Graham Norton is characterised by his upbeat, fun-loving personality – but he experienced a major trauma before finding fame, and nurses didn’t know if he would survive
Britain’s very own King of Eurovision, Graham Norton, returned to his role as the BBC’s commentator during the Grand Final of the competition on Saturday.
Having hosted the show since 2009, the much-loved presenter’s career continues to go from strength to strength, with his chat show now in its 33rd season.
Graham knows just how lucky he is. He was left for dead after a brutal stabbing in the 1980s with medical staff unsure whether or not he would pull through.
The beloved Irish host, 62, bravely spoke out about the 1989 knife attack in which he “lost half [his] blood while talking to The Telegraph. He described the experience as the ‘worst moment’ of his life.
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“Getting stabbed in 1989. I lost half my blood,” he recalled. “The bad moment I remember – because when it’s happening, it’s all just trauma – but then the morning after, I was in the hospital ward and I remember a nurse came up to me and said, ‘Do you want us to contact anyone? Do you want us to contact your parents? ‘
“And in my head, I was thinking, ‘Well, I don’t want to worry my parents but equally, if I’m going to die, they’d probably like to come and say goodbye to me, because they’d be annoyed if I didn’t tell them. ‘ So, I said to the nurse, am I going to die? And she went, ‘Eerrrrm…’ and I was like, ‘Don’t pause. This is not the place to pause. This is quite serious. ‘
“So that was bad. But the positive of it was I was probably in my mid to late 20s; I was going into a third year at drama school, and it just put everything into perspective. They were doing the castings for the third-year shows; there were a lot of people crying and running into toilets and slamming doors. And I was just sitting there going, ‘I’m alive. I’m good. I’m golden. ‘ So, in a way, it kind of changed my life for the better.
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It comes after Graham opened up about his eponymous chat show, which has been on air since 2007, and revealed some of the worst guests he’s welcomed onto the red couch.
He previously shared: “I remember one time I was outside as Hollywood star Mickey Rourke arrived in his car and he stepped out holding a bottle of Jack Daniels. More worryingly, it was half empty. It suddenly became clear where that Jack Daniels had gone. It was a nightmare!
“But the famous one was Mark Wahlberg , I guess. He was fine when he came on the show. There was not a hint of it and then about 20 minutes into the show it caught up with him. Oh, it was bad. At one point, Mark was asleep on the couch in front of the audience.”
Speaking last year ahead of the launch of a new series, Graham revealed his best and worst chat show guests ever, with both Robert De Niro and Madonna coming up short.
“We have had very quiet guests. I mean, Robert De Niro is no king of chat,” he told the Express. “He is a very benign presence. Once he started to tell an anecdote, but it was so bad.
“He got really quite a long way into the story and lost his way, so we cut it out. It was the most he has ever said on a chat show and it was not left in. “
But the star was full of praise for Lady Gaga , saying: “When she came on our show she was really nice to the audience and to fans who had made dolls of her. It was a really beautiful moment.
Source: Mirror
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