- He was a staunch supporter of the British monarchy over the possibility of a republican alternative. He once stated a reason for this was that he would have hated to have seen President Margaret Thatcher.
- When he was asked towards the end of his life what he considered to be the worst film he had ever seen, he identified Shivers (1975).
- He was associated with the phrase "and why not?", which originated not as his catchphrase - though he did say it occasionally on his programmes - but as that of his puppet likeness on the satirical show Spitting Image (1984). Norman later adopted the phrase himself and it was the title of his autobiography.
- Norman had a family recipe for pickle that has been passed down through generations and was used as the recipe for his own brand of pickled onions, which went on sale in September 2007.
- Son of director/producer Leslie Norman and Elizabeth (nee Crafford), who met when both worked in the cutting rooms of British International Pictures at Elstree. He was the brother of Valerie E. Norman and former brother-in-law of Bernard Williams.
- He was awarded the CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in the 1998 Queen's Birthday Honours List for his services to broadcasting.
- He was a one-time writer of the "Flook" strip cartoon in 'The Daily Mail'.
- He was the best-known film critic in Britain for over 25 years until he was replaced by Jonathan Ross as host of the BBC series Film '72 (1971).
- He was a cricket fan.
- He was a supporter of the British Labour Party until the formation of the Social Democratic Party in 1981. The SDP later merged with the Liberal Party to become the Liberal Democrats.
- His top ten films of all time were: Battleship Potemkin (1925), Bringing Up Baby (1938), The Rules of the Game (1939), Citizen Kane (1941), Rashomon (1950), Singin' in the Rain (1952), The Searchers (1956), Paths of Glory (1957), The Seventh Seal (1957) and Some Like It Hot (1959).
- He and his wife Diana had two children, Samantha Norman and Emma Norman. Diana Norman was the author of several historical thrillers, which she published under the pseudonym of Ariana Franklin.
- He compiled a list of his "Top 100 films" for the "Radio Times" magazine in January of 2012, which quickly became notorious among film buffs for including only three films--Shoah (1985), Seven Samurai (1954) and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)--that were not either British or American. He excluded any films directed by Jean Renoir, Charles Chaplin, Federico Fellini, Ingmar Bergman, Sergei Eisenstein, D.W. Griffith, Michelangelo Antonioni, Yasujirô Ozu, François Truffaut, John Huston, Preston Sturges, Fritz Lang, Claude Chabrol, Alexander Mackendrick, Luis Buñuel, Vittorio De Sica, F.W. Murnau, Josef von Sternberg, Nicolas Roeg, Jean-Luc Godard, Kenji Mizoguchi, Erich von Stroheim or Alain Resnais.
- When reviewing David Fincher's Se7en (1995) on his TV program "Film '96", he singled out for high praise the acting of Kevin Pollak. Unfortunately, Kevin Pollak is not in this film--presumably Norman meant Kevin Spacey, who is. However, he did not correct or apologize for this mistake.
- In February 2013, he compiled a list of his "50 Greatest British films" for the "Radio Times" magazine. These were Barry Lyndon (1975), Black Narcissus (1947), The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Brief Encounter (1945), Chariots of Fire (1981), A Clockwork Orange (1971), The Cruel Sea (1953), The Dam Busters (1955), Dr. No (1962), Don't Look Now (1973), Horror of Dracula (1958), Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), The Full Monty (1997), Gandhi (1982), Get Carter (1971), Gladiator (2000), Great Expectations (1946), Gregory's Girl (1980), Henry V (1944), I Know Where I'm Going! (1945), If.... (1968), The Ipcress File (1965), Kes (1969), Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), The King's Speech (2010), The Lady Vanishes (1938), The Ladykillers (1955), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), Local Hero (1983), The Long Good Friday (1980), A Matter of Life and Death (1946), Life of Brian (1979), Naked (1993), The Railway Children (1970), The Red Shoes (1948), The Remains of the Day (1993), Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960), Secrets & Lies (1996), Sense and Sensibility (1995), The Servant (1963), Shakespeare in Love (1998), Skyfall (2012), The Third Man (1949), The 39 Steps (1935), This Sporting Life (1963), Trainspotting (1996), Whisky Galore! (1949), and Zulu (1964) (with the 50th to be submitted by the readers).
- Reviewing The Glass Menagerie (1987) on his BBC film program in 1987, he remarked that it was amazing that no-one had filmed this famous play before, especially as it had been first staged as long ago as 1954. In fact, the play had been first staged in 1945 and there had been two previous film versions, a Warner Brothers picture of 1950 starring Jane Wyman and a television movie of 1973 starring Katharine Hepburn. The latter film had been shown at the London Film Festival in the winter of 1973 (there were plans, eventually abandoned, to give it a cinema release in Britain), at which time it had been enthusiastically reviewed by many critics - including Barry Norman.
- In an ITV documentary on Spitting Image (1984), Norman admitted initially hating the way his puppet looked on the programme (mostly because it had a large inexplicable wart on its forehead, which he doesn't have), but later somewhat moderated his attitude and felt flattered that the series found him famous enough to include him in its sketches.
- Norman had a passion for cricket and wrote a book on the subject. He was a member of the Marylebone Cricket Club and liked spending time at Lord's watching cricket.
- He won the Richard Dimbleby Award in 1980 for "outstanding contribution to factual programming".
- He was a lifelong heavy smoker.
- He was sarcastic, on his weekly television program, about the very large fee paid to Marlon Brando for "The Formula" (1980), in which Brando has quite a small part. The following week, he was required to apologize, after a viewer pointed out that Brando had donated the entire sum to a fund for unemployed coal-miners.
- Expressed dislike of the nickname "Baz" or "Bazza".
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