Take our eyes, but not our Friday nights!
BBC television and radio presenter Graham Norton has admitted that retirement is 'in his plans' in the next couple of years. God, I hate Wednesdays.
In typically whimsical fashion, the chat show host revealed that he wishes to leave broadcasting at the top, before he's forced to start welcoming questionable guests onto his sofa:
This is the 18th year of me doing a chat show. We’ve been working up to this moment of being on BBC1 on that prime Friday night slot, so we’ve always been inching forward over those 18 years.
The thing no one wants is the inching backwards, where you’re kind of going: ‘Yes the cast of Towie can come on…’ It’s about retiring when you’re on top.
The 52-year-old Corkonian has become the mack daddy of chat show entertainment on either side of the Irish sea, with Friday night's The Graham Norton Show attracting couchfuls of stars that rival the likes of Jimmy Fallon's Tonight Show in the States.
His show's format - which sees guests being interviewed together as opposed to separately - has birthed some legendary chat show moments, and US hosts such as Conan O'Brien have occasionally attempted to follow suit.
On the idea of walking away from it all, the Bandon native continued:
I’m not jumping tomorrow but it is in my head. You want to get out when you can still enjoy your life.
Neighbours of mine worked and worked and went on this trip of a lifetime round the world. They had to be airlifted three times because they were too old to do this trip. They got stuck on every hike they did.
So I don’t want to be them. You want to get out of work when you have still got time to enjoy your life.
I do love my job. I might really miss it and then I will feel like an absolute fool. You can’t come back. You could only come back to do I’m a Celebrity or Celebrity Big Brother or really awful things.
Don't leave us, Graham! Don't condemn us to watching Ryan Tubridy feign embarrassment at some sort of depraved, sexual hypnotist on the Late Late every Friday night until the end of time. We can all see the pain in his eyes.
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