Go Unlimited with Magzter GOLD

Go Unlimited with Magzter GOLD

Get unlimited access to 10,000+ magazines, newspapers and Premium stories for just

$149.99
 
$74.99/Year

Try GOLD - Free

Richard Osman's first book opened the gate for lots of us

Daily Post

|

May 10, 2025

BBC Radio 2 host and Channel 5 presenter Jeremy Vine chats to ELLA WALKER about venturing into 'cosy crime', what really scares him, and the big 6-0

Richard Osman's first book opened the gate for lots of us

DO you like your crime true, cosy or would you rather go to bed without thoughts of murder rattling around your head?

“Crime divides the room,” says journalist and BBC Radio 2 host Jeremy Vine.

“Friends will either have watched every single true crime thing, or they'll say, ‘I don’t watch it because it gives me nightmares.”

Jeremy personally loves the lot, from his “queen”, Agatha Christie (“Who was like The Beatles; the first, the band that was impossible to follow,’) to the true-crime docs Netflix is awash with.

Above all, he loves a good old-fashioned English whodunnit, the kind Richard Osman has revived in spectacularly popular fashion.

“Osman's first book reopened it all, it's opened the gate for lots of us, which I'll always be grateful to him for,” says Jeremy, who now, 49 years on from reading his first Christie - Hercule Poirot's Christmas, aged 11 - has written one himself.

Murder On Line One is the first in a cosy crime series in which a sacked and grieving local radio host discovers that someone has been off-ing his loyal listeners, and so, he begins to investigate.

Jeremy wants readers “to feel suspense, but to know that in the end, everybody in it is in safe hands”.

For him, cosy crime offers a way to consider murder and violence in a “safe and controlled way”. Encountering it in real life is very different.

Jeremy grew up in Cheam, Surrey, and remembers it was “a different time in the Eighties, you'd regularly see fights in pubs”.

He was beaten up twice as a young adult, “not badly, just knocked around. And it gave me quite a fear of physical violence, because I’m not very good at fighting. In fact, I'm useless”.

As a student in Durham, he was carrying king prawn balls back from a Chinese takeaway when he found himself surrounded.

“The food was taken, and I suppose I deserved it, because it was that thing of town versus gown. I was in their territory.”

MORE STORIES FROM Daily Post

Daily Post

Daily Post

>> Szobo in talks with club over new deal

DOMINIK SZOBOSZLAI has revealed talks are ongoing with Liverpool over a new contract - but warned there is no guarantee he will agree a new deal with the club.

time to read

1 min

January 21, 2026

Daily Post

Daily Post

Drug dealer claimed men threatened to 'chop him up'

A DRUG dealer claimed he was under pressure to sell drugs because men had threatened to kill him and “chop him up”.

time to read

2 mins

January 21, 2026

Daily Post

SALAH IN LINE FOR A RETURN TO ACTION

Slot includes forward in squad for Marseille clash

time to read

1 min

January 21, 2026

Daily Post

Daily Post

Salah will have a point to prove after cup defeat

MOHAMED SALAH has had a good Africa Cup of Nations, even if it ended in disappointment.

time to read

2 mins

January 21, 2026

Daily Post

5 signs your mums’ group has turned TOXIC

DO PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE CHATS AT THE SCHOOL GATES OR A CATTY WHATSAPP POST MEAN IT'S TIME TO CUT TIES WITH YOUR ‘SUPPORT’ GROUP? CAMILLA FOSTER ASKS AN EXPERT

time to read

3 mins

January 21, 2026

Daily Post

Daily Post

Food allergy firm on UK's top 100 Tech List

Deeside company has achieved remarkable growth

time to read

2 mins

January 21, 2026

Daily Post

CARE FIRM IS GROWING BUT HAS WARNING

Company continues to expand but threat on horizon

time to read

2 mins

January 21, 2026

Daily Post

Why did we not go back and sign Guehi?

IF Marc Guehi was under contract, he costs you £60million.

time to read

1 min

January 21, 2026

Daily Post

Daily Post

Anger as sex abuse head still gets his pension despite jail sentence

CONVICTED paedophile headteacher Neil Foden is still receiving his pension despite being in prison.

time to read

2 mins

January 21, 2026

Daily Post

Tandy springs a surprise or two ...but is there the power in his squad to avoid more Six Nations disappointment?

In the cafe of Wales’ Vale of Glamorgan training base, the main focus yesterday lunchtime was on the Welsh Rugby Union’s decision to push forward Ospreys owners Y11 Sports & Media as their preferred owners for Cardiff.

time to read

2 mins

January 21, 2026

Listen

Translate

Share

-
+

Change font size