Graham Norton has made a poignant speech defending Phillip Schofield and Huw Edwards against reactions they’ve faced in the last year, as their relative scandals broke.
Former This Morning host Schofield, 61, resigned from ITV in full after admitting to ‘an unwise but not illegal’ affair with a younger male employee.
He’s since remained out of the spotlight, aside from two tell-all interviews in which he said, of the criticism he’s faced: ‘Do you want me to die? Because that’s where I am.’
Edwards, meanwhile, was named as the BBC presenter facing allegations over payments for sexually explicit images.
In July last year, Edwards’ wife Vicky Flind issued a statement on his behalf sharing that he was ‘suffering from serious mental health issues’ and was also now receiving in-patient hospital care where he was set to stay ‘for the foreseeable future’.
The Met police later confirmed there is no evidence of a crime being committed, while the 61-year-old presenter was suspended after the claims emerged, and has not returned since to the BBC.
Both scandals created a division amongst the public and broadcasters alike, with the likes of Dan Walker sharing support for Edwards, whilst Lorraine Kelly gave a recent interview calling Schofield ‘a good person’.
Now, Eurovision host Graham has spoken about the coverage, and the lack of progress in society.
Speaking at the Attitude Awards, Graham said that he felt ‘undeserved’ but ‘thrilled’ to be recognized by the publication as a ‘trailblazer’.
He went on to reflect on the past 30 years, as the outlet celebrates the anniversary, saying: ‘You’d think the world has changed, the world has moved on, we’ve come so far.
‘And then, in the last 12 months we saw the way the press dealt with Phillip Schofield, you saw the way they dealt with Huw Edwards, and you kind of begin to think, f**k, have we moved the needle at all? Where is the progress?’
He went on to talk about conversations he’s had with stars of Drag Race UK and the ‘moving stories’ they’ve told him, adding: ‘The stories about being rejected about their family, stories about being bullied at school, stories about being physically assaulted, and myself and Alan [Carr] were saying, why haven’t these stories changed?
‘Why are these young queer kids still telling these stories, all these decades later?’
Graham, 60, went on to quote author and activist Dan Savage’s campaign ‘It gets better’, saying: ‘Right now, it will often feel like, Jesus we’re lying to these kids. We’re just making this s**t up.’
‘One of the really frustrating things about all this, is that it’s always framed in terms of culture wars, that’s the word they use,’ Graham continued.
‘And that phrase it drives me mad because it sounds esoteric, it sounds like this rather dry battle of ideas.
‘But of course, as we are so frequently aware the casualties of those battles of ideas are real people.
‘The consequences are horrific. And the dangerous rhetoric that’s out there, the government rhetoric, or cruel jokes that we’ve heard this year or this week, they have actual consequences.’
He went on to say that ‘it’s not all doom and gloom’ highlighting ‘stories of hope’ that surround him and ‘how things have changed’.
Graham has previously found himself at the centre of a social media pile-on, after speaking out about ‘cancel culture’, where he made his views heard loud and clear.
The talk show host offered his opinion on people complaining about how they’ve been ‘cancelled’, saying: ‘You think, in what world are you cancelled? I’m reading your article in a newspaper, or you’re doing interviews about how terrible it is to be cancelled.’
He suggested ‘it must be very hard to be a man of a certain age, who’s been able to say whatever you like for years’ to know there is now ‘some accountability.’
Speaking to Mariella Frostrup at the Cheltenham Literature Festival Graham had said: ‘You read a lot of articles in papers by people complaining about cancel culture and you think, in what world are you cancelled?’
He went on: ‘I think the word is the wrong word. I think the word should be accountability.’
Graham had added that people have ‘free speech but not consequence-free.’
While he was widely applauded for his comments, the also faced intense backlash and deactivated his Twitter account for some time.
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