Norton tells all in autobiography

Graham Norton has confessed that he almost became a rent boy – but bottled out when he was first asked for sex.

The experience came while living in a San Francisco commune at the age of 20, working in a theme bar, at a time he calls his most formative.

In his autobiography, the comic writes: “Being somewhere where nobody knows you and there isn’t anyone to judge you means that all the normal constraints on your behaviour are removed.

“Given that my only homosexual experience up to this point was a fumble in a French tent, it seemed a teeny-weeny bit sexually ambitious of me to apply for a job as a rent boy, but that is what I did.”

He describes how he replied to a newspaper ad, which sent him to the apartment of an Englishman, who answered the door in only a pair of shorts claiming he had just been swimming. The man, in his late forties, asked Norton to strip, and treat him like he would a client

In the book, serialised in today’s Times, Norton added: “I walked over to him and put my hands on his hips and kissed him. I pulled down his wet shorts. He had an erection.

“This was as far as I’d ever been with a man. I hesitated. In that moment he lifted me up and carried me to the bed. The sudden appalling reality of being naked on a bed with some older man who had a raging erection finally jolted me back to my senses.

“Like some convent schoolgirl lying in a field after the village dance, I looked up at him and asked: “Are you going to go all the way?’ He said, ‘Well, if you apply for a job as a secretary, you’re expected to write a letter.’

 “It was such a slick prepared line that I thought of all the other boys he had said it to, all the other boys he had had sex with.  ‘Hey, if you want to stop, we can.’ Another line, but this one was the brake I’d been looking for… ‘Yes! Yes, I would like to stop!’ I had got away with doing such an incredibly stupid, risky thing.”

Norton goes on to describe how he lost his virginity to another resident of the commune, called Obo.

Norton’s book, So Me, is published by Hodder & Stoughton on September 1 at £18.99. Click here to order from Amazon at £14.

Published: 16 Aug 2004