Graham Norton doesn’t know Oxford very well. However, with The Sheldonian to fill, and a new book to promote, he’s coming to town to sprinkle some celebrity gold dust around and tell us a bit about himself.

No mean feat for the chat show host, who has made it to the top of the TV pile by making the world’s rich and famous spill the beans while revealing very little about himself.

Notoriously private, he shuns the very limelight they seek, but needs must, and Oxford it is, where he will be interviewed by Steph Merritt / aka author SJ Parris, who will have her work cut out for her.

“I'm really looking forward to appearing in Oxford actually,” Graham says, in his trademark camp tone.

“Obviously the focus will be on the novel but I'm sure there will also be time for some tales from the chat show and unnecessary celebrity gossip.”

People forget he is also a comedian, that the stand-up came first, and then radio (he has a popular Saturday Radio2 show), that the chat shows that ricoched him into the public’s consciousness, are the icing on the cake of an already highly successful career.

“I've done stand-up in Oxford a few times,” he admits, “but arrived in darkness and left hidden under a coat.

“So I'm confident that this upcoming evening will be my number one best time ever in Oxford,” with his usual glib enthusiasm.

Even Graham must find the lofty heights of the Sheldonian slightly daunting surely, especially as it’s his turn under the spotlight?

“I always feel slightly inadequate when I'm the guest rather than the host,” he admits.

“Hopefully it will help that I'm actually talking about a novel that is set in Ireland which allows me to tell lots of stories that aren't just about myself.”

It does beg the question, why he’s putting himself through this. He’s already busy, successful, presumably solvent…..

“I’ve just always wanted to write one and I thought it was about time I stopped talking about it and actually did it. I was worried it might be like the worst homework ever, that I would hate doing it, but I didn’t at all. I just loved spending days writing, although I made sure that if I was on my own all day, that I organised social stuff for the evening. So I went out a lot.”

So what is Holding about? “It’s a love story and a murder mystery set in rural Ireland in the sort of places I grew up in. A body is found and everybody in the village thinks it’s that of a man who disappeared years ago after he jilted two women – both of whom still live in the village. And there are numerous other characters with secrets, too.

“None of the characters exist in real life, but there are various stories in the book that I heard growing up, as my family moved around the country. I picked them up magpie fashion. Apart from the murder, maybe, there isn’t a village in Ireland where these things haven’t happened.”

So is the beginning of something great, a literary career that stretches ahead of us?

“I’d love to think I could do more writing, but of course people have to like the first book before I’d get the chance to write another one.

“Then I’d have the problem of doing it all over again, too, and people liking that one. In an ideal world, though, the answer’s yes.”

It still doesn’t answer the question of where he finds the time or had the need to write a novel?

“I suppose with a job comes validation – the feeling that you’re doing a job well enough to get paid for it, and the fact that a job means you have to be somewhere and that somebody cares where you are.

“If I were to work less on TV at some point, I’d really want another purpose. Maybe writing novels could be it. I know a few people who don’t work out of choice and I will say I don’t think it’s good for them. They go a bit bonkers.”

But while some of us write Graham Norton off as a light-hearted joker, think again. He a perfectionist, researching his shows painstakingly.

His great friend comedian Jo Caulfield who writes jokes for his shows said: “He’s really good at what he does and I couldn’t do it.

If he was rubbish I might be a bit resentful, but Graham deserves his success, he works very hard for it.”

He is also enormously quick-witted and has pinned down some of his celebrity sofa companions to reveal more than they intended.

“That was certainly the case with Charlie Sheen. We decided we had to get him talking about all the stuff that had happened to him because it was just so enormous and he was publicising his one-man show. We wanted to focus on the stuff he’d done – and he’d done some terrible things – as well as finding out how is he now?

So how did it go? “I think it’s weird that he still says that it wasn’t mental health issues, that it was to do with just the drugs, and I think it has to be mental health issues more than that,” Graham chuckles

“But you know - whatever gets him through. What I like about him is that he owns it: he goes ‘I was a huge f*** up.’ I admire him for that. I think if we do a few more serious chats now and again we can get away with it, because people will think, ‘Well, next week it will be funny again.’

Graham’s easy, jokey charm, lulls everyone else into a false sense of security. Meryl Steep, for example, was obviously suspicious of all talks show hosts. So how did he win her round?

“I do love Meryl Streep. We never had her before and then we got her and she thought, ‘Oh, this is actually all right’ so she keeps coming back. A lot of stars don’t do a lot of press in Britain because the American press is all oily and ‘oh thank you so muuuuuuccchh’ and the British are much more intrusive, let’s face it.

“But I suppose the chat show has been around long enough to show the publicists that we aren’t intrusive, that we just want the stars to come on, tell a few stories, plug their movie and have fun, so the publicists now think we’re OK.”

Let’s hope Graham does the same when he comes to Oxford.

Holding by Graham Norton is published by Hodder & Stoughton on October 6. He will be at the Sheldonian on Saturday October 8.

Tickets available at readholdingtour.com