07 January 2024 , 22:01
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Graham Norton has said being stabbed and left for dead in a violent mugging 35 years ago changed his life for the better.
The chat show and new Wheel of Fortune host lost half his blood in the horrific 1989 attack, which happened as he walked home in Kilburn, northwest London. At the time Graham didn’t even realise he had been stabbed in the chest because the adrenaline took over.
It was only when he looked down and saw all the blood that he realised the extent of his injuries. Thinking he wasn’t going to make it, he recalled how he begged a stranger to hold his hand as he didn’t want to die alone in the street.
Luckily he was saved by an elderly couple passing by who called an ambulance. But the experience, which happened when the now 60-year-old was a drama student in his 20s, unsurprisingly had a lasting effect on the TV and radio star, who got his breakout role in Father Ted and is now famous around the world.
Graham was still at drama school when he was mugged and stabbed in 1989 (Getty Images)
Now 60, Graham said the attack changed his life for the better (WireImage)Asked what the worst experience of his life was, Graham shared: “Getting stabbed in 1989. I lost half my blood. The bad moment I remember – because when it’s happening, is all just trauma – but then the morning after I was in the hospital ward and I remember a nurse came up to me and said, ‘Do you want us to contact anyone? Do you want us to contact your parents?’
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He continued to The Telegraph : “In my head, I was thinking, ‘Well, I don’t want to worry my parents but equally if I’m going to die, they’d probably like to come and say goodbye to me because they’d be annoyed if I didn’t tell them.’ So I said to the nurse, ‘Am I going to die?’ And she went, ‘Erm...’ And I was like, ‘Don’t pause. This is not the place to pause. This is quite serious.
“So that was bad. But the positive of it was I was probably in my mid to late 20s. I was going into a third-year drama school, there were a lot of people crying and running into toilets and slamming doors. And I was just sitting there going, ‘I’m alive. I’m good. I’m golden.’ So, in a way, it kind of changed my life for the better.”
In another blow, Graham revealed his boyfriend at the time then ended up dumping him the next day “which wasn’t the most tactful piece of timing”. And it’s not the first time Graham has had a knife pulled on him.
Speaking previously to The Mirror, Graham revealed someone threatened him with a knife outside a club some years later. Luckily, there were lots of people around him and nothing happened. He said: “I did have someone pull a knife on me again a few years after the first stabbing but there were people around and it was fine, it was outside a club. Somebody wanted money and had a knife. And what’s so sad about the knife crime now is that everyone is a victim in the end.”