The chat show host said ‘people would just vanish’ from his social circle during the outbreak Graham Norton Graham Norton has reflected on living through the Aids epidemic, which saw the “big loss” of a close friend. The Irish chat show host said he arrived in San Francisco, California, when the city had decided “to close all the saunas and sex clubs and things” in the early 1980s. “The fear of Aids had sort of taken over San Francisco,” Norton told Jack Guinness on the Queerphoria podcast.
“So for me, that was a much more frightening place (than London) oddly. And then when I came to London, it was only starting to appear.” The Graham Norton Show host said he recalled “official signs” hanging in a London gay club which read: “Don’t sleep with someone with an American accent”.
The 61-year-old also remembered that “people would just vanish” from his social circle during the outbreak, before the disappearances hit closer to home with “a very good friend”. “I remember mutual friends sort of sitting me down and telling me Sid was sick,” Norton said. “He was the big loss for me and for our little circle, he was the one who really made you think ‘oh my god’.
“And it all came back to us when we got into Covid, that thing of that you’ve got to take responsibility of yourself and in doing that, you take responsibility for other people.” Norton married Jonathan “Jono” McLeod in 2022 in West Cork – where his mother resides. “.