The Graham Norton Show

Colin Farrell talks about his dodgy on screen hair, Rachel Weisz reveals she has a 'Mrs Daniel Craig' screen visor, Dawn French says her writing is now more grown up, Chris O'Dowd talks about his wife's celebrity crushes, and Rod Stewart says he's got his mojo back.

Colin Farrell, talking about his new film The Lobster, in which he co-stars with Rachel Weisz, and asked whether he was wearing padding for the role, he says, "No, it was natural girth sponsored by Doner kebab and Cadbury's! I just ate... a lot! I was sleeping with crumbs in the bed and very often they were the first meal I had the next day!"

Asked about his son, he says, "For father's day, his school asked the children to describe their fathers and sent it home in a letter. It was gorgeous and ridiculous. He said, 'My dad is a lot of fun and I like him a lot. He has blond hair and is very handsome.' The bit about the blond hair obviously had me concerned!"

Joking about some of the looks he's had on screen, he says, "I've had some of the worst hair dos. Empire magazine did the top worst hair dos in film and I definitely had three of those. Some of them were testament to the mess I was in at the time." Talking about his portrayal of Alexander The Great, he says, "I probably should have played him as a brunette and possibly without an Irish accent - at least that's what the 7,000 reviews I read said!"

Rachel, talking about her husband with Dawn French who jokes that she was gutted when he decided to marry Rachel, says, "You should get one of those 'Mrs. Daniel Craig' car screen visors. I have one. I don't use it all the time but once and a while I'll put it up." Dawn says, "I've got a great idea. You have the screen visor and I'll have Daniel."

Talking about her son, Rachel says "He is completely, delightfully uninterested in seeing any of my films. He is old enough now, at nine, to see The Mummy but he's just not interested."

Revealing she was expelled from school, Rachel says, "My mother always says 'You weren't expelled, you were asked to leave.' I was very naughty. There wasn't one big event but I had an authority issue and I didn't believe anyone had the right to tell me what to do. I was just very, very disruptive." Adding flirtatiously, "I don't mind a bit of authority now!"

Dawn, talking about getting married for a second time, says, "It was quite embarrassing. We had just started dating and our kids started petitioning very early on for us to get married, before we had even started talking about it and we were still doing the 'walking out.' They thought it was a great thing and that it worked straight away - which it did - but we were taking it slowly and I was being hard to get."

Talking about her stage show, Thirty Million Minutes and performing alone, she says, "It was very odd to begin with. I really missed Jennifer (Saunders). I even had to be told to stand in the middle of the stage because I was still making room for her."

And of her writing success with her third book, According to Yes, she says, "The others were written in diary or monologue form and I decided I really can write people talking to each other, in sentences with chapters, which is a bit more grown up." Talking about writing the sex scenes she says, "I would be alone in my house in Cornwall and would actually shut the door on my real life because I felt embarrassed about writing it."

Revealing that because she wrote Nicole Kidman into the novel, she had sought the actress's permission to include the chapter, she says, "I wrote to her, explaining her character and asked if she would mind and she said no, which was just as well because it had already gone to print!"

Chris O'Dowd, described by Graham as 'heartthrob-ish,' says, "The 'ish' is justified. I don't get to do a lot of sex stuff in my films - not from want of trying. I've tried it a couple of times and they didn't care for it - the clothes started coming off and the director shouted, 'Cut, no, we want people to watch the film!'"

Talking about his wife Dawn O'Porter and the crush she has on various Hollywood stars, he says, "We met Brad Pitt and we were having a chat, he was very nice and I introduced him to Dawn and they shook hand and we kept on talking. He then stated chatting to some other people and I looked down and saw that she was still holding on to two of his fingers. I suggested we go to our seats and she said, '41 seconds.' When I asked her what she meant, she said, 'That's how long I held him for.'

"A couple of weeks later we met Bradley Cooper at a dinner and as we were leaving Dawn was getting her phone out of her bag and I noticed something sparkling. She had stolen his fork. She said she was going to auction it for charity but every now and then at home I'd see her eating with it. It's hard to feel like a sex symbol when your wife uses another man's cutlery!"

Asked if there will be any more Moone Boy episodes, he says, "We are working on something and hopefully there will be some next year. We took a break because I thought I'd told all the stories I could and we got to the stage when the boys' voices were breaking. We needed a breathing period."

Rod Stewart joins Graham for a chat. Talking about his new album and the new material it features, he says, "My song writing mojo left me for about 10 or 15 year. I wasn't completely resting on my bum but I got a bit lazy and it drifted away. But, I put my autobiography together and suddenly I found I had so much to write about. I wrote songs about my dad, my family, show business, the lot."

Rod performs Love Is live in the studio.

And finally, Graham pulls the lever on more foolhardy audience members brave enough to sit in the Red Chair, one of which surprises Chris with a personal story.