Graham Norton

Graham Norton is an Irish television presenter, comedian, actor, and author with a number of connections, both direct and indirectly, to Doctor Who media.

He played himself in the three Doctor Who-adjacent comedy skits, Dermot and the Doctor, Looking for Pudsey, and 2023: The Eurovision Audition Tapes. His likeness was also used in the BBC One Christmas ident, Sprout Boy meets a Galaxy of Stars.

More notoriously, Norton has found himself at the centre of two very unintentional appearances on the show, due to BBC technical errors. In 2005, during the initial broadcast of Rose, a mistake occurred which resulted in sound from Strictly Dance Fever, hosted by Norton, and which was airing on BBC Three at the time, being heard over the scene in which Rose encounters the Autons. The error was later referenced in the Target novelisation of the episode, where it was said that Norton's voice could be heard over a radio broadcast. In 2010, during its airing in some parts of England, an animated advert for the talent show, Over the Rainbow, began playing over the cliffhanger of The Time of Angels. This sparked complaints to the BBC, who later apologised. The advert contained an animated Graham Norton, who later joked about it on his own show – saying he finally secured a role on Doctor Who, apparently unaware of his previous, accidental interruption. Norton then played a version of the cartoon banner, with a Dalek exterminating his cartoon self; coincidentally, the same show also featured an appearance by Karen Gillan and they spoke further about the error. The error was mocked further in the DWM 422 edition of Doctor Whoah! where, during a parody of a scene from the the episode itself, an advert featuring an impish representation of Norton ran below the comic bearing the tagline; "Coming up next: Someone Gets Fired".