Graham Norton's booze battle – from AA meetings to sleeping in dog's bed
Graham Norton is back on our screens tonight with a brand new series of The Graham Norton Show - with the comedian and presenter welcoming the biggest stars onto his iconic BBC sofa. However, Friday nights used to look very different for the 61-year-old, who has previously admitted that he had a "tricky" relationship with alcohol as a younger man.
Speaking candidly in his 2014 autobiography, The Life and Loves of A He Devil, Graham revealed that he used to drink "in joy, or sadness, or boredom" and once attended Alcoholics Anonymous meetings with Star Wars' Carrie Fisher. "Booze can be a very tricky friend or lover. I don’t enjoy waking up when I fall off the kitchen counter where, for some drunken reason, I have decided to make my bed, but for me that is a small price to pay for the hours of fun enjoyed the night before," he said.
"Drugs have, of course, crossed my path from time to time, but for me it has always been about the bottle. It’s easy to buy, I can consume it in public and it doesn’t involve hanging around street corners waiting for some Range Rover with blacked-out windows to pull up."
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As an adult, Graham spent "many a horribly drunken journey on night buses" in London, finding himself miles from home. He added, "If I make it home, it is quite a regular occurrence for me to end up on the kitchen floor or even in the dog bed. My rationale for this is that my bedroom is three floors up and because Bailey the labradoodle is very large, so is his bed."
Graham went onto reveal in the 2014 memoir that he had once attended a few meetings of Alcoholic Anonymous after being encouraged by
. "Initially, I was reluctant because I feared I would realise I was the same as these people who told nostalgic stories about their crazy nights and how low they had been dragged by alcohol," he said.
"I realised at those AA meetings that, although we did share some of the same stories, I had reached a very different ending from the others. I prefer my life with booze in it, but the members I met didn’t have that choice to make. They couldn’t live their lives if drink remained in them."
While Graham said that he thinks he "drinks far too much", he doesn't see the harm. When he's working, Graham allows himself "one glass of wine" whilst filming his chat show and sticks to that rule.
Graham recently opened up about the drunkest celebrity guests to appear on his hit BBC show - including Mark Wahlberg, who jumped onto his lap during a 2013 appearance. "He was fine when he came on the show. There was not a hint of it and then about 20 minutes into the show it caught up with him. Oh it was bad. At one point Mark was asleep on the couch in front of the audience," Graham said.
The Graham Norton Show returns tonight at 10:40pm on BBC One and BBC iPlayer.
