PA ImagesTV presenter Graham Norton has recalled the horrifying story of when he was stabbed and left for dead in a 1989 attack.
The comedian, who hails from Cork, says he was stabbed during a mugging when he was a drama student at a drama school in London.
As per the Mirror, Norton lost ‘over half his blood’ in the attack which left his life in the balance, adding it was ‘touch and go’ for a while. This was one of two incidents, the comedian told the publication.
PA ImagesIt came during a conversation about the knife crime epidemic in England, where the 56-year-old admitted he felt that now ‘everyone is a victim’ when a stabbing occurs because attackers are often too young to understand the consequences of their actions.
Fortunately, the presenter is now able to talk openly about knife crime without it triggering the awful memories because attacks are common place these times.
Referencing the second attack, 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.
GettyHe continued:
Because people are losing their lives and equally the kids stabbing people, their life is destroyed for nothing, for this stupid thing because they couldn’t get their heads around the consequences.
In the moment it was, ‘I want that phone’ or ‘You’ve got the keys to the car I want to steal.’ I think it’s a lack of imagination in the end, that if you had the empathy, that level of imagination to think it through, that the person you’re stabbing could be a brother friend sister, mother or father, you wouldn’t do it. Somehow people have been dehumanised.
PA ImagesWhen asked whether he believed knife crime was a modern problem, Norton said:
It’s modern in that people have knives, not sure it’s a modern problem.
Young people are incredibly cruel to each other. Bullying has always been incredibly vicious.
When you’re young you don’t understand what others are going through; you’re so busy looking after yourself.
I think young people can be quite cynical and brash and brutal; it’s a modern malady but if you read Dickens, crime was horrific. It’s more about economics than modern society.
It’s about people with nothing and if you’ve nothing to lose, that’s a really scary place to be.
Norton was almost killed during the attack which saw him stabbed in Kilburn, London.
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Emma Rosemurgey is an NCTJ trained Journalist who started her career by producing The Royal Rosemurgey newspaper in 2004, which kept her family up to date with the goings on of her sleepy north east village. She graduated from the University of Central Lancashire in Preston and started her career in regional newspapers before joining Tyla (formerly Pretty 52) in 2017, and progressing onto UNILAD in 2019.