For Graham Norton, life really begins at 60.
The Irish-born broadcaster is happily wed after meeting his filmmaker husband Jonathan McLeod, admitting that it was only until his late fifties that he ‘found someone who I was willing to take a bet on’.
He said of married life: ‘I’m from that generation of gays who assumed it was never going to be on the cards. So, one, it’s extraordinary that it can happen, I mean, I never gave up hope of finding the one. If it was a surprise, it was a pleasant surprise.’
The national treasure is wealthy, worth at least £30million with homes in London and Ireland, and he has plenty of lucrative work with the BBC and ITV as well as his beloved Eurovision Song Contest, which he took on from fellow Irishman Terry Wogan.
But when the star announced this week that he is leaving his Virgin Radio show because he ‘wants his weekends back – rumours in showbiz circles began to fly that Graham is looking to retire after 40-plus years on TV, starting aged 17 in 1981.
It is something he himself admitted was on the cards – although experts have claimed that a lack of talent at the BBC means that there is no natural successor to fill his glitzy shoes on his Friday chat show.
The star has been open about retiring before he hits the age of 60 – his current age – because he is desperate to leave ‘when you’re on top and can enjoy it’.
Mr Norton turns 61 in early April, but has already admitted on several occasions that he could step away from his work to spend more time with his husband and their dog.
Graham Norton has broadcast his last weekend show on Virgin Radio, calling it ‘one last gallop around the paddock’, having left saying he wants his weekends back as experts pondered whether he is considering retirement – as he has suggested himself
Graham with Kate Winslet, Cate Blanchett,Graham Norton, Dua Lipa, Adrian Lester and Justin Timberlake on his Friday chat show. Norton has said that when the guests dry up and he is left with TOWIE stars, he knows it will be time to go
Graham Norton walking the dog with his filmmaker husband Jonathan McLeod last summer. They spend at least two months a year in Ireland, where Graham bought his ‘dream home’
And while the timetable may have slipped beyond his 60th birthday, his decision to leave his lucrative job at Virgin is being viewed as a step in that direction.
He said in 2015: ‘I’m not jumping tomorrow but it is in my head. You want to get out when you can still enjoy your life’.
Mr Norton has admitted that his BBC chat show, a TV staple for millions on a Friday night, is central to whether he will consider to walk away from showbusiness.
He said: ‘You want to get out when people are still watching your show. You don’t want it to be when people say, “That is still on, that is still a thing?”
‘We’ve been working up to this moment of being on BBC One on that prime Friday night slot, so we’ve always been inching forward. The thing no one wants is the inching backwards, where you’re kind of going, ‘Yes the cast of TOWIE can come on, That’s about retiring when you’re on top’.
Mark Borkowski, one of Britain’s leading PR gurus who represents a number celebrity clients, told that despite the trappings of wealth and celebrity, a career as long as Graham’s takes its toll.
He said: ‘Folk think fronting these programmes is a breeze – but it’s hard work especially with intense attention on private matters’.
The pull of their second home in Cork, where they already spend two months a year, may also getting stronger.
Locals in Ahakista say he is getting increasingly involved in local matters, even down to running charity events, judging fashion shows and mingling in local bars, restaurants and cafes.
Graham has found happiness with his partner Jono late in life. The couple married in Ireland in 2022 – and again Mr Norton brought up his age when talking about their relationship.
Graham and Jono are very private and are seldom seen together save for a rare photo in 2018 where they posed with friends
Andrew Smith (L) and Graham Norton, pictured together in 2015
Graham Norton and Trevor Patterson, who had an off and on relationship
Graham also had a short-lived romance with Kristian Seeber, 43, (pictured together) best known as drag artist, Tina Burner
Graham has now told The Guardian about the day as he joked that ’till death do us part’ was ‘more achievable’ at the age of 60.
He said: ‘I had a joke in my speech: the vows are much more manageable. ‘Till death do us part’ seems more achievable at our age.
‘If you get married at 23, that’s a big ask. We only have to put up with each other for a couple of decades. And then I’ll be out of here.’
Jonathan ‘Jono’ McLeod is an esteemed Scottish filmmaker and the couple tied the knot in July 2022, having met six years previously.
Having drawn together a slew of stars for their glamorous Irish wedding, the couple have remained blissfully happy ever since.
At the time, Graham revealed: ‘I got married this year and we had our wedding party near to where my mother lives in Ireland just so she could come.
‘She wouldn’t have been well enough to come to London so West Cork it was. And it made me very happy.’
Speaking about their marriage, Graham went on: ‘It’s good so far, it would be awful if it wasn’t at this stage, just a few months in, I’d like to think that even I could manage a few months.
Jono is a moviemaker, who has been recognised by BAFTA Scotland for his work.
Graham, who is worth an eye-watering £30million, remains private about his current relationship as well as those have come before him.
It was public knowledge that he dated Trevor Patterson from 2011 to 2013.
Speaking about their relationship after the split, Trevor said he was competing with the television presenter’s affections were the other constant presence in his life: Norton’s two dogs, a labradoodle called Bailey and a terrier called Madge.
In 2013, he said: ‘There were four of us in the partnership.’
He claimed the comedian treats his dogs like the children he never had. ‘Frankly, he’d do anything for those animals. They mean the world to him and were always his first love . . . in some ways he put them before me.’
Graham Norton aged 17 on Youngline in Ireland in 1981. A year later he moved to London, living in a squat in Camberwell. It would be another decade until he became a famous face
Graham became a regular on Just a Minute (pictured in 1994)
His first solo show, So Graham Norton (pictured) aired in 2000
Graham Norton with Sarah Ferguson as part of the 2001 Red Nose Day Campaign
Graham Norton during the filming for the Graham Norton Show this year. He earns a reported £3million-a-year from the show
Following his split from Trevor, he then went out with marketing consultant Andrew Smith, before they separated in 2015 and he met Jono.
Graham also had a short-lived romance with Kristian Seeber, 43, best known as drag queen, Tina Burner.
Brand and culture expert Nick Ede told that he believes Graham is unlikely to fully retire – but ‘limit his work’ to his passions, such as Eurovision and his BBC chat show.
Rumours persist that Norton is in the running to take over Steve Wright’s Sunday Love Songs on Radio 2 following the veteran DJ’s death.
Although it airs at the weekend, the programme is pre-recorded, meaning he can keep his weekend.
Mr Ede said: ‘Graham Norton has been at the top of his game for many many years and he is a national treasure but he has said in the past that he would retire rather than carry on into his 60s and 70s.
‘I think that he may start to limit his work rather than retire – his chat show is one of BBC ones flagship shows and no one not even Claudia Winkleman could fill his shoes. stars flock to be on his shows so I don’t see him quitting that soon.
‘I think he will start to do shows he wants to do rather than for the money and spend more time with his husband but I can’t see him quitting his beloved Eurovision so I think we will luckily have him on our screens for many more years to come’.
Norton started his career as a stand-up comedian, finding success at the Edinburgh Fringe.
He became a regular panellist on the Radio 4 show Loose Ends in the early 1990s and was one of the early successes of Channel 5 when he stood in to host a late-night TV talk show usually presented by fellow comedian Jack Docherty.
Today he has a home by the River Thames at Wapping, where he insists he saw a whale go by.
He also spends more than two months at his home in Ahakista, close to Bantry in West Cork.
His dream home was found for him there by his sister.
He said: ‘It’s just outside Bantry on the Sheep’s Head peninsula which is a beautiful bit of coast. I grew up in Bandon, so that whole bit of west Cork I knew very well. I had a place in the city and I was looking for a seaside place and my sister found this house. It is a paradise. I love it’.
Graham became a famous face in the mid to late 1990s, when he had been in London for 15 years for his part in the much-loved Father Ted, playing the madcap and hyperactive priest Father Noel Furlong.
He arrived in London 42 years ago.
He said previously: ‘Arriving at Victoria station in about 1982, I had come from France, where I thought I could get a job in Paris, but it turns out I couldn’t.
‘I knew some people who lived in London, so I thought I’d go find them. My main memory of that time was being on buses and coming around corners to see things like Trafalgar Square and Westminster Abbey and just thinking: what, this is it?! My Irish imagination had made them massive. I remember being really underwhelmed by it all’.
He settled in Camberwell in South London, in a squat.
He said: ‘The people who had the squat had done a very odd thing: they’d taken all of the bannisters out. It can’t have been safe. And every time a train went by you felt like the whole house was going to fall down. I didn’t stay there very long’.
He was given his own show, So Graham Norton, on Channel 4, which ran until 2002, before becoming a regular presenter of BBC programmes. His chat show, The Graham Norton Show, began in 2007 on BBC Two, moving to BBC One two years later – the same year he became the Corporation’s voice of Eurovision.
The talk show is made by Norton’s company So Television, which pays him £3million a year.
Last month, he started hosting ITV’s reboot of the word-based game show Wheel of Fortune.