Bandon chat show host Norton sees 13% drop in 2025 TV salary – to £2.12m

Bandon chat show king Graham Norton has enjoyed a bumper pay packet of £2.12m (€2.47m) from his TV work for So Television last year.

That is according to new accounts filed by ITV subsidiary, So Television which produces the multi-award winning The Graham Norton Show and sells it to the BBC and to TV stations across the world including Virgin Media.

The accounts lodged with Companies House in the UK show that the pay to Norton reduced by 13% from £2.43m in 2024 to £2.12m in 2025.

The £2.12m in pay last year compares to £2.77m for 2023  — a drop of 23% over the two years.

The 2025 pay to Norton — who grew up in Bandon and now owns a home in Ahakista on Sheep's Head — works out at an average £101,260 per episode for each of the 21 presented by Norton in 2025.

This summer, Norton was one of scores of VIP guests to attend Taylor Swift's wedding to Travis Kelce at Madison Square Garden in New York City.

Swift has appeared on The Graham Norton Show a number of times and the Fate of Ophelia singer's most recent appearance was in October 2025.

Last year, So Television confirmed that it agreed a deal with the BBC for three further years of the flagship chat-show which continues to attract entertainment A-listers.

The programme continues to be strongly supportive of Irish stars and, in 2025, actors Cillian Murphy, Domhnall Gleeson, Jessie Buckley, Nicola Coughlan, and singer Hozier joined the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Jennifer Lawrence, and Kim Kardashian on the couch.

The BBC said that its 2025 series averaged 2.9m viewers per episode across the run, retaining its status as the biggest chat show in the UK and Irish markets.

It also continues to generate millions of global video views across YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram.

The three-year deal is to commence later this year with the broadcast of series 34, beginning at the end of September.

The Graham Norton Show started on BBC Two in 2007 where it ran for two series before moving to BBC One.

Norton’s pay — made up of presenter fees, production fees and royalties —declined last year after So Television’s revenues decreased by 16% from £10.04m to £8.44m.

However, operating profits — due in part to Norton’s pay-cut for 2025 — doubled from £522,211 to £1.087m.

So Television relies on The Graham Norton Show for the vast bulk of its revenues and the firm’s UK revenues decreased by 15% from £7.7m to £6.58m as ‘rest of world’ revenues, which includes its income from Virgin Media here, dipped by 19% from £2.3m to £1.86m.

Norton’s novels are also best sellers and his critically acclaimed works of fiction, Holding, Home Stretch , A Keeper, Forever Home, Frankie, and The Swimmer have generated millions in sales in Ireland and the UK since 2016 according to Nielsen BookData, though the author receives only a small fraction of the sales figure in royalties.

West Cork features strongly in his works of fiction and he has said he draws heavily from his experience of growing up and living in the area.

Numbers employed by So Television last year remained at 11 and staff costs increased from £1.98m to £2.145m.

Accumulated profits at So Television in December 2025 totalled £31.39m.