, it was thrilling to be nominated, even if there was no way I could win.

The big night arrived and tragically I can still remember what I was wearing. Although shiny, it was almost tasteful for me – a sort of glittering Nehru jacket affair and some trousers that were so tight my legs looked like satin sausages. Scott and I got to our table in Studio One of London Studios and joined Jack Docherty and his wife, various other producers from his show and Graham Stuart. All night people were trying to tip-toe around me and the very obvious fact that Jack was going to win, but every now and again someone would come up to the table and just see Jack. ‘It’s in the bag, mate, it’s in the—’ Then they caught sight of me smiling in my shiny blouse. I really didn’t care. It was the Perrier award all over again: I was genuinely thrilled to be nominated and required nothing more.

Finally it was time for the award for Best Newcomer. Jack and I laughed and wished each other luck. Jonathan Ross introduced Kathy Burke, and the two of them cracked a few jokes before she opened the envelope. My back was to Jack as I looked at the stage. Cameras were trained on us both, and just before Kathy announced the name I heard one cameraman whisper to the other, ‘I’ll cover Jack to the stage.’ Of course I knew I hadn’t won, but I couldn’t help but be disappointed to find out in such an offhand way even before it was official. I fixed my grin and refocused on the stage.

‘Oh!’ cried Kathy. ‘It’s my favourite Irish homosexual!’

What? But I’m the only . . . and then I heard it – my
name. The rest was a blur. I think I kissed Scott, maybe shook hands with Graham, but mostly stumbled to the stage as quickly as I could before someone changed their mind or Kathy revealed that she was only joking. I blurted out a few thank yous – the people at TalkBack, David Johnson and Mark Goucher, probably my parents – but then I just dried up, clutched my award and walked off.

I was no more than a couple of seconds backstage when it dawned on me. I had forgotten to thank anyone who worked on the show, Jack himself or my great supporters at Channel Five. I felt like such a complete selfish bastard, but, but . . . there is no but. It was unforgivable. I was taken backstage to the press room for photographs with Kathy and the award. In between the flashes I just kept telling everyone, ‘I forgot to thank all the people I worked with.’ ‘They’ll be all right, don’t worry,’ I was told repeatedly.

One of the production assistants led me around the back of the set and, in a commercial break, ushered me back to the table. Jack was full of smiles and shook my hand. The others weren’t quite so good at hiding their displeasure – there were a few ‘well done’s through rigid smiles. I apologised again for my sin of omission, but everyone assured me that it was all right and of course they understood.

In terms of my professional life, this was the best thing that had ever happened to me and in lots of personal ways I suppose it was too. I might not have been bred for disappointment exactly, but nor had I ever won anything before – not even a raffle. But sitting at a table with Jack and all the people who worked with him day after day slightly put a lid on my euphoria. Even then, however, I was so full of a Good Thing happening to me that somehow I hadn’t fully
taken on board that mostly what had happened that night was a Bad Thing. It was only later that Scott told me what it had been like at the table after I had been whisked backstage. Apparently everyone around the table had gone very quiet. I’m sure certain things were left unsaid about me at the time to save Scott’s feelings, but he said it was a fairly horrendous experience. The only bright spots had been when Dale Winton and Barbara Windsor (and I will always appreciate them for doing this) came over to congratulate Scott.

The party afterwards didn’t feel very festive. I had a prize, but the awkwardness of how I had won it married to how badly I had handled my acceptance of it meant that the usual air punching and champagne popping just felt very out of place. I couldn’t help but feel like the bad guy. Scott and I slipped away fairly early. Just as I was saying goodnight to Graham Stuart, a man came up and congratulated me. After he walked off I asked Graham, ‘Who was that?’ A beaming Graham replied, ‘Kevin Lygo, Head of Entertainment at Channel 4.’

We didn’t go straight home. Instead we stopped for a last couple of drinks at the White Swan, the East End gay bar that gained a certain notoriety when Michael Barrymore used the stage there for coming out. We stood at the bar in our finery drinking pints, and a few people who had been watching the award show on TV came over to offer their congratulations. It was like taking off a tight pair of shoes. The stress of the award show melted away and we were just another couple getting drunk.

11

So Time

C
HANNEL 4’S OFFICES ON HORSEFERRY
Road in London make you feel important. I strode through the revolving doors and announced myself to the bright-eyed receptionist sitting in her tower of glass and televisions. ‘I have an appointment.’ It felt as if the very least the meeting could be about was the merger of huge international companies or peace in the Middle East. I signed in, was issued a security pass and was then whisked away in a glass pod lift to a higher floor. Then I started talking about a show that had a few celebrity guests and maybe a member of the audience telling a story about wanking.

Graham and I had meetings with a commissioning editor called Graham K. Smith. All three of us had grown up not knowing anyone else called Graham, so we all found a childish pleasure in being in an All Graham Gang. We talked about the show in very vague terms. Essentially it would be a chat show and maybe I would do some talking with the audience or make a phone call. It was my stand-up show from Edinburgh with a few celebrities thrown in to make it seem like a television programme.

Eventually we met with Kevin Lygo, the man who had shaken my hand at the Comedy Awards. Kevin is very rare amongst television executives in that he is both funny and
genuinely seems to know what he is talking about. I know that doesn’t sound like much to ask from someone who has risen to the top of their profession, but you would be surprised. Most people who are in control of the programmes we watch seem to take great intellectual pride in not actually watching any television. Kevin and Lorraine Heggessy, who runs BBC 1, are happy exceptions to that rule.

All these meetings at 4 went very well, but Graham and I always left feeling slightly frustrated because no one was actually telling us that the show was definitely going to be commissioned. We kept playing around with the format, and I remember the day when Graham Stuart came up with the idea of using the Internet as well as the phone. I had never turned on a computer at the time, and although I smiled and nodded (boat be still!), I was thinking that it sounded really dull. I decided not to worry because it was beginning to look like the programme would never see the light of day.

In the middle of all this media cock-teasing, Scott had found us a new house to rent. It was further east in Bow and it was enormous. Arranged over four floors it meant we could have a study each. Scott was desperate to get a computer and try out the World Wide Web. God, what did everyone see in this Internet thing? Didn’t they realise it was going to be like laser discs all over again? I reluctantly agreed to his demands and a computer arrived and was installed in his study. Almost instantly I became an Internet widow. Scott spent more and more time in his study with the computer and less and less time with me. I can’t blame him, because I was so rarely there and when I was, all I wanted to do was drink wine and watch TV. I had brought this man to Britain with promises of endless love and attention
, but once he’d arrived I was always out. It must have been hell for him because thanks to our application to the Home Office for his residency he had had to give up his passport. He was in effect trapped in Britain, unable to work. Of course it’s relatively easy to be sympathetic in retrospect. At the time, knowing all the extenuating circumstances didn’t make it any easier to live in a house with a big grumpy American sitting at his computer all day. Occasionally we still had fun and I told myself that we were just going through a bad phase, but sometimes as I sat alone flicking through the channels I wondered if the good times had been the phase.

Scott desperately wanted to get involved in the show we were planning, but although I was more than happy to discuss it with him at home, it just seemed eggy to bring him into an office full of television professionals. I suppose this was partly because I felt like such a fraud myself, and also because I was aware that it just wasn’t the done thing. I told myself that I was protecting Scott and our relationship from the stresses of working together, and besides, why would he want to be my Debbie Magee?

Having spent months in non-committal committee meetings, suddenly we got the call. Channel 4 wanted to do a pilot and, should that go well, a series of six shows that would go out at 10.30 p.m. on Friday nights. After the initial celebrations had died down, we thought about the challenge we had to face. We had always imagined this show as a fairly low-key chat show that might play on a Wednesday or Thursday night, but they were asking us to take over from the slot that
Eurotrash
had been so successful in. Patently that post-pub Friday-night audience would need a little more
than some Irish poof bantering with Simon Callow about his latest stage triumph. Kevin Lygo was obviously slightly nervous about his decision because he kept telling us, ‘This is an entertainment show – not a chat show!’ Thrilled as we were to be making any show, this did strike us as slightly odd, given that all we had ever pitched to them was a chat show.

Because nobody told me that I wasn’t supposed to, I showed up for every pre-production meeting that was arranged. I’ve since learnt that this is not the norm. All the technical types with long hair and big bunches of keys would really prefer never to meet the presenter of a show, and if they have to then at least let it be after all the truly important work is over. People walked in for meetings about the set design or the graphics and were slightly taken aback to see me sat at the table with a cup of coffee and lots of pictures I’d ripped out of magazines. I’m sure if you talked to these people they might speak about me in terms of being a control freak, and I suppose they’re right, but the way I look at it is that I’m the one fronting the show, so if it is a disaster I’d prefer it to be my fault.

A great deal of time was spent talking about what to call this new programme. The Channel and Graham Stuart would have been perfectly happy with a straightforward
The
Graham Norton Show
, but I had a very strong gut feeling that my name shouldn’t be in the title. For some reason I had decided that it would be unlucky, and I also had that weird thing where although I wanted to jump up and down waving my arms and shouting ‘look at me!’, I didn’t want people to think that was all I was doing. I wanted to call it after a bar in Los Angeles called the Frolic Room, but when
I suggested this at a meeting the expression on the faces of the other people told me that I might as well have just let off a big fart. More suggestions please.
The Lock-In?
Too negative.
Last Orders?
Someone else had already used it. At one meeting, the writer Jez Stephenson was joking around because when I had guest-hosted
The Jack Docherty Show
, it had been called
Not The Jack Docherty
Show
. ‘Why don’t we call it
The Very Graham Norton Show?
’ he asked.
Completely
Graham Norton? So Graham Norton? We laughed and moved the conversation on to something else.

Finally I realised that I was not going to convince Graham or Channel 4 of any title that didn’t include my name, and people seemed to actually like
So
Graham Norton
. It was decided. I now realise that if I was going to lose any fight about my own show then this was the one to lose. Ever after, if there was any dispute about anything about the show, I could use my trump card – ‘It’s supposed to be
So
Graham Norton
, and I don’t think that’s very me.’ I’m sure there were times when the Channel 4 executives deeply regretted the day they inadvertently gave me such power.

We worked out of offices on Oxford Street that had previously been occupied by some sort of bucket-shop travel agent. It became clear that they had shut down and vacated the building quite suddenly given the number of times someone would poke their head around the door looking for their tickets to Uganda.

Graham Stuart and I put together a small team of people, some of whom still work with me today. The worry was that we had yet to find a producer. Graham couldn’t do it full time because he was looking after other projects at United, and we weren’t having much luck. I suppose it was always
going to be hard to find a talented, successful producer who had the time and the inclination to risk their reputation on an untried performer doing a totally new show in the relatively low-profile summer season. We worked on confirming all the elements of the show, not really mentioning to Channel 4 that with weeks to go there was still no one to produce it.

Being the host of a show after guest-hosting someone else’s or being just a guest on various panel games took quite a lot of getting used to. I didn’t feel any different, but it was clear from the outset that I was the boss. The first meeting I had with the team was very strange. I was introduced to them all and that was fine, but then as the meeting went on I noticed that if I spoke everyone shut up and turned to look at me. If I made the slightest little joke they all laughed . . . for just a little too long. I’m sure this still happens in meetings now, but what worries me is that I’ve just stopped noticing. I remember being really upset when someone on the team organised a barbecue one weekend and I wasn’t invited. It felt like a punch in the stomach, but then I realised that this was the way it was going to be from now on. I was the boss, and who invites their boss to a party? They wanted to have fun, and I imagined them all standing around eating their burnt raw sausages having a great time ripping the shit out of me. There is still an invisible, unavoidable glass wall between me and the people I work with, and anyone who pretends it doesn’t exist is an idiot. Of course I am extremely close to some of the team, but no matter how drunk we get, our work relationship continues to hang around us like the smell of dog shit stuck to someone’s shoe.