According to The Guardian, Norton made the comments during promotional work for the new series of The Graham Norton Show, which airs on Friday nights.
The Graham Norton Show continues on Friday 11 October on BBC1.
Norton went on to criticise The Telegraph’s standards when it came to fact-checking, referring to the paper as “a mouthpiece for Boris Johnson with no fact-checking at all”.
He has now said that he made the decision to quit after the publication defended public figures including then-US supreme court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.