Smash hit

Over the years he has mercilessly lampooned a number of female celebrities, although now that he tends to hobnob with them at parties, it's probably quite convenient that he's forgotten which ones were once his victims.

"Minnie Driver? What have I said about Minnie Driver?" ("She's just so ambitious and needy" to take one random comment.) So does he have any male targets? "Erm, Michael Douglas is quite high up on our list. Basically our constant joke is that he's dead. I'll do jokes about Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael Douglas because, like, what the f*** do they care about what I think about them? You know what I mean? They're in love, they're rich, they're happy, they've got babies, they've got Oscars, so what does it matter? Let's have them."

Since he's hardly aiming to be Jeremy Paxman, it's probably not surprising that Norton tends to have people he likes or admires on the show: Mo Mowlam (who is now a friend), Joan Collins, Dolly, Cher, Whoopi and Dustin. He wouldn't want to ask them tough or controversial questions, partly because he's relying on their goodwill to make fools of themselves on one of his daft games towards the end of the show. But he also has his own, not always immediately apparent, ethical sense of what is appropriate television.

I ask him whether he's ever had anyone on the show whose views I imagine he finds obnoxious, like, say, gun enthusiast Charlton Heston, and I'm surprised by the force of his response: "I think Charlton Heston is a very, very old man and it's sort of cruel to wheel him out as a spokesperson for anything. Do you know what I mean? I don't think he could order a breakfast, so to ask him to justify why people should have the right to bear arms seems..."

Did you see Michael Moore's film? (Bowling for Columbine, a passionate anti-gun documentary, featuring Charlton Heston.) "Yes, and I think Michael Moore's a very bright man but he does a lot of shouting at receptionists. He seems to make his point with people who have no power; the people he's supposed to be the friend of. He never gets to talk to the head of whatever company he's attacking, and so he always rants at some receptionist or security guard, and you think, 'What's the point of that?'

He would supposedly want that receptionist to have better working conditions, and one of those improved conditions would be not to have a fat man with a beard shouting at you." I say that I would definitely want to ask Cher about her Botox habit: "Yes, and you can. Because your interview will be good whether she's happy, sad or serious. She was genuinely upset when she said that she knows when people tell her she looks great, in brackets afterwards it's understood they mean 'for your age'. That she will never actually look great again."

I roll my eyes and he says: "It's the world's revenge on pretty people, is what it is. 'The plain shall inherit the earth.' We'll be in old people's homes looking at old photographs saying, 'Oh look, what happy days,' and Cher will be sobbing."

Hey, excuse me, I don't think of myself as "plain" exactly, thank you very much - and I don't think you are either. "We don't trade on our beauty," he says, mock-primly. "We never have."

But Dolly's quite happy to talk about all her plastic surgery, isn't she? "Yes, and she still looks fantastic, but she can't keep looking like that.

It's the same as someone needing to be talked down off a building. They need to be talked down into age. The danger is that they've kept it at bay for so long, it's like they need some kind of age counselling."

Heat magazine apparently rang Norton's agent and insisted they knew that he'd had a face-lift in America, and she phoned him in a panic to ask if it was true. "And I said, 'Don't you think I would have sued a plastic surgeon if this is how I looked after my plastic surgery!" Which is almost as horrible as anything he says about Celine Dion.

It was seeing himself on television that prompted him to lose weight. He says that producers and directors just tell insecure performers that telly puts on at least 7lb: "And it sooooh doesn't. When I had more weight on, I could tuck a shirt in, pull it so, look in the mirror and think, 'Oh, I look all right.' And all day long you'd have a certain level of confidence about that being the way you looked.

Times recommends

• Students face big rise in university fees
• Students to rate lecturers online
• Lord heads team to look at raising tuition fees