Chat show king Graham Norton enjoyed a bumper pay packet of £2.12m (€2.47m) from his TV work for So Television last year.
That is according to new accounts filed by ITV subsidiary So Television, which produces the multi-award winning The Graham Norton Show and sells it to the BBC and to television stations across the world – including Virgin Media here.
The accounts lodged with Companies House in the UK show that the pay to Norton reduced by 13% from £2.43m in 2024 to £2.12m in 2025.
The £2.12m in pay to Norton last year compares to £2.77m for 2023 – a drop of 23% over the two years.
The 2025 pay to Norton – who grew up in Bandon, Co Cork – works out at an average £101,260 (€118,315) per episode for each of the original 21 Graham Norton Shows Norton presented in 2025.
Last year So Television confirmed that it agreed a deal with the BBC for three further years of the flagship chat-show which continues to attract entertainment A-listers.
The show continues to be strongly supportive of Irish stars and in 2025, actors Cillian Murphy, Domhnall Gleeson, Jessie Buckley, Nicola Coughlan and singer Hozier joined the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Jennifer Lawrence and Kim Kardashian on the couch.
The BBC said that its 2025 series averaged 2.9 million viewers per episode across the run retaining its status as the biggest chat show in the UK and Irish markets. The show also continues to generate millions of global video views across YouTube, TikTok, Facebook and Instagram.
The three year deal is to commence later this year with the broadcast of Series 34 which is due to start at the end of September.
The Graham Norton Show started on BBC Two in 2007 where it ran for two series before moving to BBC One.
Norton’s pay – made up of presenter fees, production fees and royalties – declined last year after So Television’s revenues decreased by 16% from £10.04m to £8.44m.
However operating profits – due in part to Norton’s pay-cut for 2025 – doubled from £522,211 to £1.087m.
So Television relies on The Graham Norton Show for the vast bulk of its revenues and the firm’s UK revenues decreased by 15% from £7.7m to £6.58m as “rest of world” revenues, which includes its income from Virgin Media here, dipped by 19% from £2.3m to £1.86m.
The directors state that the revenue decrease is due to a reduction in ancillary revenues.
The firm delivered 22 hours of TV in 2025 which was at the same level as 2024.
On the firm’s future developments, the directors state that “the company will continue to follow its strategy to work proactively with UK and overseas broadcasters its international distributor and development team to develop and sell ideas for new returning series”.
They state that the external environment is expected to remain uncertain and competitive in 2026 “but the directors remain confident that the company is well placed with the broadcasters and commercial partners to exploit opportunities that become available”.
Norton’s TV fees are the entertainer’s main income stream.
His novels are also best sellers and his critically acclaimed works of fiction, Holding, Home Stretch, A Keeper, Forever Home, Frankie and The Swimmer have generated millions in sales in Ireland and the UK since 2016, according to Nielsen BookData, though the author receives only a small fraction of the sales figure in royalties.
Born in Dublin, Norton – who turned 63 this year – first shot to prominence in 1996 for his part of Father Noel Furlong in “Father Ted” before he moved to Channel 4 to host his own chat show.
Numbers employed by So Television last year remained at 11 and staff costs increased from £1.98m to £2.145m.
Accumulated profits at So Television in December 2025 totalled £31.39m.
Reporting by Gordon Deegan
