Graham Norton: Middle aged gay men don’t want to date men their age
Television star Graham Norton has said he thinks gay men his age don’t want to date “someone their age”.
The host, 52, said he felt pressure to be “settled”, and that people often asked when he was going to get into a serious relationship.
“Well, I’m 52 and I’m single and on some level, I feel like I’ve failed because by the time you’re my age, you really should be settled,” he told The Mail on Sunday’s TV Week.
“But then I look at the relationships people around me have and I find myself asking, ‘Really? That doesn’t look like winning to me’. I’ve reached the point that when people ask, ‘Are you single at the moment?’, I say, ‘Come on, you can drop the at the moment’. I’m single forever.
“That’s the weird thing. Gay men my age don’t want to date someone their age.”
Going on, Norton said he had no regrets about having made sacrifices for his career.
“To succeed in this business, you do have to work very hard and sacrifice a lot to get there,” he continued.
“There are years of penury. Once you’ve arrived, you don’t walk away from it lightly because getting there has cost you dear. Mind you, it’s quite a fun job, isn’t it? I’m not digging coal.”
“The majority of people in showbiz put their career before everything. It’s some sort of weight psychological defect. As psychological problems go, it’s quite a good one to have. If it works out, you end up with a nice life. But equally you miss out on a lot.”
Norton spoke in an interview with Radio Times last week to say that he no longer watches the ITV show X Factor, and that it has “lost its credibility”.
He said: “It just seems so long now – it’s endless,” he said.
