Sign up to The Irish Times Archive (1859 - 2008)My Account »

PROFILE GRAHAM NORTON:WITH THE BBC needing to calm troubled waters after having to usher its star presenter, Jonathan Ross, out through the workman’s entrance, what does the august institution do? In his place it appoints a bed-wetting, cross-dressing gay Irishman who almost became a rent boy.

But nothing is what it seems in TV land. While Ross thrived on his cheeky-chappie image, Norton is a nice boy from Bandon, in Co Cork. Ross’s humour had a recklessness at its core. Norton trades primarily in camp nuances, never the outrageous jokes of the kind that Julian Clary once made about the former British chancellor Norman Lamont.