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| Norton uneasy with 'camping up' |
| Written by Administrator | |
| Saturday, 22 April 2006 | |
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BBC entertainment star Graham Norton has revealed his unease at being encouraged to "camp up" his onscreen persona by producers, in an upcoming TV documentary.
In the BBC3 documentary, The Trouble with... Gay Men, Norton says that he is occasionally uneasy with having to constantly make gay references in his TV work and speaks for the first time about being put under pressure by producers to "camp up". He jokes that he is surrounded with "scores of straight producers making sure I am as gay this week as I was last week" in his professional life. "So you say I don't want to do this really gay joke and they say basically you think of a better joke and then you say, alright, I will be taken up the arse one more time," Norton adds. Norton's comments are the first indication of unease from the presenter with the trademark over-the-top humour which made him famous. In 2004, Norton signed a golden handcuffs deal with the BBC rumoured to be worth £5m. He moved from Channel 4, where he presented the innuendo-laden, late-evening shows So Graham Norton and V Graham Norton, for gentler early Saturday night programming work with the BBC, which appeared at first to have problems finding him an appropriate vehicle. Norton is now fronting the second series of Strictly Dance Fever for BBC1. His other BBC1 work has included late-night topical chatshow The Bigger Picture. He will also present BBC1 entertainment programme How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?, in which people audition for the lead role in Andrew Lloyd-Webber's forthcoming West End production of The Sound of Music. Norton's comments were made in the first of a new The Trouble With... series, which begins on BBC3 on Monday with a show in which broadcaster and writer Simon Fanshawe decries the superficiality and promiscuity within the gay community. Fanshawe also interviews camp presenter Julian Bennett, presenter of ITV1's The Jules and Lulu Show, as well as the openly gay deputy assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Brian Paddick. This programme will be followed by The Trouble with... Young People, in which Sunday Mirror columnist Carole Malone condemns liberal, over-indulgent parenting and The Trouble with... Old People in which comedian Robin Ince pokes fun at what he sees as the emergence of an older generation "growing old disgracefully". The new series follows the critical success of the original The Trouble with... programme, in which journalist David Mathews tackled the issues facing young black men in Britain today and which received a Royal Television Society Awards' nomination. Source |
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