The Graham Norton Show

Maggie Smith's appearance on the show marked the first time she had been on a talk show in 42 years.

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Graham Norton introduces almost every comedian as "My favorite comedian."

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A fly interrupted the show twice by landing in one of the guests' drinks. In June 2013, a diving beetle got into Chris O'Dowd's alcoholic drink and caused Steve Carell to go off topic. In October 2014, Emma Thompson interrupted the conversation to remove a fly from a glass of red wine belonging to Luke Evans.

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In 2017, Graham Norton said the two guests he most looked forward to seeing on the couch were Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts. Edit: Julia Roberts appeared on the show on 1 December 2023.

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Graham Norton's TV talk show differs from most of its contemporaries in that all the planned guests are announced at the start, then brought out, seated and interviewed together as a group.

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Robin Williams visited the series twice. On both occasions, gay penguins and the Genie from Aladdin (1992) came up as topics.

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Lenny Kravitz was the first and only guest to give a standing ovation to someone telling a story in the red chair.

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The show allows guests to consume alcoholic or non-alcoholic drinks in their seats, a rarity among chat shows, which is why a variety of glassware and colored liquids sit on the table in front of the guests. Musical guests also appear on stage at the end of the series and are invited to join the couch as part of the group interview, with a drink of their choosing, before all the guests listen to the Red Chair stories.

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This was Carrie Fisher's last talk-show appearance, as she died three weeks after her final interview in December 2016. She appeared on the show twice and was one of several guests who had previously taken part in Graham Norton's other talk show, So Graham Norton (1998).

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Both Emma Thompson and Bette Midler threw themselves from the couch to the floor as a joke.

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Both Daniel Radcliffe and David Tennant visited the show while growing their hair out. On both occasions, Graham Norton's first comment when they sat on the couch was about their hair, which he described as "silly."

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In Series 19, Graham Norton paid tribute to Ronnie Corbett, who died on 31 March 2016 and had appeared on the talk show three times. Norton credits Corbett's armchair monologues on the long-running sketch comedy show The Two Ronnies (1971), which ended in 1987, as the inspiration for the Red Chair segments.

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The 17 May 2019 broadcast was the first show without Graham Norton. Because he was hosting the 2019 Eurovision Song Contest, Norton could not host the show, and rather than postpone it to the following week, he had Jack Whitehall stand in for him as guest host.

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Ardal O'Hanlon, star of Father Ted (1995), appeared on The Graham Norton Show (2007) in the eighteenth episode of Series 1. Graham Norton played Father Noel Furlong in Father Ted (1995).

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The episode dated 22 April 2016 ends with a tribute to British popular comedian Victoria Wood, who died at the age of 62 two days before the broadcast. A clip from Wood's December 2014 appearance was shown.

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Arnold Schwarzenegger had a cold when he appeared on the show on 10 October 2012.

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(#18.12) Carrie Fisher, Daisy Ridley and John Boyega appeared on the show to promote Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015), and were joined by Kylie Minogue and David Beckham. Fisher starred in the Australian science fiction film The Time Guardian (1987), which was released exactly ten years after the first "Star Wars" film.

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