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London, 26 May. Tower Bridge straddles the Thames like, say, Madonna in Like a Virgin. Piccadilly lights. Ray of Light vibes. Graham bricking it in a black cab. (Forget Norton: such is the superpower of tonight’s subject that her mere presence exorcises any need for surnames.) To all this – London, the dance floor, Graham, you, me, the universe – Madonna whispers “thank you for coming”. I Feel So Free kicks in. And so it begins.
Openings need to be big to accommodate “the incomparable Madonna” – as the BBC press release for this hyped special calls her – now that we’re in the final countdown to the release of her new album Confessions II. This one’s perfectly judged. Nice and hammy. Equal parts outré and gay.
“I’m always nervous meeting Madonna,” Norton giggles as his cab heads to Koko, where Madonna played her first UK gig in 1983 and where she returned to launch Confessions on a Dancefloor in 2005. Cue archive footage of adoring girls in perms and rule-the-world quotes as Graham ascends to meet “the great lady herself”. The film switches to slo-mo as he enters the sexy red theatre. There, alone on the spotlit stage, is Madonna.
“Madonna as I live and breathe! Back on the dance floor!” he announces, which is nowhere near as good as his intro on The Graham Norton Show in 2012, when he lost it and screamed “HOLY MOTHER OF GOD, IT’S MADONNA!” They stand on stage and do some cute small talk about Madonna finding her community on the dance floor. “That’s how I started,” she says. “Dancing is in my DNA.” And so to queer Detroit club Menjo’s in the 1970s. “The doors opened and there were two beautiful men without shirts on wearing rollerskates, bow ties and shorts, carrying a drink on a tray. I was like wow, we’re not in Kansas any more! Everyone was so free.”
It was Christopher Flynn, her life-changing ballet teacher in Michigan, who took her dancing. “The first gay man I met,” she says. Norton: “Not the last … ” Madonna: “Definitely not the last!”
It starts so well. There’s Madonna in her imperious grande dame era, wearing shoulder-padded teal silk, fingerless gloves and custom Yves Saint Laurent boots from the Confessions tour. (Not the original ones, those were stolen at Coachella, keep up.) And there’s Norton. Looking starstruck. And asking silly questions. But, you know, wouldn’t we all?
After an uneventful ride in the lift faux-captured on CCTV, a weirdly stilted middle section ensues. With special guest one, Confessions I and II producer Stuart Price. (Special guest two is … holy mother of God … Kylie.) They listen to sections of new tracks and do some po-faced seat-bopping. The influence of Detroit techno and Chicago house on Confessions II, made at Price’s Maida Vale studio over the course of a year, is discussed. Norton, perhaps stymied by the level of artist control, presence of Price, or just the supercharged Madonna-ness of the situation, can’t seem to stop asking banal questions. Like: “Who goes first in the studio?” Or “Where did [this song] come from?” “It came from my soul,” Madonna replies with an incredulous expression.
It’s not that an interview focused on Madonna’s creative process wouldn’t be fascinating. Or, indeed, refreshing as the men who’ve interviewed her over the decades – and this superfan has seen ’em all – haven’t tended to bother much with her music. It’s just that this isn’t it.
Partly the problem is the format – the interview is spliced with guest appearances, images, footage and Confessions II – The Film clips. A classic two-hander would have yielded a more intimate and entertaining result, but TV producers seem to have decided we no longer have the attention span for such things.
So it’s back downstairs for a drink. Who’s serving at the bar? Kylie! Another weird bit follows in which Kylie produces her copy of the first Madonna LP, Madonna confesses she was a bit jealous of Kylie “because she was so cute and I think my ex-husband at the time had a crush on her”, and Norton feels as if he has “died and gone to gay heaven”.
Titbits for the fans whose appetite for Madonna is currently reaching fever-pitch are, I’m afraid, small when you compare this to the infinitely more juicy, naughty and gay Interview magazine sitdown with Mel Ottenberg. Which, unfortunately for the BBC, also dropped this week. But we do learn about her feelings towards London. And how she wrote a new song about her late brother, Christopher, immediately after speaking to him: “He was in a lot of pain, I knew it was close to the end … I went upstairs and wrote a song.” And how her daughter Lola, with whom she recorded a duet on Confessions II, “has been very reticent to work with me” and “struggling with these feelings through adolescence”.
Oh, and as well as promo tours Madonna has planned “something bigger in the summertime”. Norton: “In this country?” Madonna: “Could be.” Hmmmm. And with that she berates Norton for always having “to know everything”, and we are once again left none the wiser, which is probably exactly how one of the best-selling artists in history likes it.
