-Our first guest tonight is the award-winning host
of "The Graham Norton Show."
His new novel, "Home Stretch," is available now.
Please welcome back to the show the legendary Graham Norton.
How you are, Graham?
-Oh, I'm so well. Lovely to see you again, Seth.
Hi. -It's lovely to see you, too.
It has also been lovely to have you back in your studio.
I think we both returned around the same time in the fall.
How has life been for you guys? Because you've kind of gone
back and forth, as far as what you've had for an audience.
-Yeah. When we came back,
we had a sort of socially distanced audience.
Which is kind of worse than no audience.
Because we went from 600 to 60, so the applause, it sounded like
someone emptying a bucket of fish.
It was just like nothing. [ Laughter ]
And as a performer, your relationship with the audience,
I don't think you should ever feel sorry for the audience.
And that's how you felt.
Their masks just dotted across the thing.
So they're gone. They -- They got banned.
And then it was just us and the crew.
Which I thought would be terrible.
But, actually, you feel a bit giddy
when it's just you and the crew in the room.
And I don't know if you agree, but there's something about
if you get a laugh out of a cameraman,
it equals about getting 450 people laughing.
Regular people. -I agree with you 100%,
except for our cameraman Buck, who laughs at everything.
[ Laughter ] -Oh, okay.
Good hire. -So we have, like, one guy
where it's like -- it's meaningless.
[ Laughter ]
But it is -- I will agree with you on the giddiness level.
-Crew humor. [ Laughter ]
-Oh, my God, the amount of pandering
I've been doing to the crew. [ Laughter ]
I mean, when I have an audience back,
the crew is gonna turn on them the way they do
when, like, a new boyfriend moves in.
[ Laughter ]
-"Do jokes about my hometown again!"
[ Laughter ]
-You know, one of the things I want to ask about, you know,
because you have -- you have developed, you have perfected
this sort of party atmosphere with your guests.
You know, this last year, and certainly without an audience,
it maybe feels a little bit less like a party.
Have you managed to maintain it?
-Well, I was worried 'cause I thought,
"Who would want to come to the studio anymore?"
'Cause we can have some guests in the studio.
Turns out everybody.
People were showing up, like, in ridiculous --
like in ball gowns because they hadn't got to wear
their fancy dressing-up clothes
for months and months and months.
And, you know, at the end when I'm saying,
"And thank you to my guests,"
you can see them going, "Do we have to leave now?
I have to go back to the house, to those people I've been
looking at every day for the last, you know, 12 months?"
So that was kind of an upside.
The Zoom thing -- this thing, you know --
I think we've all got better at it.
But it's still not ideal. You know?
I wish I was there.
And, you know, you're talking to a screen.
And it's all a bit weird.
But it's better than nothing, I guess.
-I do think it's better than nothing.
I do think it's not maybe terrible.
-The reviews are in -- "Better than nothing."
[ Laughter ]
-I do -- I don't think it's terrible for people at home.
And maybe I should let them speak to that,
because I don't watch shows like this.
But I feel like -- at least if you're home right now, like,
Graham Norton is looking right at you.
And I think that there's some value to that.
You know what I mean? -Yeah.
I think if you're watching at home, it has got much better.
I think in the beginning, when none of us
knew what we were doing, it was quite a difficult watch.
-Yes. -But it has --
It has got much more fluid. And, actually, we got to a point
where, you know, the people in the studio
would talk to the person on the Zoom screen.
The other person on the Zoom screen would know
that their friend was sitting in the studio,
so they'd talk to them.
And again, you know, a bit odd in the room,
but on TV, that probably worked fine.
It didn't bother anybody. -Right.
I also think it was helpful that all audiences
understood why we were doing it.
It's one of the few upsides to it being a worldwide pandemic.
I think that that helped that everybody knew the details.
Hey, this is your -- I'm very impressed by this,
and a little bit jealous,
that you've managed to write three novels.
And this one is about a car crash
and then the secrets that the people involved in it
carry with them.
It's maybe a little bit more serious, the subject matter,
than people would expect from you.
Was that one of the exciting things
about taking it on as a subject matter?
-It was, really. I think with the novels,
what I wanted to do was kind of take myself out of them.
Because you know, as a reader,
I think it's really intimate entertainment.
It's just you and that page with the marks.
You get lost in the story.
Whereas if Graham Norton off the TV is kind of
reading over your shoulder, that's a bit distracting.
So, I wanted the books to be as far removed from the TV show,
from my TV persona, as possible.
And I've ended up writing really serious books.
This one, it starts quite dark.
I mean, you know, it's clearly a car crash.
Three people die. It's not a laugh riot.
Quite funeral-heavy for the first few chapters.
But then it does open up. And Connor,
the central character, who's driving the car,
he ends up, you know, living in Liverpool, in London,
and finally makes his home in New York.
So there's some American in this book, as well.
-And this was true of you.
This is obviously not autobiographical,
but you went from Ireland to New York for a bit.
How was your time in New York?
-[ Laughs ] I was 20.
This was -- I was an Irish 20
in the early '80s, which makes me kind of an international 14.
And we showed up -- we showed up in New York,
this little gaggle, I mean green in every sense
we were, and I think --
Do you remember the TV show "The Equalizer"...
-Yes, of course. -...with Edward Woodward?
-With Edward -- -Edward Woodward.
-Yes. -Eewa Woowa. Yeah.
And, uh -- [ Both laugh ]
And I think I watched too much of that,
because I got to New York, and I was just terrified
the whole time.
You know, if two people were talking,
that was a drug deal going bad.
You know? So it was all terrible.
And then, to make matters worse, the morning after we got there,
we had, I think it was called orientation or something.
I don't think it was a cop gave this talk,
but somebody gave this talk.
And it was essentially how not to get killed in New York City.
[ Laughter ] And we were all like...
And I still -- It's so engrained in me
I still obey the rules.
Like, in New York City, never look up.
I mean, if you look up, that's tantamount to a death wish.
-Right? -It's one away from suicide
if you look up in New York City.
Never walk next to the wall, always walk on the curb --
on the curb side.
You know, all these things, and I still do them.
-Well, I mean, and here you are.
You're obviously living a very vibrant life.
-I survived. -So it's paid off.
-Yeah, yeah. -We talked about your mom
last time she was here -- last time you were here.
She's not been here yet. Impossible to book your mom.
[ Laughter ]
But you -- how does she feel about your novels?
Do you share them with her through the process,
or do you wait till it's done?
-I wait till it's done. And my mother's a big reader,
so I always feel like if she doesn't like them,
then I failed.
This book had -- you know, it had some sex in it.
So, I go, "Oh, Mom, I'm not sure you're gonna like this one."
And so she didn't read it for a long time
because she was scared she wouldn't like it.
Because my mother, she, you know -- she's quite --
she tells you in her own way.
Like if she watches the show, my TV show, and thinks it's bad,
next time we talk on the phone, she'll go, "Hmm.
How do you think it went?" [ Laughter ]
I think we know how you think it went.
So, in the end, she read it, and she did like it.
She went, "Why didn't you think I'd like it?"
And I went, "Well, there's sex in it."
And she went, "I know about sex."
And I was like, "Ew! Please stop talking."
[ Laughter ]
"I liked it before -- I liked it before
when I thought you didn't. -You --
You've always had a very high level --
we're used to a very high level of celebrity on your show.
But you almost got what would be considered maybe the peak.
You almost got some royals on your show,
or at least were led to believe you were close.
-Yeah. There was a rumor went out that
we were gonna get -- I think it was Kate and William.
And we were so excited.
Because, you know, they're young people.
They're in the world.
It's possible they would come on a talk show.
So, we were very excited. Where this rumor came from,
we were asking our booker, he didn't know anything about it.
And we were asking around. I think he contacted
their press office to say, "Where did this come from?"
Yeah, the rumor came from me.
I had started the rumor in an interview where I said,
"Quite nice if they came on."
And then somebody else reported that,
and, so, yeah, to much disappointment all around.
Not in the royal household. They're very happy.
-Before you go, I have one question for you.
I want you to answer it honestly, okay?
-Okay. -If I was in England,
am I famous enough to be on your show?
-Yes, Seth. -Are you sure?
It's a British -- It's an English show.
I know we don't air over there.
-There's a global pandemic. We'll have you.
-Okay. [ Laughter ]
I'm gonna bring my cameraman Buck to be in the audience.
-I'm on your show, so come on.
All bets are off. [ Laughter ]
-Hey, thanks so much for being here.
It's always a pleasure to see you, Graham.
-All right, take care. Thank you so much, Seth.