If you were to envisage the picturesque life of an author, then Graham Norton penning his novel at his holiday home in Ahakista, looking out over the water in west Cork has to be it. The reality though is that the contents of his new novel Frankie (and that of his four previous books) were written on the go; snippets scribbled in whatever spare time he could get as a TV presenter, wine business-owner and until recently, a radio broadcaster.

“But oh my, being in west Cork provides great inspiration,” says Graham. “An interaction in town, some beautiful scenery, it adds that authentic bit of colour that you just can’t get in London.”

For a man who admits that he was dead set on getting out of rural Ireland, he now spends a lot of time back home (after buying Ahakista House nearly 20 years ago).

“I think of the young guy who was running away from Bandon in 1983. If someone had said, ‘Oh, by the way, you will willingly come back and spend months at a time here’, I would have thought they were talking a load of crap, but there you go. There’s something about it. When I come back, I drive in and turn the engine off, open the car door and it’s just, you feel everything disappear. It’s something to do with growing up here, I think it often happens to people, that they end up heading home, there’s a draw. Now saying all that, I’m not sure I could live there all the time, I think I’d go nuts.”

When Graham left in the 1980s, as a young gay man, he found freedom in London. He also found fame as a stand-up comedian and some highlights of his 30-year television career include being the longtime host of the Eurovision on the BBC and appearing in one of the most iconic episodes of Father Ted – Irish dancing in the caravan with the St Luke’s Youth Group.

However, it has been sitting in the armchair hosting The Graham Norton Show which has shot him to international acclaim with more BAFTAs than he knows what to do with. When it comes to famous guests, its more of a question of who hasn’t been on his red couch, as opposed to who has. From Tom Hanks to Julie Andrews, Will Smith and Meryl Streep, it’s fair to say this Cork boy has done good.

While the main character of his new book Frankie doesn’t quite reach such dizzying heights of success, there are a few parallels to the story. Frankie leaves behind a life in west Cork, a place where she never felt like she fit in, attracted to the big lights of the city. This may be Graham’s fifth novel to date, but interestingly, it is the first one in which his characters explore a world beyond rural Ireland.

“When I first started writing, I wanted people to read the books, without thinking of me. So that meant I didn’t set them in London, there weren’t any celebrities, they weren’t even funny books necessarily. I wanted the reader to enjoy the story instead of thinking about that guy from the telly. When I got to book five though, I thought, well we’re got this far, they’ve come on this journey with me, let’s dip our toe into other worlds – although still a good third of it is set in rural Ireland.”

Frankie is a story of love and friendship, the arts and homosexuality while also touching on the AIDS epidemic in New York. “That part was quite accidental,” says Graham. “I didn’t set out to do a book about AIDS but as Frankie’s story unfolds and she ends up working in a New York restaurant in the 1980s, well to be honest, it would be remiss not to include it. AIDS decimated the hospitality sector at that time, people just vanished and so while it wasn’t intended, I’m glad it did emerge, because it ended up becoming part of the emotional heart of the book, where it reaches its climax.”

Getting In Touch

The story leans into characters and emotions which is a different angle to Norton’s other books which are very much focused on mystery and edge-of-your-seat plot twists. One such book is A Keeper, published in 2018. Patricia one of the main characters was keen to find love, and used none other than the Irish Farmers Journal Getting in Touch column to find a match. Adjusting his seat and leaning in, ready to reveal a juicy piece of gossip, Graham says, “So true story. A friend of my mother, her daughter actually did correspond with someone through a personal page but it turned out the person she met wasn’t the person who was writing the letters. I loved that idea of Patricia falling in love with a pseudo character, so when it came to writing it, well Getting in Touch and the Irish Farmers Journal was just the thing.”

Without giving too much away Patricia and Edward don’t get their happy-ever-after which isn’t much of a testament to Getting in Touch but Graham is fascinated by the many success stories we share with him.

Even though he is happily married to husband Jonathan McLeod, we have to ask, ‘Did you ever use Getting in Touch yourself Graham’? Laughing, he says, “Well, obviously back in the day, I would have looked but I think it might have been slim pickings.”

“Not necessarily so,” we reply with a wink.

And so, the conversation leads to being gay in rural Ireland. As we discuss a recent Irish Country Living article in which LGTB Ireland stated that a huge number of their calls are from people living in rural areas, Graham says, “Yes, it can be a very lonely place – a lot of isolation, people feeling disconnected, finding it hard to meet someone. You may have to travel big distances to meet someone, as opposed to a casual 30-minute coffee date if you were living in a city.

“However, a lot of people find it hard to meet someone, so it’s important to acknowledge that you’re not alone. And this may sound harsh but equally, I think it’s important to not cast yourself as some sort of tragic hero because there are choices. It may not be easy but if your end goal really is to meet someone, like everything in life, you have to get up and make things happen for yourself.”

“Silence is such an enemy also,” Graham says as we start to discuss Irish Country Living’s Break the Cycle campaign. “And I’m talking across the board here, not just about being gay. Staying silent, it definitely seems to be more of a male problem. Sometimes men don’t have the emotional vocabulary to talk about their feelings, about what’s going on.

“Frankie starts with a quote from Séan O’Casey. It says, ‘Life...[is] a lament in one ear, maybe, but always a song in the other.” It’s very apt for Frankie as it’s about her looking back on her life but it also applies to mental health, especially young people. As you get older, you realise that the songs won’t last forever but either will the lament. I think when people are going through a tough time and are in a dark place, they think this is forever and that is when you hear of people dying by suicide. And when you hear those stories, it’s so heartbreaking because you think, “Oh God, if only there was some way for you to know that this won’t last forever, if you could have just hung on, if you could have just put one foot in front of the other, to see a better day. I think a campaign like this is really important to break the stigma around the silence.”

Finishing up, we talk about burnout, how Graham manages with so many balls in the air. In true Norton style, he finishes with us laughing. “I take a really nice holiday,” he says. “But you can’t really do that as much when you are a farmer now, can you? You can’t just say, ‘hang on cows, I’ll be back in a fortnight’, and you know, ‘let’s just pause that harvest until I’m back’.

“Yeah, I really can’t give advice to farmers on burnout,” he says. But perhaps we’ve planted a seed for his next novel in rural Ireland.

• Graham’s book Frankie is available from bookshops nationwide and priced at €15.99