How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - Richard Osman on cats, crime and c**ts

Episode Date: April 17, 2024

I loved interviewing Richard Osman and can’t stop thinking about our conversation. I think it’s because his brain works at warp speed: I genuinely felt he was three steps ahead of every question I was about to ask. It became something of a personal challenge to ask a question he couldn’t guess beforehand and I *think* I managed it when I asked if he’d ever written to Jim’ll Fix It (he had, by the way). His mind was formed by an early passion for television and the stories it created. He became an expert producer of winning formats and then, in his 40s, transferred his skill for knowing what people wanted to books. His debut, The Thursday Murder Club, became the fastest-selling crime novel of all time. The following three in the same series have sold over 10 million copies globally. He joins me to talk about professional failure, his lifelong struggle with food addiction and his Fear Of Joining In (FOJI). Plus: cats and why being tall is a successful c**t radar. Richard’s new novel - We Solve Murders is published on 12 September 2024. As always, I’d LOVE to hear about your failures. Every week, my guest and I choose a selection to read out and answer on our special subscription offering, Failing with Friends. We’ll endeavour to give you advice, wisdom, some laughs and much, much more. Have something to share of your own? I'd love to hear from you! Click here to get in touch: howtofailpod.com Production & Post Production Manager: Lily Hambly Studio and Mix Engineer: Josh Gibbs Senior Producer: Selina Ream Executive Producer: Carly Maile Head of Marketing: Kieran Lancini How to Fail is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment Production. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by car and other conditions apply. Hello and welcome to How to Fail with me, Elizabeth Day. On my podcast, I discussed my guests' failures each week, seeking to understand what obstacles people have overcome and what, if anything, they've learned along the way. Because ultimately, our failures are lessons that help us understand success better. Just before we get to my chat with Richard Osman, please do join me after this episode on Failing With Friends, where my guest and I take a look at your failures or questions.

This week, Richard and I go through the mailbag and tackle fear of rejection in the workplace, how to receive negative feedback, how we wind down and relax, and how to deal with being overly competitive, particularly at Scrabble. I'd love to hear from you. If you'd like to get in touch, follow the link in the podcast notes. Get Failing with Friends episodes every week and all episodes of How to Fail completely ad free. Just visit the How to Fail show page on Apple Podcasts and click start free at the top of the page to begin your free trial. Or you can visit howtofailpod.com if you're not an Apple user. If you were to put the name Richard Osman into Google, the fifth search suggestion would be a simple question. Is Richard Osman a genius? The evidence on first assessment seems quite compelling. Osman appears to possess an uncanny knack for working out what people want and then giving

it to them in the form of entertainment. As a TV producer, Osman devised formats for hit shows such as Deal or No Deal and Pointless, which he ended up presenting with his university contemporary, Alexander Armstrong. Then, when he pivoted into writing fiction, his debut, The Thursday Murder Club, became the fastest-selling crime novel of all time and was optioned by Steven Spielberg for film adaptation. The following three books in the series also broke sales records. The Quartet has sold 10 million copies globally, and all four of them have simultaneously been in the series also broke sales records. The quartet has sold 10 million copies globally, and all four of them have simultaneously been in the Sunday Times bestseller lists. When, last year, Osman launched a podcast called The Rest Is Entertainment with The Guardian columnist Marina Hyde, it casually soared to number one in the UK charts. Osman was born in

1970, the youngest of two brothers, and grew up in West Sussex before reading social and political sciences at Trinity College, Cambridge. He was raised by a single mother after his dad left when he was nine, and it's his mum, Brenda, who is probably his most ferocious critic, claiming that her son's prose style is a bit staccato. claiming that her son's prose style is a bit staccato. Undeterred, Osmond is publishing a new novel this autumn called We Solve Murders. It introduces a father and daughter-in-law private detective duo. It will undoubtedly sell by the bucket load. But, says Osmond, I'm with Kipling on success and failure. You have to treat them in just the same way.

Richard Osman, welcome to How to Fail. Thank you. Kipling put it better than me, I think. You were paraphrasing. I was paraphrasing Kipling. See, he's a genius. I had to set aside all feelings of professional jealousy and my innate competitiveness when writing that introduction okay because you are an astonishing success is that important to you yes it is but it doesn't come from genius it's funny working in a world such as television and and and the media in general it's it's sort of filled with people who don't really know their audience and so anyone who comes into that industry and there's

plenty of us who who know the audience and who grew up amongst the people who watch kind of mass entertainment media, it's quite easy. Because you just make the sort of stuff that you grew up watching and you grew up loving and that your family watched and your family loved. And then everyone around you goes, how have you got this magic touch? And it's just what's, you know, the inside of my brain is what I grew up watching. And my brain is very, very mainstream. I've been able to monetize that. Do you think that public taste changes over time? Not really.

I mean, of course, you know, the color of the car changes. But, you know, an engine is an engine. You know, people always want the same thing. They want to be entertained. They want to be amused. They want to be educated. They want to feel slightly better about themselves by the end of something than they did at the beginning. And that's basically what they want. And then you just build something extraordinary around that. I've been very lucky that I get to do that every day and I get to do something that I love and I get to my real job is I desperately desperately want to entertain people I want people to not

turn off my television program and I want people to turn the next page of the book and yeah so yeah it's it's really really important to me and how connected is that desire to entertain people to your desire to be liked by people um Gosh, that's a good question. I certainly like being liked. That's definitely true. You know, I'm not interested. I'm quite conflict averse. And the best way to be conflict averse is for people to like you, I suppose. But in a cynical way, I'm not interested into shifting into various shapes just to be popular but I certainly love it if I hit a seam in my brain that people like and people like me for so I can be real but at the same time popular to be real and popular at the same time that's the dream so talking about the Thursday murder club and the books that

came subsequently they are wonderful in many respects but one of the ways in which I appreciate them is because the protagonists are older people what was it about people in their 70s that appealed to you as a writer I think it was my mum lives in a retirement village and and I would go down there and you you talk to everybody and they just did these amazing things people had extraordinary life stories you know women who'd sort of ridden on motorbikes around Iran in the 1950s and stuff like that and then when we see older people in our culture they're shuffling down the street getting in our way voting for the wrong people you know hogging all the houses that's how that's how older people are seen either they're completely invisible or they're the problem and I thought my god you know what they're a generation like any other generation

they've done these extraordinary things and so I wanted to just tap into that I wanted to tap into the fact that I had natural heroes there who also would be underdogs and from a crime writer point of view also were invisible and therefore could kind of open any door they wanted could ask any question that they wanted so they were sort of perfect but but really it it was just meeting these people and thinking they were sort of lost to our country's narrative and there were so many stories that were just disappearing as a writer it's wonderful to be able to have all of these backstories amongst people who are you know not seen as huge heroes and who are sort of locked away somewhere and and underestimated how old do you feel my mum always says she feels about 32 which i think is quite a common age for people i have always felt 46

really that's so intriguing that your mum's always felt 32 and that's quite i feel 32 but i didn't think that was common. I think... Because I always ask people that question, because quite often in book things, people ask about writing older people, and I always say, how old do you feel? Some people still think they're in their early 20s. That must be quite difficult, I think. I think around about 32 is probably a pretty healthy thing to be, isn't it, for the rest of your life?

I think so. And similar to you, I felt very aligned with myself at 32. all downhill since then obviously but I did like yeah exactly I did I kept thinking I've this man I don't quite fit this world and I wonder if there'll come a point where I do and yeah 46 I went oh there we go there we go okay this makes sense now uh Brenda sounds like a legend yeah up to a point i know i did quote her saying that your prose is a bit staccato to be fair she said that she enjoyed reading you she also said i tell you what your books would be very good for any foreigners learning english yeah okay thanks mom okay that's good no she's uh she she loved the new one she loved the last devil to die

so um but yeah she's not like any mum she assumes that the love is built in she assumes over the years she's put enough work in that I know I'm loved and I know that she's proud of me and so she doesn't ever feel the need to tell me anymore and like any child of course I need it I need it constantly I don't need it from anyone else but from you I do so whenever she says something that's not a compliment you do kind of go come on mom talking of your success obviously that comes with a fair amount of money now is money something that you fear the lack of yeah and yes a hundred percent I'm gonna grow up with zero money uh and you know certainly as I started my career and if if I ever got back to zero there was nothing to bail me out

there was that you know I couldn't I couldn't get into debt because there was no one to get me out of debt so yeah I grew up with no money at all from a family that didn't really have money and yeah I really really value it and I'm very very lucky that I'm in a field that overpays people I think sport entertainment these worlds you know they are overcompensated but yeah it's always been a big worry of mine and I've always been very very keen on maximizing what I could earn from what I do I'm a grafter so I would always put in a day's work but if someone else is getting paid off the back of my labor I want to make sure I get paid too and I've always been very very unionized about that yeah it's really important

to me and it's not not anymore those days are slightly gone but yeah the fear of losing it all and the fear of having nothing again it really was a was a big driver for me in my 20s and 30s I read somewhere or maybe I heard somewhere, that you said that once you hit a certain level of success, or once you hit a certain age, the rocket fuel of competitiveness and ambition sort of falls by the wayside, and it becomes about being happy. Yeah, I think so. You see it all the time in people, in lots of areas. We're all driven by something in our 20s and 30s, whether it is you came from no money

or whether it is you want to vindicate yourself against the bullies who were at your school or you didn't feel beautiful, you didn't feel loved. Whatever it is that drives you, you need that because building a career is hard. It's proper graft. You have to put the work in and you have to have a drive. But that rocket fuel which propels you up there it doesn't last forever and it can't last forever

you know for me in my 40s for other people it might be a different age you have to kind of see oh i need to find a different way to live now because the rocket's in orbit so all it's doing now is circuiting the globe you're not going to get any higher you have to find a way of enjoying the view right and then you have to work out that what happens after the rocket orbits the globe well eventually you know it runs out of orbit and it crashes back down to earth and then we'll get to the next bit which is you know the thursday murder club bit of how do you manage the decline of your life that's how i've experienced it. And you see it in lots of other people. You see it in politicians. You see people who are still burning their fuel, like really late in their career. And you think at some point you have to just let it go and you

have to look out the window. Has happiness been good for your creativity? Yeah, I think so. I've always found contentment very easy. I find it very easy to shut the door and watch the snooker and be happy. In that regard, be content. I think a range of experience is good for creativity. And I think historically, we think being a sort of a misanthrope and, you know, and drinking too much and, you know, being embittered against the world makes you a great writer. And it can do if you can express those things in interesting ways that kind of you know add to the human condition but you can write about happiness as well and you can write about the things that we hold dear and you can write about the little things that make getting up in the morning worth living and so long again it's easy write about it

in an interesting way then um people are drawn to it every single thing that ever happens in my life i'm like a magpie goes straight into the writing i would never go anywhere or buy anything and not then mention it in the book the next day you know it's impossible the new book i'm doing we solve murders it's it's all around the world and i thought i have to do some research i think i'll just set it places i've already been there are certain scenes and certain books that are about love and about happiness that come because I was, you know, that's how I felt at that time. As long as you're not sort of just singing it from the rooftops and saying how wonderful life is, because people know that that's a lie. The other thing that you've taken from life with your new book is the cat on the cover. Yes.

You are a cat lover. Yes. You're amongst friends here. Yes. How important are cats to you i think i think i think they're very important is that a question you've ever been asked do you know it's not although people it's fascinating as soon as that book cover came out and people are like okay i'll buy that because it's got a cat on the cover you think

that's the problem that's how easy it can be sometimes you have to be able to comment with that then you have to back you have to back it up yeah the front cover than you because it's a cat on a gun and honestly if you chopped my brain open that's what you'd see inside is it's it's a cat and a gun yeah i love cats because i love their attitude i love how little of a toss they give but i love how when they do finally sit on your lap you just oh yeah i did it i love dogs but dogs are dogs are a pushover it's the truth and that's nice as well it's nice to have absolute kind of untrammeled loyalty but with a cat

when a cat finally goes do you know what I'm actually not going to sit on this really uncomfortable table anymore I'm going to come and sit on your lap you're like yes I did it I'm a hit and that's looking out the window you just think ah there's me and a cat

that's the only success you really care about, Richard Osman, isn't it? It's the cat on your lap. Yeah, if Liesl, Ingrid and I will sit on the sofa and you'll see Liesl approaching the sofa and you think, okay, she's going to sit on someone's lap and then we'll look at each other and just go, who's it going to be?

Who's it going to be today? And we both sort of pretend we don't want it to be us while we're raising our laps into the sort of perfect uh place and if she ever walks over Ingrid and lies on my lap I just oh my god it's the dream is she called Liesel after Liesel in the sound of music she is yeah she's called Liesel von Kat is her oh it's her full name so good yeah yeah no it's it's um the hero of the of the new book has a has a cat at home called Trouble. And the whole point of the new book is, which is similar to me, I'm sure we'll talk about, I don't really like going anywhere.

And I wanted a symbol for this guy not really wanting to go anywhere. And that was he wants to stay at home with his cat. So he just got this representation of that desire to be at home. He wants to stay with trouble rather than getting into it. Exactly. I do. Honestly, I get an awful lot out of that. I called him trouble just because I thought it was funny. And then through the book, you just think, oh, I can use this in a lot of ways, like returning to trouble, trouble crossing your path, all sorts of stuff. Before we get onto your failures, I would love to touch briefly on Richard Osman as a child.

Yes. I understand that your grandfather was very important to you. So my dad left when I was very young. My grandfather is one of 10 brothers from Brighton, from the back streets of Brighton, and was a soldier and then a police officer. And yeah, he certainly represents to me an idea of masculinity, which is lacking these days, which is an incredibly strong man, but incredibly kind. And, you know, he was in the police force. He never really got promoted because, for example, he wouldn't police the mine strike. He said, I'm not that you say that's not my business. That's another man's living. I'm not going to go and police it. And so understandably, perhaps he did not become the chief constable of Sussex. perhaps he did not become the chief constable of Sussex so he was always for justice and equality and fighting for people but he was tough as well so strong and tough and gentle and kind at the

same time I think is an exemplar we don't see much these days and I'm not as tough as my grandfather would that I were but that's what I think about when I think about how you can use masculinity in this world because there are ways of using it where it doesn't have to be toxic and you know so I try and write characters like that certainly you know when I think about when I see the world and someone like that crops up I'm like yeah this is uh this is what we need and he had dementia yeah the last almost sort of 10 years of his life so he was a very healthy strong guy so his his body was never gonna give out i feel very um humble to write about and and talk about uh his experience of it and uh you would hear the same stories time after time but he

was such a great storyteller you'd be like oh this is amazing you know you tell a story about coming back from you know india on the boat and it taking four weeks and him losing all his money in a card game and all this stuff and you've you've heard it before but he told it in a beautiful way um he wouldn't always recognize everybody he wouldn't always understand things and you know things would slip and slip and slip but i i remember always the last things to go really well laughter there's always a lot of laughter so you know that i find interesting and love as well when he knew who you were he knew he loved you and you he's loved by you and that i found so many people listening to this have have experiences of

dementia and everyone's is slightly different is the truth but writing about it that's what i wanted to write about trying to really get inside them his mind really or the mind of one of my characters steven give it a humanity and a dignity and to pay tribute really to my grandfather and to you know the grandfathers and grandmothers of all of us what was his name like all people from his generation he was really thomas but everyone called him fred so like he was always like like middle names we've got i've got a educational foundation now which is set up in his name, the Frederick Wright Foundation, because he left school at 14, because he couldn't afford to go to school.

But he was a very, very bright man. That sort of fire powers a lot of what I do. You have spoken in the past before about your dad leaving when you were nine and the fact that you had a glass of orange squash and you were sort of summoned to the front room and told that this seismic change was happening in your life and I suppose I wanted to ask you how much the world of television was a refuge for you through that point in the same way that I imagine music was for your brother who ended up in Suede yes the little known band Suede did end up in them yeah and also I know

this is like eight questions in one that's okay but the fact that you were born with this eye condition yeah and therefore feeling the need to belong to the world in a different way from how other people accessed it if you could just please all of that in three words or less i'm gonna take the fourth question first um we sum it up in television is very important to me you know growing up we had three channels and then briefly you know know, then there was four. And we're like, four? This is insane.

That's so many channels. But yeah, I learned about the world through television. I could sit very, very close. My eyesight is very, very bad. So in the real life, I can't see birds in the trees or, you know, a cricket ball flying through the air or what have you. But on television, I can. I can see all of those things. And, you know, you can see slow motions and you can sit right up next to the screen so I saw most of what I saw

from life on television and it only occurs to me very recently I'm always reading books and people go describe people's faces or a tiny tick and I didn't know what that meant I thought oh yes because I can't see it everyone I ever meet looks just beautifully lit, like just in a soft blur. And so television, yeah, I can see things that I can't see elsewhere. And yeah, I think, you know, growing up, it was certainly a world that I was able to escape into. It's not like I didn't watch television, then my dad left, then I watched television because they were my friends. It's like I watched loads and loads and loads of television, then my dad left, then I watched television because they were my friends it's like I watched loads and loads and loads of television then my dad left then I watched loads more television it's absolutely in my DNA again when I started in TV and I'd someone come up with an idea and I said it was a bit like that was a bit like that and no one had ever watched them and I'd watched everything like in the kind

of 17th century when it's still possible to have read all the books ever written in the 1970s it was still it was possible to have watched all the tv shows ever made I think I had so yeah it was a constant companion to me but again because I was you know I like staying in as well can you read your own books with your eyesight most books I listen to an audiobook funnily enough my eyesight is changing a little bit and reading books is becoming slightly easier than it used to be which which is a real welcome change. Did you ever write to Jim or Fix It? Yes, I did.

Okay, what was yours? I had two. One was quite weird and I thought that was too weird, so I need to write a more mainstream one. The first one I wrote was asking to be put in a box and put on an airport carousel. Wow, really? Because you know that's fascinating to kids. And you know what? He would have done that.

He definitely would have put me in a box. No problem. And then the second one was, I'd like to teach Parrot to talk because I thought that stood more chance. That's a really good one. Thank you. That's good TV as well.

I didn't get any responses. I asked if I could train with the Harlem Globetrotters. Okay. The basketball. Do you remember the basketball team from the 70s, 80s? That was mine. Everybody, everyone wrote to Jim will fix it, right? Everyone did.

Isn't that incredible? If you think about what media is like now, but every single child in the country wrote in and asked for something. I can still remember the address probably. I mean, I wrote into Blue Peter as well, and it was the same address because it was BBC TV Centre. I genuinely think that you could probably make both of those dreams come true still that would be nice for like a future podcast why don't you invite someone on who could like the box on a

carousel that's definitely yeah doable i mean that's got richard osmond tv format all over it box on a carousel yeah celebrities celebrities in boxes yeah exactly that who's who's here what it's got how to fail written on the side of the box who might be in there um and yeah i reckon you could you could uh if anyone from london zoo is listening yeah you could teach a parrot to talk that's good it's important to keep those dreams alive yeah you've got to have some goals that you still aspire to exactly i'm not sure the harlem glow trotters are still going though so my my dream might have died was that because of your height that you wrote in yeah I think so it was a love sport so much but I've always been terrible at it but basketball I was quite good at because I was

you know the tallest at my school and that's something that I could do and so yeah I was in the basketball team that's the only team I've ever been in so yeah I was obsessed with Harlem Globetrotters because they were you know even now the average height for an NBA player basketball player in America is six foot nine so they might I'd be now the average height for an nba player basketball player in america is six foot nine so they're all my i'd be under the average height for an nba player which is uh which is my dream when i did we did a celebrity darts tournament for comic relief and um my walk-on music was i wish i wish i was a little bit taller by skilo and i had my favorite karaoke track yes i like doing it on karaoke do you yeah i used honestly i used to do ignition by r kelly and now i of course i can't do that i'm not going to do that

but ski though as far as i understand has not been cancelled no uh so i can continue to do obviously it was a little bit taller but i had a seven foot two man and a six foot nine woman as my bodyguards on that show on my walk-on did you you choose that music? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, they didn't force it on me. Because you have spoken in the past very movingly about essentially being body shamed because you're tall. It's interesting that I've never thought, you know, my whole life, of course, certainly since I was 15, 16, 17 and the height I am now, there's no getting past it. You know, you are amazingly tall and everybody notices.

And so, yeah, I've always felt that shame because it's you know you do you feel you're on display the whole time if you if you have something that's out of the ordinary but human beings can't help but notice you can't create a world where people go oh no you're you look exactly the same as everyone else you can't do it and over the years it's an incredibly great radar for people's personalities because you instantly see if someone's a bully. You instantly see if someone's unpleasant or someone needs to sort of get something out of their system. You instantly see who's kind and nurturing.

You instantly see who's curious. And so it's an amazing radar. If you can bleep something out, I've always called it a **** radar because you can immediately tell if someone's a they respond to you instantly they have there's a visceral response and so yeah i've always understood that thing of people going through life feeling looking different and mine is fine because i'm not discriminated against in any way you know i know there's no violence towards me because of it but i think i hope that it gives me some empathy

as to what it is like to go through life being different if these micro encounters that I have every day if they became micro aggressions life would be very very hard Hi I'm Matt Lewis historian and host of a new chapter of Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hit. Join me and world-leading experts every week as we explore the incredible real-life history that inspires the locations, the characters,

and the storylines of Assassin's Creed. Listen and follow Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. Peyton, it's happening. We're finally being recognized for being very online. It's about damn time. I mean, it's hard work being this opinionated.

And correct. You're such a Leo. All the time. So if you're looking for a home for your worst opinions. If you're a hater first and a lover of pop culture second. Then join me, Hunter Harris. And me, Peyton Dix. The host of Wondery's newest podcast, Let Me Say This.

As beacons of truth and connoisseurs of mess, we are scouring the depths of the internet so you don't have to. We're obviously talking about the biggest gossip and celebrity news. Like it's not a question of if Drake got his body done, but when. You are so messy for that, but we will be giving you the B-sides. Don't you worry. The deep cuts, the niche, the obscure. Like that one photo of Nicole Kidman after she finalized her divorce from Tom Cruise.

Mother. A mother to many. Follow Let Me Say This on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Watch new episodes on YouTube or listen to Let Me Say This ad-free by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Let's get on to your first failure, which is the sitcom Boys Unlimited, which you say failed in 1998 it did yeah it's still available on channel4.com by the way is it i did have a little watch well a lot is available yeah i've been in telly for a few years and i was writing and i'm doing a panel show at a company called hat trick and we had this sitcom boys unlimited about a boy band and james corden was uh was a very young james corden and it was one of those ones where people are like oh this is this is going to be big it's

nice budget it's channel four and you know sent the script off and they like the script and so we did six scripts and they like those and suddenly you're making it and it's incredible and i was 27 or something like that and um everyone was oh this is this one's really going to fly and you think okay finally this is the thing that i wanted the big hit and i'd worked on tv shows before but i wanted the thing that was mine and that was you know right out there in the in the middle of culture and winning awards and all those lovely things and it absolutely bombed and i was i was in an edit for another show when i got the overnights through which are the ratings and it's got like 1.6 million, which these days would be huge.

But back then it was an absolute disaster. But I'd already started writing the second series, and I had to stop writing the second series because Channel 4 were not going to put any more money behind it. And I've had so many failures since then, but that was the first big one to really, really really hit me and if you write anything a sitcom a novel anything it's like a couple of years out of your life each time and to then go oh I can't I don't know if I can start again I don't know if I could do that again and so I just I went into back and just into the world of formats and creating tv shows and being a producer and sitting in a gallery because I'd done this thing of writing, which is a very vulnerable place to be.

And formats are not a vulnerable place to be. That came out in the year that my eldest daughter was born. That failure is the same age as her, which she's very much not a failure. So it was 25 years ago. But it took me another 18 years before I could write again. Jimmy Mulville, who ran Hat Trick, he said, look, the most important thing about failing is what you do next. But what I did is I ran away and hid from it and did something I loved and something I enjoyed and, you know, a career that I'm proud of. It was only at like sort of 47, 48 that I thought I should probably go back to it.

I think in that instance, I failed badly. I learned later in my career how to fail well in creative endeavors and how, you know, when something doesn't work, that it's okay. But that was so early in my career and such a big deal. And people were so excited about it. And everyone was telling me this one's going to be a hit. And it wasn't. And so whenever anyone ever tells me that one's going to be a hit uh and and and it wasn't and so whenever anyone ever tells me that something's going to be a hit in the future i don't i i pay no attention because you never know one of the things that you did do in the aftermath which i'm very impressed by given that you were 27 is you wrote a letter didn't you to the people who

had chosen not to recommission it yes and that And that, and you know, that, that is something I would recommend to anybody, especially, you know, in telly. So there was Kevin Liger, who's head of channel four at the time and, and, and a wonderful lady called Cheryl Taylor.

And they're both still in the business now. And they brought me in for a meeting and said, look, it's not, we're not going to do it again. And I know that's hard to hear and blah, blah, blah.

And I, you know, obviously I didn't take it brilliantly, but the next day I just thought, man, that's a, that's a hard meeting for them to do as well they didn't want to do that and so yeah I wrote them both a letter saying look that must have been really difficult I completely get it thank you for the opportunity really loved it and hopefully I'll get to work with you again and of course you do work with people again it's the truth and they remember

that I've had situations where a friend of mine was writing a show with someone. And the first series did all right. It got sort of four million or something. So it was one of those, shall we do another series or not? And they went in and the guys writing with were saying, you put it in the wrong slot. It was the wrong casting. You didn't publicize it enough. And so the channel just, you know, afterwards just went, well, let's not do it. Because we don't want to do that.

Whereas if you'd gone and gone, what do we do on the next series? How do we make this better? What do you need from us? Immediately they go, okay, let's do it again. You know, and people in telly take it very personally when things go badly. My view has always been, listen, the viewers tell you if a show is right or not,

you know, and you have unexpected hits, you have unexpected failures, but you know and you have unexpected hits you have unexpected failures but you know you can't tell viewers what to watch and you know it's you have to take it on the chin and it's not it's not a personal slight on you it's not a personal slight on the work that you've done and if you're good then the next one will be a hit on the next one will be a hit or the next one will be a hit but it's hard when it's one of your first ones it's hard I say to anyone who's doing creative stuff who's got an idea if someone says I've got an idea I've got an idea you've got to have 10 ideas there's no point having an idea because it's too much there's too much weight on it and also when it disappears

what do you do then you've got to have the next one in the rank all the time it's got to be you've got to have them lined up and you know my career since then doing formats is you can have a failure but the good news is you've got another show starting next friday and another show starting the wednesday after that and so long as one in four of them hits then you'll have a a long and successful career looking back do you think the viewers were right yeah boys right of course they were because i thought the scripts are okay uh i think we didn't i didn't produce it very well i was put in charge of producing it as well and i was too young i didn't really know what that meant so

we cast it properly it didn't it just it just wasn't just didn't have the kind of depth that it should have had um it didn't you know you have funny jokes, but if people are sort of watching them from the wrong angle, they're not funny. You've got to have all of your ducks in a row. And I think I just didn't. I just didn't make it well enough. I didn't have enough attention to detail on it. And I just, I hoped that the brilliant hilarity of my script would carry the whole thing through. And, you know, it never does. TV is incredibly collaborative.

And, you know, everyone's got to be on the top of their game. And, yeah, the producer should have been better and the producer was me. So, yeah, I think I take full responsibility for it. But, yeah, it's very, very rarely I've had shows that have done badly. And I've been like, I'm shocked. I'm shocked by that. But it happens. Sometimes you have a show that you don't have faith in,

and it does well. I'm very interested then that it took you until you were, was it 46, to start writing again? Yeah, something like that. Which is the age that you have always felt inside. Oh, yeah. Oh, there you go. There's a lovely alignment to that. So maybe it's that you always actually wanted to write books.

Yeah, I think so. And I think, yeah, I'd always wanted to write novels. Always wanted to write crime books as well, because I love crime. But yeah, I think if I'd written a novel in my 20s, I'd have been rubbish. I was too glib. And I think by the time you're in your mid-40s, if you've lived any sort of a life, you have hopefully a little bit of wisdom and a bit of insight and some empathy. The book was so much better than it would have been 10 years before

or 20 years before but was there fear attached to it when you started writing because you had this memory of failure no not at all then it comes from learning how to deal with failure it comes from a long career in formats where actually I just worked out very quickly that it was okay do the stuff you believe in do the stuff that's true to you so it genuinely that Kipling thing it's not me saying gosh aren't I wise that I really understand that actually success and failure are the same things it's genuinely that's just been my lived experience it's the toss of a coin and the key thing is keep your head down and keep doing good work so when I started writing the book genuinely I was like it's okay I'll write I would be proud of myself if I write a book

so I've always wanted to I couldn't have gone to my grave without having done one. And I thought when it's finished, you show it to a few people. If it's not right, it's not right, but you did it. And you've got, you know, carry on with your presenting and your producing, but you would have written a novel and maybe you'll write another one in 10 years time.

But you know, that's not what happened. I wrote it and, you know, it took off. But I honestly, it would have been okay if it hadn't is the truth and anyone who's sitting at home writing a book now you have you you have to write it for the love of it there's it's so difficult it's so painful to do and by the way it's all about managing failure writing a book uh and you know you you can't rely on it to be you know some to be a hit and to be a success. You can't legislate for it.

Your second failure is addictive behaviour around food, weight struggles and addiction. We know about food addiction. We know about alcohol addiction and drug addiction and food addiction. I think sometimes people are slightly kind of, is that a real thing? All I can tell you is from my experience, it's been a real thing to me. Certainly how I've experienced it has been real in the inability to control it. It controlling my life for many, many years. It making me miserable, me feeling ashamed of it.

All the things that you would attach to a classic addiction. So I shouldn't have to justify food addiction, but there I am. The amount of people who come up to me on the street, by the way, all women and all talking about their partners every single time. Like a man has never come up to me and said, thank you for talking about food addiction. But women come up and say, my husband listened to this. He played it to me. And he said, that's me. That's what I have. That's what I've always had. He said, and I've never felt able to talk about it, never felt able to speak about it. And it's so ridiculous. You know, this stuff, food stuff, I mean, alcoholics will tell you the same,

just like it's absurd that there's a bottle of vodka in front of you or there's a packet of crisps in front of you and it's more powerful than you. It makes no sense. People are very judgmental in this world and I always try, I think about myself sometimes and like a big bar of dairy milk. And I think, how can you judge anyone in this world and how they behave or how they act or

what their, you know, instant reaction to something is when you are less powerful many times in life than like a big bar of chocolate in front of you. Cause that's absurd. It's crazy, right? It doesn't make any sense.

And we've all got human minds and we're all crazy in slightly different ways. So that's my version of it since I was probably nine years old. It's been absolutely ever present in my life, weight, food, where I am in relation to it, where I am in relation to happiness because of it, hiding it, keeping it hidden, you know, all of that stuff. It's been the absolutely, the sort of like the drumbeat of my life. Thank you so much for of that stuff. It's been the absolutely, the sort of, like the drumbeat of my life. Thank you so much for talking about it. Does it help lessen your own personal shame to talk about it? Yeah, I don't have any personal shame anymore. Addiction is shame. That's the point. It's the same thing. And you have to catch that tiger by the tail. You have to talk to the shame.

You have to get rid of the shame. And it's still hard. If you're a drinker and you haven't drunk and then you drink, okay, the physical act of it is hard already, right? You then feel ashamed of that. And all the shame does is make you drink. And food is the same. So, you know, you'll overeat.

You feel shame about that. Shame makes you overeat. It's a spiral. So you have to learn to absolutely just cut it off at the source. And if you do feel shame, just to go, yeah, okay, that's all right. Because shame leads to more shame. In the same way that panic attacks, you panic, then you panic about panicking, then you panic about that.

Or if you have anxiety and then suddenly you get anxious about being anxious and with all of them you must not panic about panicking you must not be anxious about being anxious you must not feel shame about feeling shame and if you can do that you've got at least a stop gap that can help you a little bit it's a sort of first line of defense so the reason I would talk about it and be comfortable talking about it is because i have to i have to accept that it's okay i have to accept it's not embarrassing i have to accept that if people really told you their secrets everyone on the street we're all fucked right we've all got terrible things we've all got stuff that we just think is crazy and

it's because we're all human beings right it's quite hard to live on the planet it's not it's not easy we're surrounded by millions of other people all of whom are a bit like us and a bit not like us and we're surrounded by stimulants everywhere we go and we and we have to get through every single day it's difficult whatever it is that you have to get through the day if it works for you great if it doesn't work for you at some point you have to sort through the day if it works for you great if it doesn't work for you at some point you have to sort of look at it and try and deal with it let it be what it is talk to people about it tell people it's amazing the second you start telling people people are like well firstly everyone goes yeah yeah we know that yeah we know you have issues with food we

we got that but secondly they're like okay well what can we do you know and it's just anytime you're struggling with it then you've got people to talk to you say there's not a day since the age of nine yeah and i know you're always several steps ahead of the question i'm going to ask which is about when you were nine and what was going on when you were nine and your dad leaving johan harry has done some interesting work around addiction and and called it a form of alienation yeah do you think that your dad leaving made you feel alienated in some way alienation is not a word that resonates with me I imagine he means something similar to things that would resonate with me firstly by and large addiction is running away from your pain right so you have a pain that you it's impossible for you to look in the eye so i was

in a lot of pain clearly but you know what i was nine ten i don't want to be in pain particularly i don't want to miss my dad i want to go this is okay everything's fine if you start going away from you know your true north you know who it is you actually are the further you get away the bigger leap you then you have to sort of make back because you know reality and who you actually normally should be it sort of just gets further and further away and so anything that can stop you thinking or numb you or anything like that is incredibly useful to you because if you start thinking you think yeah but hold on you know i sort of maybe i do miss him and so that would but wouldn't surely that would mean and then you go actually i can just hold on there's some food in the fridge i'll have that nine-year-old me and a different version of me sort of converged at age of nine and and the bit

of me that converged was fueled by food and fueled by secrecy and fueled by shame and all of those things but you know i was able much later in life to reconnect with the nine-year-old version of me which is great because actually whenever in life you have your crisis whether it's nine years old 17 years old 26 years old having your crisis at nine years old reconnecting with a nine-year-old is really quite a good thing to reconnect with because it's a really pure and funny and loving and curious and interested in the world. So it's been, it's rather lovely that I feel a connection with that nine-year-old. Who was the first person you told about it?

Funnily enough, it was probably Jimmy Mulvill at Hattrick, who I made Boys Unlimited with. I was just aware that, you know, food was still a thing for me and that I wasn't happy about it. And I didn't think of it as anything other than food addiction. I'm addicted physically. So I said to Jimmy, I've got this thing. And again, he said, yeah, yeah, I worked that out.

And he sent me to a really lovely therapist, a man called Bruce Lloyd, who's a genius. And I had one session i thought like everyone going to therapy you thought oh you're never going to get inside this brain mate oh i'm going to be too complicated for you i'll be able to run rings around you and let me tell you can't run rings around bruce but so bruce would talk to me about my life and yeah and he let me go through all this and just nodded and just went, and how's that working out for you? And I said, oh, yeah, it's working out really badly.

It's working out really badly. And that's always the question I ask. If ever people come to me, you know, if you just always ask your friends the question, how's that working out for you, then that's often the way to unlock, you know, what the issue is and what the beginning of the solution is. Because, you know, eating food is a defence mechanism.

You know, it saved me from pain. It was doing a job for me, but it didn't work for me. And there came a point in life where you think, oh, you have to stop this now. You have to try and change it. So now, on a day-to-day basis, how much of a wrestle is it with control? Yeah, non-stop i would say non-stop but but to the

to the to the extent that it's it's so uh daily that bits of it you sort of don't even notice anymore become it becomes second nature but yeah i'm i'm always either in control or not in control there's not a point where i'm like oh yeah and i'm just going to chill today and yeah i just have a salad for lunch and you know you know there's it's always i'm aware that uh i'm eating or not eating as i would call it it's an it's a huge amount easier than it was so i understand it i get it i know where it is if i fall off the wagon i'm very forgiving of myself i understand i've got strategies for coping with it but yeah it's it's it's always then the therapist will tell you like an alcoholic will tell you it's always you're always never not going to be an

addict ever so but you have to try and find a way to live with it I think but I wonder how hard it is living in the culture that we now live in which is so obsessed with diet yeah and the idea of health through intermittent fasting or glucose. Put the menus with all the calories on them. How difficult is that? I think that in some ways it's easy because my whole life I've been thinking about what you should eat and what you shouldn't eat and when you should eat it and when you shouldn't eat it

and what rules you can have. I think it makes me sad. It always makes me sad. And we do have an obesity epidemic. We know how to not be obese. There's no one in this country now who hasn't been reached by a piece of information that tells you if you eat less and you exercise more, then you're going to lose weight. We all get it. And yet we are not.

And we're not because there's an absolute epidemic of food addiction out there. you know, billions and billions being made by people just sort of combining fat and sugar in the absolute perfect way that doesn't fill us up, but makes us want more of it. And they can do it cheaply and they can put it in bright packets. And, you know, every single psychologist trick, every single thing that can appeal to every single pleasure center in our brain is applies to food. You know, I, I think there will come a time when the generation of food that we grew up with will be looked on in the same way as cigarettes because it's because it's insane but it's absolutely laser focused to be incredibly delicious my final question on this is about falling in love yeah with ingrid yeah where's this going um it's going to that idea of when

you are falling in love with someone and you're going on dates and you're getting to know them yeah not wanting to share everything that might put them off not that it would and also going out for meals and how you cope with that and how easy it was to be honest with her with ingrid i mean simple i mean i i knew from our first date that I was going to marry her and the reason I knew I was going to marry her is because I just could talk to her about anything and be completely honest and I'd reached a stage in my life by the way where I could be honest and I wasn't always in that place as lots of people aren't so you know I'd done some work on myself and you know even my therapist said maybe have 18 months just not in a relationship just to and I

thought come on Bruce and then there was a bit just to, and I was like, come on, Bruce. And then there was a bit of the pandemic, and I was like, does this count? Does this count as part of the 18 months? I don't have to start again after this. But I had, I'd started doing work on myself, and, you know, I met Ingrid, and I just, she was perfect.

And right from that first day to now, literally there's nothing that isn't said in that relationship which is one of the keys and it's just absolute communication and truth and care for each other so I think the fact that I no longer felt shame about it

and that I owned it meant that I was able to talk about it and I am able to talk about it in a dispassionate way and in terms of going to restaurants and stuff that's kind of easy I mean you just you know if you're eating badly you have the chips and a pudding and if you're not eating badly you don't have the chips in the pudding I mean there you go it's simple you can have the you know there's not many calories in a steak and some spinach but if you have the chips and the pudding then the next day you will feel shame

but you make friends with your shame like you understand that it's there and that it will pass. Well, I note it. I'm like, okay, that's interesting that you're letting this get away with itself. Like writing, you have to trust the process sometimes. You have to go, well, listen, you're not going to be overeating forever. At some point, you're going to put your foot down. I wonder what day that will be. I think rather than kind of thinking, no, I have to, I can't, I mustn't, I mustn't.

And being hard on yourself, you have to go, okay, for whatever reason, that's where your brain is at the moment. But yeah, you have to just accept it for what it is, I think. So you don't punish yourself? No. Food is a particularly hard one to deal with because with booze, you can not drink ever again, which I know is virtually impossible, but that's the cure. Whereas food, you can not drink ever again, which I know is virtually impossible, but that's the cure.

Whereas food, you do have to eat, and then you can just sort of slightly fall into bad habits again. So you just have to, every now and again, just check yourself. Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest? This is a time of great foreboding. These words supposedly uttered by a king over 800 years ago, these words supposedly uttered by a king over 800 years ago, set in motion a chain of gruesome events and sparked cult-like devotion across the world.

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No idea what bro's saying at all, but I'm jacking these melodies. And you know, I hear Megan Thee Stallion is also a big anime fan. So Megan, do you want to trade AOT hot takes? We're here. Listen every Friday, wherever you get your podcasts, and watch full episodes on Crunchyroll

or on the Crunchyroll YouTube channel Do you think you're addicted to work? No, I really love work but no my god no I love nothing better than to not work that's my favorite thing

in the world I think I work fairly love nothing better than to not work that's my that's my favorite thing in the world I think I work fairly smartly and you know I find uh ways of you know making my work last as little time as possible but no I love working because I like meeting people you know and I like hanging out with people and I like funny people talking to me and I like you know I just like writing and talking and saying things do you like meeting people because your third failure is fear of joining in rather than fear of missing out your fear of joining in yeah and you've described yourself in the past as an alpha introvert so describe what is an alpha introvert before we get into this phase uh I'm shy I'm uncomfortable

with new people I would always say no to an invitation before I said yes to an invitation. In those regards, I'm an introvert. But I think I'm alpha in that if I do put myself out there, I'd try and exert some control over my work or situations. I like being in a group where something fun and interesting is happening. But if I'm in that group group i really need to be in i need to you know have some input rather than stand on the sidelines and that's why i love work because if i go abroad for work i'm like great i'm happy to go abroad just got back from india and i went to do jaipur literary festival and i was like great i'm gonna

do that i'm gonna go there for work and accidentally then of course I have two weeks in India which is lovely but if it was just me I would go oh I don't know about going to India I don't know it's a quite a long way and uh and meeting people I thought I don't really want to meet anybody but then you if you go to work suddenly you're meeting all these interesting people you're talking to them in the context of work that's just like meeting people I'm able to um meet people and go to places under the guise of work but if it's just me if ever I'm invited anywhere I have one question only my brain screams one thing and that's but how am I going to get home that's fine are you genuinely worried or is that a defense mechanism genuinely worried genuinely worried

is your brother like that because he's actually a rock and roll star oh my god he's the opposite I mean he is literally the opposite that that's how i know i'm an introvert because uh you know so my brother would say yes to everything he spends his whole life going around the world he's the absolute polar opposite of me and i love him to bits but i love being at home so do i i also know what you mean about work as a helpful social prop when I started writing books I suddenly realized that I was never going to feel lonely yeah not that I ever really do like I like my own company but you could go I could go traveling and I would have my laptop and I would have a reason for being there yeah for being in a cafe on my own how much of that do you think is about not feeling that you're enough on

your own I definitely feel like I'm not enough on my own. And always, you know, again, you have to make peace with that. You know, I've always felt like someone who's watching the world rather than someone who is participating in the world. And, you know, which is why I'm a writer and, you know, why I like talking and discussing things, because, you know, I sort of feel like I'm talking about something that's like a sociological matter rather than something that is all around us.

I don't feel built for the world, that's for sure. And anything I have that allows me to feel more like part of the world. So I have a quick wit. That's the only intelligence I have is a quick wit. And that allows me to just make forays out into the world whenever I want and wherever I want and then immediately withdraw but you know everything else about me you know I'm too big I can't see all of that stuff it makes me want to withdraw always and do you think it is actually a failing this fear of joining in you say you quite love it as well since being with

Ingrid I'll join in far more because if Ingrid's with me I'm like I can do it because I always want to be where she is and she feels like me if that makes sense you know I feel like I'm my completely myself when I'm with her I feel I'm not having to shape shift if ever we get invited to book festivals if Ingrid is free if she's not filming and so she can come out I'm like great I'll sign up to it and say yes I'll come and do that and you know then I'm very happy I'll meet people and chat away to people without that I'd find that very difficult I have loved talking to you and I would love to draw this to a close by talking to nine-year-old Richard I mean honestly that's pretty much who you've been talking to I want to know what he was like but I also want to know

what he's saying to you now given everything that you've done with your life he was very similar to me you know I would watch a lot of television I would lay on the floor

and make sort of sports tournaments with dice and pens and sort of and do little knockout championships of the best bands

in the world and things like that I was always obsessed with what's in the charts I was always obsessed with what's in the charts. I was always obsessed with that weekend sport. And that is something my life is fueled by. Oh, what's interesting? What's next?

What's, you know, what's next on TV? What films are coming out? And I've still come up with little kind of formats, but now I make them on TV. He, again, liked me me too awkward really to be around in the world but liked sort of being able to make occasional forays into it it's you know it's hard to talk to him because because because I feel I am him but yeah we certainly have managed to carry that on into older age which is great and being really really happy at the same time so that's the real treat he's delighted that Ingrid is in our life.

I think that's for sure. He's like, oh, here we go, finally. Finally, it all makes sense. Final question. Are you more Miss Marple or Erku Poirot? I am much, much, much more Miss Marple. I'm very vibes-based. That's the first thing everyone says about Miss Marple. Yeah, she's vibes-based. Okay. That's the first thing everyone says about Miss Marple to be fair.

Yeah, she's vibes-based. She is vibes-based, whereas Poirot is not vibes-based. But yeah, I'm Marple. How about you? I actually think I'm more a coup Poirot. Are you? Yeah, I think I have a fastidious quality. Okay.

I lack fastidiousness. I'll say that. I will own up to that. Well, Richard Osman, you might not be fastidiousness. I'll say that. I will own up to that. Well, Richard Osman, you might not be fastidious, but if you ever want to make Box on a Carousel as a TV format... Yes, Celebrity Box on a Carousel. Yeah, just give me a call. Excellent.

Okay, we can work out the commission. Even while you were talking to me, I've sold it to Channel 5. Perfect. Channel 5? That's great. It's great these days, Channel 5. Yeah, that's where you want to be these days. Okay, fine, fine.

I'll trust you. Thank you so much for coming on how to fail i just wanted to remind you that richard and i talk more over at failing with friends it's a wonderful community of subscribers where we chat through your failures and your questions one of our makeup ladies she said you saved my marriage i gave her a bit of advice uh And she said, oh, you saved my marriage. I thought, oh, that's great. That's some sexy lingerie. If you're not yet a subscriber, well, you're really missing out. I know I'm biased, but I do think that. And I would love for you to join us. Just visit the How To Fail Show page on Apple Podcasts and click start free at the top of the page to begin your free trial and start listening today. And remember to follow us. Press the plus button on the top right to get

new episodes of How to Fail as soon as they drop on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. And please tell all your friends. This is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment original podcast. Thank you so much for listening.