Graham Norton Audiobooks

Behind the chat show host, the storyteller who wrote Frankie

1 audiobook reviewed

★ 4.5/5 average

17,852 listener ratings

Who is Graham Norton?

Graham Norton, born Graham William Walker in 1963, is an Irish comedian, broadcaster, actor and writer, and for most British households simply part of the furniture: host of The Graham Norton Show since 2007, the BBC’s Eurovision commentator since 2009, a Radio 2 Saturday morning voice for a decade and latterly a judge on RuPaul’s Drag Race UK. The trophy cabinet is absurd – a record six BAFTAs for Best Entertainment Performance, plus another for producing – and in 2012 he sold his production company, So Television, to ITV for around £17 million.

The innuendo and the flamboyance are the public brand, richly earned. The quieter fact is that Norton is also a writer, and the writing deserves attention on its own terms.

Graham Norton in audiobooks

Norton appears in our catalogue with Frankie, and it rewards setting the chat-show persona aside before pressing play. A career spent drawing stories out of other people is, when you think about it, unusually good preparation for telling them yourself: timing, voice and an ear for how people actually speak are his professional tools, and they transfer.

For UK and Irish listeners especially, Frankie offers something genuinely interesting – a thoroughly familiar name in an unfamiliar register, asking to be judged not as a celebrity turn but as a storyteller. We suggest taking him up on it.