When Graham Norton walked off with two Bafta awards earlier this year nobody had more to celebrate than Graham Stuart, the Scottish television producer who first spotted the camp comedian’s TV potential.

The awards for Best Entertainment Performance and Best Entertainment Series send the value of So Television Ltd - the company jointly founded and owned by Norton and Stuart - soaring by several millions; they also helped win the company its first commission from the BBC.

The hush-hush deal, a factual show following the fortunes of a UK celebrity who reinvents himself in a small American town, is being filmed in the US.

Stuart has clearly come a long way since the early 1980s, when he worked as a disc jockey at Radio Tay.

Capital Asset

So Television is also making a 60-minute documentary for Channel 4 - a Norton travelogue spin-off on Mexico City entitled So Graham Norton. It capitalises on the success of Ah So Graham Norton, which followed the peregrinations of Norton in Japan.

The quick-witted Norton, with his risqué brand of late-night humour, has become the hottest television property around. Recently he turned down a £5m two-year contract from the BBC, to return to Channel 4, where he has a contract that runs to 2004.

Creating A Balance

Norton is the very public face of So Television, the company he founded with Stuart in September last year. But, behind the scenes, the other Graham is equally important in striking the creative and commercial balance needed in trend-setting television.

Stuart, 44, is a Dundonian who trained with the BBC in London before returning for a spell on Radio Tay and a stint as a reporter on STV. He says setting up a production company with Norton gave them the creative freedom they needed.

"Graham and I decided to set up the company last year to secure the independence to make our own shows," he said. "All of the shows so far have come out of our heads.