The presenter used to host a series in Norton’s slot, starting in 2001, but he jumped to ITV after being dropped by the BBC in 2010. Since then, The Graham Norton Show, which premiered on BBC Two in 2007, has gone from strength to strength, becoming a favourite stop-off for the most globally recognisable faces, including Julia Roberts and Harrison Ford – and even earning the host an invitation to Taylor Swift’s wedding.
Ross, whose ITV chat show has aired on Saturday nights since 2011, has expressed confusion over why the Irish presenter books all the A-listers from overseas while his sofa is typically filled with British talent.
“He gets American names, and I am not quite sure why that is,” he told The Times when asked if Norton gets more famous guests. “I think they have a better relationship with the studios, and by ‘better’, I mean more conciliatory.”
However, the presenter said he does not think his show “is any weaker” because of the lower calibre of celebrity guests.
“We put a lot of thought into the mix of people we get on. I try not to have all actors. I try not to have all comedians. I try to have a variety of ages and, obviously, sexes,” he said.
He also acknowledged that Norton’s overnight viewing figures are “slightly better”, but said “on catch-up, we are about the same”.
Norton presented So Graham Norton, on Channel 4 from 1998 to 2003. Two years later, he began hosting shows for the BBC, including several Andrew Lloyd Webber reality shows searching for new leads for West End productions.
Caludia stood in for me last year and she had an amazing job
The success of these led to Norton being given his own 30-minute chat show on BBC Two in 2007, which was promoted to an hour-long slot on BBC One in 2009.
Last year, Norton’s show, now on to its 33rd series and averaging 2.9 million viewers an episode, was renewed for another three runs, ensuring the host would remain on the air until at least 2028.
At its height, Ross’s former BBC show Friday Night with Jonathan Ross averaged 3.1 million weekly viewers. The show, which ended permanently in 2010, was initially pulled in 2008 after the presenter and Russell Brand prank-called Fawlty Towers actor Andrew Sachs during Brand’s BBC Radio 2 show.
They made several calls to Sachs, and Brand left a voice message saying he’d had sex with Sachs’s granddaughter, Georgina Baillie. They were both suspended by the BBC without pay. This month, Traitors and former Strictly host Claudia Winkleman will launch her own Friday night show on the BBC.
Clarifying where his show fits in this new landscape, Norton told Lorraine: “When I finish at the end of February, I used to come back and do kind of April, May series, so I stopped doing that a few years ago and this idea came up that Claudia could come and do it.”
“She stood in for me last year and she had an amazing job. I thought she was very Claudia and this is going to be even more Claudia because, you know, it’s her own set, her own everything.”
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.independent.ie ’
