Richard Osman reveals ‘crazy’ four decade battle with addiction after childhood heartache of dad leaving home
TV presenter and best-selling author Richard Osman has revealed a food addiction that stretches back four decades – caused by childhood heartache.
His relentless desire to overeat stems from the pain of his father leaving home when Richard was nine.
The 53-year-old dad of two said: “It’s so ridiculous, this food stuff.
Alcoholics will tell you the same, 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.
“I think, ‘How can you judge anyone in this world and how they behave, or how they act, or what their instant reaction to something is when you are less powerful many times in your life than, like, a big bar of chocolate in front of you?’.
The former Pointless co-host, whose brother Mat is the bassist in the rock band Suede, told the How To Fail podcast: “We’ve all got human minds and we’re all crazy in slightly different ways.
“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.
“All of that stuff, it’s been absolutely like the drum beat of my life.”
When Richard was nine, his father summoned the family to the living room and announced he was having an affair, and left home.
At first, Richard travelled by coach from the family home in West Sussex to Warwickshire to see his father but he soon cut ties.
The two were reconciled when Richard became a father in his twenties.
‘Running from pain’
The presenter, whose Thursday Murder Club book series topped the bestsellers list, said: “By and large, addiction is running away from your pain.
“I was in a lot of pain, clearly, but do 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 OK, everything’s fine’.
“If you start going away from your true north, who it is you actually are, the further you get away the bigger leap you have to make back.
“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, maybe I do miss him’.
“Then you go, ‘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 the age of nine and the bit of me that converged was fuelled by food and fuelled by secrecy and fuelled by sha- me and all of those things.”
Much later in life, Richard started having therapy and al- though he said he has relapses, he is now better able to cope.
Richard accepts them — and they do not lead to a downward spiral of shame and more eating.
He said: “I don’t have any personal shame any more. Addiction is shame.
‘I’m always either in control or not in control.
Richard
There’s not a point where I’m like, ‘Oh yeah, I’m just going to chill today, I’ll just have a salad for lunch’. I’m aware that I’m eating or not eating’
“You’ll over-eat, you’ll feel shame about that. Shame makes you over- eat. 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, ‘That’s all right’ because shame leads to more shame.
“I have to accept that it’s not embarrassing.
“If people really told you their secrets, everyone on the street, we’re all f***ed. We’ve all got terrible things, we’ve all got stuff that we just think is crazy. That is because we are all human beings.
“I was able much later in life to reconnect with the nine-year-old version of me, which is great.
“Reconnecting with a nine-year-old is really quite a good thing to reconnect with, because it’s really pure and funny and loving and curious and interested in the world.
“So it’s rather lovely I feel a connection with that nine-year-old.”
Richard was married from the late-1990s and has two sons, but divorced in 2007.
In 2022, he married again, to the actress and comedian Ingrid Oliver, whom he met when she was a contestant on his House Of Games show.
Richard said the first person he told about his food addiction was Jimmy Mulville at production company Hat Trick, who he made comedy series Boyz Unlimited with, and he recommended a therapist called Bruce Lloyd.
Richard said: “I thought like everyone going to therapy, ‘You’re never going to get inside this brain, mate’.
“But you can’t run rings around Bruce.”
Asked how much he had to wrestle with controlling his addiction now, Richard said: “Non-stop, I would say, but to the extent that it’s so daily that bits of it you sort of don’t even notice any more. It becomes second nature.
“I’m always either in control or not in control. There’s not a point where I’m like ‘Oh yeah, I’m just going to chill today, I’ll just have a salad for lunch’.
“It’s always I’m aware that I’m eating or not eating. It’s a huge amount easier than it was to understand it.
“I know if I fall off the wagon I’m very forgiving of myself. I’ve got strategies for coping with it. But it’s always there.
“You’re never not going to be an addict, ever, but you have to try to find a way to live with it.”
Richard also blames people’s food problems and obesity on manufacturers.
He said: “We do have an obesity epidemic. There’s an absolute epidemic of food addiction out there.
“There’s billions and billions being made by people combining fat and sugar in the absolute perfect way that doesn’t fill us up and makes us want more.
“Every single psychologist trick, every single thing that can appeal to every single pleasure centre in our brain is applied to food.
“I think there will come a time when the generation of food that we grew up on will be looked on in the same way as cigarettes.”