PLUME: Are there any guests that you’ve had to fight for, that have wound up enjoying themselves once they’ve been on? Or that you’ve had to coerce?

NORTON: Most guests… we have to kind of cajole most guests onto the show. But, I mean, the vast, vast majority of guests walk away happy. They have a good time. Over the years – I guess when you’re saying fight for a guest, you tend to be battling with other chat shows for your guest, rather than with the guest. You’re kind of saying, “Come on our show because …” or whatever. One of the biggest coups we got – it was a quiet coup – was when we got Macauley Culkin on, because he’d done one other interview, and that was Barbara Walters, in the States. He was doing one show over here, and obviously he had the pick of them – and he chose us.

PLUME: And he looked like he enjoyed himself…

NORTON: Yeah, he had a great time… he had a great time. In fact, I still see him. He’s like a friend now.

PLUME: Do you find that that’s usually the case – that once they come on and enjoy themselves, they tend to like to come back?

NORTON: Yeah. I mean, certainly now that we’re on five nights, we can have people back. In the past, because it was a weekly, special thing, we were very reluctant to have repeat guests. We did have some, but we didn’t have many. Now, we’re just part of the landscape, and we can have people back on again. They’re just friends of the show, and they can just come on and shoot the breeze about whatever they’ve been up to.

PLUME: I know one of the relationships the show formed early on was with Carrie Fisher…

NORTON: Carrie I met when we were both guests on another show. We started emailing each other, because I’m quite into the Internet, and she’s really into the Internet, so we were just sending each other mad sites and weird mpegs and stuff, and so we became friends. Yeah, she’s one of the people who did repeat guest on the old show. I think it was her and Joan Collins, were the only repeat guests we had on when we were doing the weekly show.

PLUME: So when is the “Christmas with Carrie” special?

NORTON: She has done a Christmas special – she was a guest on a Christmas special with us.

PLUME: Oh, she has?

NORTON: So, she has done a Christmas one, yeah. I can’t remember who else was on that – Nigella Lawson, and somebody else.

PLUME: What goes into the planning of the remote specials?

NORTON: Oh, they take a lot of planning and a lot of work, so there are very few of them. I think we’ve done four of them, altogether, and three were travel and one was Dolly – and even that was kind of travel. So yeah, there’s just so much work involved in those. We enjoy making them, but I guess it frustrates us that after all that work, you end up with an hour of television. Whereas, after putting around in the office all day, we come up with half an hour of television.

PLUME: And people seem to be just as satisfied.

NORTON: Well, you know, that is the odd thing. The audiences don’t kind of go, “That was so much better because it was on film and you were walking.” The people who put the shows together, particularly the series producer, Jon – he directs and produces the films, and I think he really likes putting the films together. He really enjoys the editing process and the editorial control he has over the films. He kind of enjoys them more than anyone else.

PLUME: Do you enjoy the travel? You didn’t seem too happy with the Mexico trip most of the time.

NORTON: I did like Mexico, but I kind of hope that film doesn’t encourage anyone to go to Mexico City, because I don’t think they’ll have as good a time as I did.

PLUME: Well, you seemed to have a good time in spite of all the drawbacks – such as the accommodations.

NORTON: Yeah, yeah. We did one this year in China, we went to Shanghai – which I don’t know if that one’s been on BBC America yet.

PLUME: No, it hasn’t.

NORTON: So you’ve got that to look forward to.

PLUME: I think we’re technically a year behind…

NORTON: I think it’s quite random, where you are. I’ll be in the States and somebody will say, “Oh, last night I watched the so-and-so episode.” And I’m thinking, “That’s only about three months old.” Then the next person will say, “Oh, and the night before that, I watched …” And that will be really old. So I think it’s quite random, how they shuffle them out.

PLUME: The latest one they just aired was the Series 5 Jerry Hall episode.

NORTON: Oh how weird, because she’s coming back on again tonight … I remember we’d asked her quite a few times, and she always said, “No.” There’s one that we kind of cajoled on, and in the end she really enjoyed it. I think she was nervous that I’d talk about Mick, and – you know what I mean… the point is, I don’t want to upset guests. So if I know that talking about Mick is going to upset somebody, then I’m not going to.

PLUME: I think the brilliant thing is it seems very rarely do you touch on personal issues in your interviews. Whereas most people will sort of, “Oh, here’s the latest scandal, let’s talk about that.” And you’re like, “Let’s talk about your career or what you’re doing now…”

NORTON: Well, also because I require more from the guest, so I can’t afford to upset them or annoy them early on, because later on I’m going to need them to play a stupid game. Or I’m going to need them to take part in a phone call – I need to keep them onside. Also, it kind of kills the audience, if the audience is looking at a guest who’s not having a good time. I don’t know, it’s just not an atmosphere I’d like.

PLUME: Has that ever happened during a show, where things have turned?

NORTON: Not really. If it has, we’ve kind of dealt with it during commercial break – we’ve kind of made sure that we’re back on track and we’ve assured them that something will be cut out. But it’s never been serious.

PLUME: Well, I’ve heard that things didn’t go to well with the Raquel Welch interview…

NORTON: Oh, yes… see, that was kind of a different, because she was on satellite link-up and she couldn’t see the show. It was all a bit of a cockup, that thing. But it wasn’t really an interview – she was just on a video wall looking all grumpy. It is funny. I do feel badly that I called her an old bitch, but the only thing is – no one’s ever contradicted me. No one’s ever kind of come rushing up to me, going, “Oh, no, you must meet Raquel again! She’s actually really lovely!” No one’s told me that.

PLUME: So you must be justified, then.

NORTON: Well, I feel like I made an intuitive leap in my judgment of her character, and I think I might have been right.

PLUME: Did it also tell you that you really couldn’t do satellite link-ups with the way your show works?

NORTON: Yeah, it was a special show that we were doing for millennium eve. That was the millennium show which we did live on Channel Four, and she was just on satellite hook-up. We’ve never tried to do them before or since. It was just on that night, it was a way of kind of bringing a bit of Hollywood to call – without actually having to try to book guests for midnight on millennium eve.

Continued below…

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