‘Toxic Telegraph made me feel nauseous’
London: Graham Norton has said he stopped writing for the Daily Telegraph because the newspaper’s recent “toxic” political stances increasingly made him feel “nauseous”.
The BBC One chatshow presenter wrote the newspaper’s advice column for 12 years before stepping down without explanation at the end of 2018. Norton has now said he decided to leave the outlet after it defended the likes of US supreme court then-nominee Brett Kavanaugh and published articles by future Prime Minister Boris Johnson containing falsehoods, the Guardian reported.
He said: “When I signed up to be their agony aunt, I was aware that it was a rightwing paper and that didn’t bother me, but about a year before I left, it took a turn and there were some things in that paper about which I thought, ‘I cannot be contained within the same pages as this.’
“There was a piece defending Brett Kavanaugh and things President Trump had said about [Kavanaugh’s] accuser, and I just thought, ‘This is toxic.’ And I loved that job; I absolutely adored doing it, but ultimately I didn’t love it enough to be part of that stable.
“I just had to step away, which saddened me, but I was beginning to feel a bit nauseous. It’s a weird thing: these very nice people would say, ‘Oh, I love your column in the Telegraph and I’m looking at them thinking, ‘You read the Telegraph?!’ That’s not good, that’s not a happy situation to be in.”
The presenter of The Graham Norton Show made the comments while undertaking promotional work for the latest series of his Friday night show.
He said he didn’t explain to the newspaper at the time his reasons for leaving, but now wanted to clarify the decision.