Graham Norton always has a glass of wine to "take the edge off" before he hosts the BAFTA TV Awards.
The 52-year-old presenter is taking control of the ceremony for the ninth time and he admits he likes to have a tipple before standing in front of the star-studded audience to calm his nerves.
Speaking about what he does before the event starts, he said: "I brush my teeth – I think that’s good. And I normally have a glass of wine. I mean, if there is no wine then I can’t have it, but in an ideal world I’d have a glass of wine. It takes the edge off, and also it’s just … I like wine! I can see how Mariah Carey ends up with a basket of kittens, because somebody said, ‘What would you like?’ And she finally got to a basket of kittens."
Norton has rid himself of all other pre-show rituals because otherwise they became a self-fulfilling prophecy of disaster if they go wrong.
Speaking to website DigitalSpy, he explained: "Those things (rituals) become a kind of tyranny, and they’re self-fulfilling prophecies. So if you don’t have your lucky socks, you get to the venue and you don’t have your lucky socks, you kind of think, ‘Oh my God, it’s going to be awful,’ and it probably will be awful because you’re willing it to be awful. So I’ve tried to get rid of all of those things that I ever did."
Despite being a veteran of the BAFTA TV Awards, Norton admits he still gets nervous before every ceremony because he feels under pressure to be funny in front of so many famous faces.
He said: "This one I do get nervous about, because the audience isn’t a normal audience. It’s not just the famous people. The famous people are off-putting enough, but then the rest of it is executives and directors and people who are just bored out of their minds. There’s no excitement for them."
The House of Fraser BAFTA TV Awards take place on Sunday (10.05.15) at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane in London and will be broadcast on BBC One.
Graham Norton has wine before BAFTA TV Awards
