Elton John: Uncensored: Sir Elton grants us an audience in a true royal interview

Norton tones down his usual matey style and plays up the respect in this one-off interview with the musical legend
Elton John
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David Sexton28 November 2019

So THIS is what a proper royal interview should look like.

After his biopic, Rocketman, and his autobiography, Me, it might seem that Elton John has little left to tell about his life. Yet tonight here comes Graham Norton with “the only major interview he’s giving this year”.

It takes place in Sir Elton’s villa in the South of France but we see nothing at all of his home. The pair sit in white armchairs in the corner of a room that could be anywhere, with a few bits of coloured glass, a painted ceramic and some photobooks visible in the background — and that’s it for local colour. Whiskery Norton wears a flowery jacket, Sir Elton a dotty suit and big pink-tinted glasses — but over the hour this interview takes, they don’t budge from their seats. Formal!

The format is simple too, a progress through Sir Elton’s career, decade by decade. Unlike the film, this show does include archive footage of him performing his hits (including a rediscovered recording of Rocket Man on Top of the Pops, “unseen for 47 years”, which, confoundingly, I can remember actually seeing at the time, back in 1972). So at least you are constantly shown his power as a performer, reminded of why he matters.

Frank: Sir Elton opens up in his only major TV interview of the year
PA

Often Norton makes his own fame into a gift of mateyness for his interviewees. Not this time. He’s deferential throughout, taming the cheekiness, playing up the respect. Sir Elton tells a story about meeting one of his idols, Winifred Atwell, in Australia and says, “She gave me a koala bear — not a real one of course.” Norton nervously bursts out in guffaws of laughter, as though he’s just been treated to one of the jokes of a lifetime. Royalty will do that to you. Even to him.

So this could have made very dull viewing. Fortunately, Sir Elton doesn’t have to be pushed to offer full disclosure. That autobiography? “I’ve suddenly realised I’ve led an amazing life. When I read the book in its entirety after it was done, I went, God almighty, I could have filled another 300 pages with this stuff.”

Going bald? “I look like Shrek and I don’t like it.” So, after failed hair transplants, he took to wigs. “Yes, I am bald, but I don’t like being bald, so I wear a toupée.”

The drinking? Six martinis in half an hour to start the evening. That shopping addiction? “I found solace in inanimate objects because they couldn’t hurt me.” He remains a “legitimate kleptomaniac”.

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He’s proud of the letter addressed to cocaine in his autobiography. “It was cathartic, it was like having an enema with a pen, it all came out.” Whoosh!

Having children? It gives him a reason to live. “Originally I was going to die on stage — now I don’t want to, I want to be with my kids.”

He reveals that he became seriously ill after being diagnosed with prostate cancer, being characteristically explicit about this too. “I literally had to learn to walk again, I was very sick.” Now he’s like the Bionic Woman, “there’s so little of me left”, he says.

And will he really stop performing when he finishes his 300-date world farewell tour? It seems not. After a break, he’d be up for a residency, just not doing all the hits again, “not the ones I’m fed up with”. Onward!

Elton John: Uncensored is on BBC1, 9pm

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