Graham Norton's TV pay packet tops €2.79 million for 2024

Gordon Deegan

Irish chat show host Graham Norton enjoyed a bumper pay packet of £2.43 million (€2.79 million) from his TV work for So Television last year.

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

The accounts lodged with Companies House in the UK show that the pay to Norton reduced by £336,000 from £2.77m to £2.43m last year.

The pay to Norton works out at an average £116,117 (€133,148) per episode for each of the 21 Graham Norton Shows Norton presented in 2024.

Earlier this month, So Television confirmed that it has agreed a deal with the BBC for three more series of the flagship chat-show which continues to attract entertainment A-listers, including Taylor Swift earlier this month.

Guests slated to appear on the show over the next two Fridays include Bruce Springsteen, Jennifer Lawrence and Kim Kardashian.

The BBC said that the latest series averaged 2.9 million viewers per episode across the run and the new three year deal is to commence in 2026.

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 - dropped last year after So Television’s revenues and profits decreased sharply.

So Television relies on The Graham Norton Show for the bulk of its revenues and company revenues in 2024 decreased by 30 per cent from £14.5m to £10.04m as pre-tax profits decreased by 42pc to £2.24m

The directors state that the revenue decrease “is due to a reduction in production hours as well as a decrease in distribution revenues”.

There was a decline in production hours delivered from 28 hours to 22 hours and the directors state that the reduction in hours is due to two shows from 2023 The John Bishop Show and Hannah Gadsby’s Gender Agenda not returning in 2024.

The accounts show that UK revenues decreased by 28pc or £3m from £10.75m to £7.73m while ‘rest of world’ revenues decreased from £3.76m to £2.3m.

The company’s operating profits decreased by 80 per cent from £2.55m to £522,211 and the net finance income of £1.72m increased profits to a pre-tax profit of £2.24m

Norton’s TV fees are the entertainer’s main income stream.

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.

Born in Dublin and raised in Bandon, Co Cork, Norton first shot to prominence in 1996 for his part of Father Noel Furlong in 'Father Ted' before he moved to Channel 4 to host his own chat show.

Numbers employed by So Television last year remained at 11 and staff costs reduced from £2.29m to £1.98m.

Accumulated profits at So Television in December 2024 totalled £29.5m.