Do we like Graham Norton?
Our score: 8 out of 10. He has stood up for gay and trans people at a personal cost and has no harmful record, but one contested call on hosting J.K. Rowling keeps him off a 9.
Norton was born just outside Dublin and grew up in Bandon, County Cork. He has said that as a young man he “wanted out, out, out” of Ireland. After drama school in London he struggled for work, then broke through with a comedy act as Mother Teresa, which led to Edinburgh, stand-up and eventually BBC television from 2007.
His first big public stoush was on home turf. In 2014 RTÉ paid €85,000 to settle a defamation threat from the Iona Institute and two columnists, after drag performer Panti Bliss said on air that they were “horrible and mean about gays”. Norton told Hot Press he was furious, calling the settlement “absolutely moronic” and asking why opponents of gay marriage were so scared of it.
On the harm test, his own words are on the right side. In 2021 he told The Sunday Times that trans people “need to be protected, rather than feared”, and condemned the online abuse aimed at them. The one contested call is hosting Rowling on his radio show, which he defended by saying he wouldn't have her on to air her views on trans people. No climate, migrant or anti-vax slide turned up in what I read.
The recent news is about him being targeted. A Facebook page called The Westminster Wire has posted about him since December 2025, with AI-generated images and invented stories, including false claims that he made racist and anti-immigrant remarks. He told the court he had not made the statements attributed to him, and he plans to sue in the English High Court once the operator is identified.
The good stuff is mostly the steady kind. He hosted the Drinks Trust gala at Claridge's in October 2025, which reportedly raised more than £60,000. He has also used his platform to back gay and trans people when it cost him online. That's a smaller list than some saints can show, and I'm not going to pad it.
On nice, nothing credible has surfaced. Some junk sites float vague accusations without naming a source, and I'm ignoring them. Where you land on the Rowling call depends on whether you read it as free-speech housekeeping or as handing a platform to someone who has caused harm. He drew his own line and took the abuse for it.