'I am essentially an 80-year-old woman in everything apart from my frame'

Back with a fifth Thursday Murder Club novel, Richard Osman talks to Ella Walker about Helen Mirren taking on one of his creations and why he doesn't fear growing older

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>(left to right) Celia Imrie, Richard Osman, Sir Ben Kinsley, Helen Mirren and Pierce Brosnan at a Murder Club photocall. Jeff Moore/PA Wire

(Jeff Moore/PA Wire)

"I LOVE, love, love doing nothing. Doing nothing is, quite absolutely, my state of grace," says Richard Osman, 54, who, most days, is doing very far from nothing. When we speak, he's just wrapped on 110 episodes of his quiz show Richard Osman's House Of Games, is hosting The Rest Is Entertainment podcast with Marina Hyde each week and, during our conversation, is signing 5,000 copies of his new book, The Impossible Fortune. He admits he's not wonderful at multitasking. "I'm good at monotasking. I'm good at focusing on one thing at a time, in extreme depth," he says wryly, but even when scrawling his name on a perpetual loop, he still has an uncanny ability to answer every question put to him immediately, eloquently, without hesitation.

Born in Billericay and growing up in Haywards Heath, West Sussex, for most of us, for a long time, Osman was best known as Alexander Armstrong's foil on BBC One's Pointless, or for giving us 8 Out Of 10 Cats on Channel 4. Since 2020, though, he's the man who brought Elizabeth, Joyce, Ron and Ibrahim into our lives.

And now the Thursday Murder Club crew are back for a fifth stint. "I've given them a year off to rest and recuperate. I put them through quite a lot," notes Osman fondly, calling his characters "four of his best friends". "Things have changed a little bit for all of them."