Cate Blanchett and Hannah Waddingham join William on sofa for special edition to celebrate prince’s Earthshot prize

The Prince of Wales has braved the chatshow sofa, making a surprise appearance on The Graham Norton Show.

In the pre-recorded show, to be aired on Friday on BBC One, William made a surprise appearance in a special Earthshot prize edition to promote his environmental initiative, which has an annual awards ceremony due to be staged in Mumbai, India, next month.

How did Lordi sing in a giant condom? How many sex lives has Epic Sax Guy helped? And what will push Graham Norton to retire? As Eurovision hits 70, legends of the song contest spill the beans

Not many 70-year-olds spend their nights with pop singers in sparkly catsuits. Or nightmarish monsters barking out heavy metal. Or 160,000 giddy Europeans staring at them as they get progressively more drunk. There’s only one, in fact – the Eurovision song contest. To celebrate its uniqueness, we’ve spoken to some of the most interesting people ever involved with the contest to tell their tales. Happy seven decades of Eurovision!

The comedian and broadcaster on moaning about his eyebags, being stabbed by muggers, and his publicity-shy pet

Born in County Dublin, Graham Norton, 63, studied at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London. In the 1990s, he was a standup and appeared in the sitcom Father Ted. Since 2007, he has presented The Graham Norton Show for the BBC. He hosts Eurovision, is a judge on RuPaul’s Drag Race UK, and is presenting new reality show The Neighbourhood, which starts on 24 April on ITV. He has won nine Baftas and written three memoirs and five novels. He is married and lives in London and West Cork.

When were you happiest?
Our wedding weekend in Ireland.

It seems that even the Traitors host can’t save the ailing chatshow format. As her series ends, it’s hard not to feel that she never quite got out of Graham Norton’s shadow

Six weeks ago, before Claudia Winkleman launched her BBC One Friday night chatshow, media profiles regularly referenced her “Midas touch” with TV formats. She had left one golden programme, sashaying away from Strictly Come Dancing, but her portfolio still included three other winners: the mega hit The Traitors, its celebrity spin-off for the BBC, and Channel 4’s The Piano.

Half a dozen sofa chats later, Winkleman hasn’t exactly suffered the fate of the mythic King Midas, but The Claudia Winkleman Show can fairly be seen as her least glittering work for several years.

She might have the same producer as Graham Norton, but will Claudia Winkleman’s new series succeed? Seasoned pros from Esther Rantzen to Kirsty Wark reveal their tips and tricks for creating interview gold

Claudia Winkleman’s new chatshow will land next month, and its enthusiast army are already excited. Winkleman herself, who doesn’t come off at all breathy, said: “I can’t quite believe it and I’m incredibly grateful to the BBC for this amazing opportunity.” Kalpna Patel-Knight, who commissioned The Claudia Winkleman Show, observed: “Claudia is a true national treasure – warm, witty and endlessly entertaining.” Graham Stuart, long-term producer/buddy of Graham Norton, who runs So Television, which produces both, said of his new venture: “How can you possibly follow [Graham Norton]? By booking a host equally as brilliant. So we have.”

And if anything proves how hard it is to create great chat, it’s those quotes. If anyone was ever that bland and blow-hard on one of their chatshow sofas, most TV people would punch themselves in the head. No wonder so many chatshows struggle when they first come out – it’s not that the expectation is too high, exactly, so much as the fanfare is too boasty. Brilliant as she is, then, the success of Claudia’s new series is far from given. But how exactly do you go about creating chatshow magic?

Opalite video reunites host and guests including Domhnall Gleeson and Lewis Capaldi from Swift’s October chatshow appearance

Graham Norton’s chatshow has long been an object of fascination for American stars, wowed by its combined star wattage, glasses of wine and Norton’s own quick-witted, lightly saucy repartee – and Taylor Swift has now taken that fandom to another level.

Norton has been cast in the music video for Opalite, the second single from her album The Life of a Showgirl to receive music video treatment after The Fate of Ophelia. Not only Norton, in fact, but the stars from the guest lineup who sat alongside Swift when she appeared in October 2025: actors Domhnall Gleeson, Greta Lee and Jodie Turner-Smith, and fellow chart-topping musician Lewis Capaldi.

New LGBTQ+ festival included McKellen in a fiery monologue and Norton in conversation, as well as a queer ceilidh and ‘kilted yoga’

Sir Ian McKellen is on stage blowing up a red balloon. For a man of 86, he has impressive lung capacity. He lets it go and watches it take a satisfyingly theatrical trajectory, rising to a height, then plummeting. “Free the spirit,” he says, in character as Ed, an elderly gay man searching for release.

There was a lot of spirit-freeing over the weekend at Pitlochry Festival theatre. In a bold pre-season move by new artistic director Alan Cumming, the UK’s most idyllic venue launched its first LGBTQ+ festival in an atmosphere of exuberance. Programmed by Lewis Hetherington, Out in the Hills was a three-day compendium of talks, scratch performances and workshops that turned a sedate theatre into a buzzy social hive.

Can Bill Nighy solve your life problems? Why are comedians moonlighting as detectives? And what happens when an AI steals your heart? This year’s most addictive podcasts …

20