He won a BAFTA on Sunday night, and now he’s been named as the best paid Irish television star – it’s not been a bad few days for Graham Norton.
Here in VIP Towers, we are big fans of the Cork native’s BBC chatshow, which is also a humongous hit in the UK, and new figures have confirmed that Graham is the richest Irish tv star as a result of its success.
The funnyman earned £3 million (€4.2 million) last year alone, which means he clocks up over €2,150 in fees and royalties for every minute he is presenting his top-rated Graham Norton Show that continues to attract Hollywood A-listers on BBC1 every Friday night.
Over the next couple of weeks, the 52-year-old is to interview George Clooney and Kylie Minogue, and this season already he has chatted with David Beckham, Will Smith and Hugh Jackman.
To give you an idea of how huge the fees received by Graham are compared to RTE’s top earners, recent figures showed that Ryan Tubridy is the best paid taking in €495,000 per annum.
Although the Graham Norton Show premiered back in 2007 and is currently on its whopping 17th series, the presenter proved he’s still very much on the top of his game with his BAFTA win over the weekend.
Also playing host on the night of the ceremony, Graham beat off competition including Charlie Brooker’s Weekly Wipe and Would I Lie to You? to nab the award for Comedy & Comedy Entertainment Show.
Backstage he was pictured clasping the iconic award before taking to Twitter to say: ‘And Bafta is over for another year. Amazing how winning cheers the evening up!’.
Proving why we NEED to be his friend, the fun-loving star then added: ‘#baftatv #timeforbooze’ before attending the afterparty.
The award was the eighth of his TV career. Long reign King Graham!
