So Me by Norton Graham

Author:Norton, Graham [Norton, Graham]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781444717778
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Published: 2011-12-08T00:00:00+00:00

10

Talking with Strangers

EVERYTHING SEEMED TO BE HAPPENING at once. Scott had finally decided that he could bear to leave the city where he had no job or money and move to London. We planned that I would go to California and help him pack everything he owned into a truck, drive across America to Chicago, where it would be left in storage with friends, and then he would come back to the UK with me. The only problem was that I couldn’t do it right now because I was busy. There was the guest-hosting of Jack’s show, and then I was doing yet another show at the Edinburgh Festival. I promised that I would come after that. It would give him time to get organised. He agreed. Neither of us noticed that compared with when we had first met, I had been getting busier and busier. We just knew we had enough money for the airfare and the job I loved was going really well. Scott’s job was just gone.

I remember arriving at the Whitehall Theatre to guest-host my first show. I went through the stage door and climbed the endless concrete stairs to the star dressing room which was in effect Jack’s home. I was already putting my toothbrush, toothpaste, razor and shaving cream on Jack’s sink when I found a card. It was addressed to me. ‘Dear Graham, I hope you have a great week but remember the following. Please feel free to be a) hilarious, b) attractive, c) charming, but on no account should you be d) BETTER THAN ME. Lots of love, Jack.’

My first guest that night was Uri Geller. I introduced him by saying, ‘Channel Five were worried that with me hosting, the show might be too gay, so I’m sorry to say that my first guest is a big bender.’ The show went well, and over the week it got better and better. We found a truly awful pop video of a new girl band from South London called Vanilla. They had obviously saved their dinner money for a week to come up with the budget for the filming, and the song, ‘No Way, No Way’, was just as bad. Each night I showed another bit of the video. I gave them nicknames like the Spice Girls, and on the Friday night show, the brave ladies actually showed up and performed the song. It could have been an awful moment of television because we were just laughing at them, but somehow it managed to be funny and sweet. Every now and again I will bump into someone who asks me about Vanilla, and I regret to inform the public that the band have since split up. I did meet two of them in a shop recently, and no, they weren’t working in it. They were on their lunch break.

When the week was over I felt robbed. I had found my dream job but it was someone else’s. The executive producer had been Graham Stuart again, and he saw how much I had enjoyed doing it.

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