Norton Folgate

Norton Folgate was a member of Torchwood One in the 1950s. He spied on his teammates on behalf of the Committee, and later worked with his lover Jeremiah Bash Henderson to restore them to life after their defeat by the Enemy.

Early life
Norton's father was a vicar, which meant that he grew up in a church in London. His mother would sew hassocks for the church, spending most of her time during World War II doing so, but the church was bombed and her hard work was destroyed. She had been snobbish and not fond of the Cockneys and the couple moved to a parish in the Cotswolds. Norton often felt the spare child as his parents preferred his elder brother, Gerald. (AUDIO: Ghost Mission)

He did national service at the Joint Services School for Linguists. (AUDIO: Eye of the Storm) He did not visit his parents, as they disapproved of his being gay. (AUDIO: Ghost Mission)

He had an aunt named Faye. (AUDIO: The Torchwood Archive)

Early career
Whilst doing National Service, (AUDIO: Parasite) Norton joined Torchwood One, (AUDIO: Outbreak) a choice that his parents disagreed with. (AUDIO: Ghost Mission) He worked in Alien Acquisitions under Reginald Rigsby. (AUDIO: Parasite)

In the wake of World War II, Norton and his team had to deal with a large amount of black market trading in alien artefacts as a result of the number of spacecraft shot down. However, they were mostly called out to the sites of unexploded bombs. At some point, he began working for the Committee. (AUDIO: Ghost Mission)

Norton met Lizbeth Hayhoe in 1951 as she prepared the Skylon for the Festival of Britain when Rigsby sent him to supply her with a list of additional requirements with which he disagreed. She described him as one of Rigsby's "bright boys" and was able to tell from his posture that he was the son of a pastor. (AUDIO: Parasite)

In June 1953, Folgate was at Queen Elizabeth II's coronation at Westminster Abbey with the Vicar and Rigsby. (AUDIO: Parasite)

On the rise
Norton gave an alien pathogen to the US government for the development of the Good Thinking virus and was later brought in to try to control it, but found that there was no cure but to contain and burn the infected. He watched Jack Harkness burn with a number of people that he tried to save and visited him in hospital, after which he helped to try to destroy all trace of the virus. He and Jack entered into a sexual relationship and devised a protocol should the virus return. (AUDIO: Outbreak)

In 1953, Norton used a soft-light projection device to visit 2016 on the Committee's orders to find Object 1. He claimed to be a Torchwood assessor and manipulated Andy Davidson in assisting him in his search, locating the object in a spaceship in a clone factory and taking it to the Committee in Bide-a-Wee Care Home. Told by Roy to take it back to 1953, he left a note for Jane telling her to say hello to Andy. (AUDIO: Ghost Mission)

Mitford told Norton to pass Object 1 on to Mandrake so that Torchwood would investigate his gang and recover it. (AUDIO: The Torchwood Archive) He was reprimanded by Torchwood for his visit to the future. (AUDIO: Outbreak) By the mid-1950s, he had killed somebody that he loved.

Ianto Jones brought Norton from 1955 to 2009 via soft-light projection to provide answers on Good Thinking. Norton told him what he knew and placed documents related to it in a time-sealed container in the Hub's vaults, exploiting the protocol that he and Jack had devised, and programmed the cell doors to unleash the infected Jack on Ianto before telling Ianto how to initiate the emergency sterilisation system. Just before going into Stage 4, Jack broke the projector and sent Norton back to 1955. (AUDIO: Outbreak)

Norton acquired an alien painting inside of which was the key to a Martian tripod. He stored at his boyfriend Alejandro's studio and, after summoning Andy to the 1950s to help clear his name when the Vicar began suspecting that he was a double agent and dealing alien weaponry with gangsters, he implanted the key into Andy's mind. After Fat Kim used Andy to activate a tripod under Leicester Square, Norton killed her by transferring the key into her and the collapsing tripod killed the Vicar, removing the only two people aware of Norton's criminal dealings. Rather than admit his actions, Norton sent Andy back to the 21st century. (AUDIO: Goodbye Piccadilly)

Work at Room 13
Norton expected to succeed the Vicar as the head of Torchwood. However, Rigsby instead got the job and relegated Norton to work with Lizbeth in Room 13, a place where he quickly grew bored due to the monotonous nature of the work. To better fund their activities, Norton began tracking down and killing Nazis. (AUDIO: Parasite)

Whilst working in Room 13, Norton was tricked into allowing Adam Smith into Torchwood after he promised to use his memory manipulation abilities to make Norton leader of Torchwood. With his memory falling under Adam’s influence, Norton managed to contact the Kernaz for aid as they were hunting for Adam. Norton and Lizbeth Hayhoe struggled to realise something was wrong as Adam took over Torchwood and rallied them to fight against the approaching Kernaz, however eventually deduced what was going on, despite numerous setbacks in their investigation when Adam kept altering their memories. On the day of war with the Kernaz, Norton and Lizbeth managed to disable Torchwood’s weaponry, enabling the Kernaz to send Adam into the Void. (AUDIO: Madam, I’m)

Norton planned to take over Torchwood by exposing Reginald Rigsby to the Project Hermod fungus and saving the day using the Skylon, to which end he put an alert on the Torchwood computer which led Andy to save Gideon Lyme, unaware that Norton wanted Lyme alive in order to get the power of the Parnaeum to power the craft. Lizbeth opened the package instead and exposed Torchwood to the infection, but he was able to go through with his plan and was left to rebuild Torchwood, which he invited Lyme to do with him, having begun something of a relationship with him. (AUDIO: Parasite)

Flight 405 and Torchwood Three
Norton boarded Flight 405 in order to obtain the Lens for the Committee. However, he found himself caught in a time loop for which he blamed Jack Harkness, believing that he had put the plane in a time loop to stop the lens from falling into the wrong hands. After sixty years aboard the plane, he managed to hijack Yvonne Hartman's attempted summoning of Ianto as a hard-light hologram by using the lens. As a hologram, he assisted Yvonne and Andy in saving himself. He and Yvonne later gave the lens to Roy per their instructions. (AUDIO: Flight 405, Eye of the Storm)

Thanks to God, Norton switched bodies with Tyler Steele, with whom he had sex. He also had sex with Jay and proposed to him, causing him to flee. They were later restored. (AUDIO: Another Man's Shoes)

Norton continued to work with Yvonne to further the Committee's plans to utilise the power of the Rift, during which time he attacked both Jack and St John Colchester. Eventually, he realised that the Committee had double-crossed him and were planning on wiping out the Earth. He attempted to ruin their plans by diverting energy using the Lens, resulting in him trapping himself aboard Flight 405. (AUDIO: Eye of the Storm)

Fate
When Ianto Jones looked up Norton in 2009, there was no record of his death. Ianto believed that an elderly Norton might be out there. (AUDIO: Outbreak) However, Norton found his own skeleton on Flight 405. (AUDIO: Parasite)

Undated events
In the far future, Norton and his lover Jeremiah Bash Henderson planned to revive the Committee after their defeat by the Enemy, in part because they wanted their money. Jeremiah visited the Torchwood Archive and learnt about Object 1 and how they could use it to revive them. The two subsequently left, after blowing up the archive using a fake object. (AUDIO: The Torchwood Archive)

Alternate timeline
As a member of the Torchwood Institute, Norton Folgate answered directly to John Hart in an alternate timeline in which he took control of Torchwood and became King of the British Empire. (AUDIO: The Death of Captain Jack)

Personality
Norton was camp, flamboyant and sarcastic. Andy remarked that he very rarely said anything helpful, preferring to make flippant comments. (AUDIO: Ghost Mission) He was very afraid of heights (AUDIO: Parasite) and was sensitive about his age. (AUDIO: Outbreak, Parasite)

Norton liked ham sandwiches, scrambled eggs and tea, which, after the end of rationing, he realised that he did not enjoy with too many sugars. (AUDIO: Parasite)

Behind the scenes
Norton Folgate was named after a street in London. (BFX: Parasite)