Step back Love Island's Molly-Mae and Beyoncé – when it comes to fitting a lot into 24 hours, Richard Osman might just wear the crown. Or perhaps we should say deerstalker, given how much of his time is spent on the business of murder mysteries.
Not only is he working on the eagerly-awaited fifth instalment of his multi-million-selling Thursday Murder Club franchise – co-writing a play based on the series – and fronting his own quiz show (Richard Osman’s House of Games), but the 53 year old is still finding time to visit a film set where you couldn’t swing an Oscar without hitting a national treasure.
In the midst of all this, he’s somehow managed to write the first novel in a brand-new series, and while we might miss Joyce, Elizabeth and the Murder Club crew, there’s plenty for crime fans to love. We Solve Murders follows somewhat formidable security expert Amy and her father-in-law Steve, a set-in-his-ways widower who’s devoted to his cat, Trouble. While protecting famous author Rosie D’Antonio, Amy finds herself in the frame for murder, and calls on Steve to embark on a round-the-world mission to clear her name – and avoid getting killed in the process. Pretty exciting stuff for a man who would rather stay at home with his new kitten…
How has it been writing a new series?
It started off scary, but obviously I can't just write the same characters all the time. This is my full-time job now, and I want to do it forever, so I wanted to introduce readers to a new world and to characters that they'll love. In the first couple of weeks, you do feel like you're cheating on your old characters, but after a while, I fell in love with this world. And I knew I was coming back to The Thursday Murder Club, I knew they were just having a lovely little year off and putting their feet up. I very quickly got to the stage where I thought, ‘Oh, I really, really want readers to meet Steve and Amy and Rosie now.’
We Solve Murders is set in some glam locations – did you get to have some lovely holidays for research-purposes?
It was sort of the opposite, because I knew I needed to set it at various places around the world. I don't love research – if I'm working, I like to be writing. We’d already been to St Lucia a couple of years ago, and absolutely loved it. So I thought, ‘Great, I can set a bit on St Lucia.’ Pretty much everywhere in the book, I had already been to, which meant that I'd pre-done my research.
Very efficient!
For the next book, if you look on my Instagram over the next couple of years, you’ll be able to work out where it’ll be set.
Do you think that Steve and Amy would get on with the TMC gang?
Funnily enough, that was the moment that I felt comfortable writing about them, as soon as I realised they all lived in the same world. Steve lives in a beautiful village in the New Forest, and that's probably an hour and a half by car to [TMC’s retirement complex] Cooper's Chase. And yes, I think everyone gets along with at least one member of the Thursday Murder Club. I think that Steve would get on very well with Ron, for example, and I think Amy would get along very well with Elizabeth.
If you were ever in a crisis like Amy, which family member would you call?
I mean, the whole idea is, really, that I'm Steve, so I'd be the one sitting there thinking, ‘Please, God, don't ring me.’ My wife [actor and comedian Ingrid Oliver] is unbelievably brilliant. If ever I'm in trouble, she will always be able to solve everything. So if I was aboard and needed help, I’d get my wife to come out. Years ago I would’ve got my grandfather to come and do it, because he was an old copper and he could turn his hand to pretty much anything. I come from a family who are fairly useful in a crisis.
We love Trouble, the book’s cat – are you a cat person?
I love cats – and dogs, to be fair – but with my wife as an actor and me going around the world, we couldn’t have a dog. The thing is that Steve just always wants to be at home. So he has to go around the world on private islands and private jets, but really he wants to be at home. And the cat, to me, is what absolutely exemplifies that. If you ever go away, you could be in St Lucia, and all you're thinking about is, ‘I hope [our cat] Liesl is OK.’ The cat sitter will be looking after her, or my daughter [Richard has two grown-up kids from his first marriage], and I think, ‘Oh, I hope she sends lots of videos.’ It's that idea that it's something lovely to go home to, because cats are incredibly independent, and they don't really care, but also… they do. We just got a kitten yesterday. It’s stupid really, but we were worried Liesl would be lonely.
[Squeal] What’s she called?
Lottie, she’s from the RSPCA in Brighton and has not stopped purring since the minute she got home.
What colour is she?
She’s a tabby, they’re both little rescue tabbies.
We’re in danger of just talking about cats now… How many books are planned in the We Solve Murders series?
I don't know, really. I've done four Thursday Murder Club and there are two more definitely planned. So I don't see why it would be too different to that, really, but I think we have to see. I think that's not up to me. It's up to readers, If they want loads more I will do loads more, because I love the characters. But certainly I would love to write four or five of them, if people will let me.
Have you always loved murder mysteries?
Yeah, I have. I mean, that's why I write them. You must always – like with my TV career – do things that you would watch yourself or you would read yourself. And I've always read crime or murder mysteries, so that’s what I wrote. I like it, because we live in a world where there's an awful lot of problems, and they seem to be fairly intractable and seem to have no solution. And there's a lovely contract you sign in crime fiction which says, ‘Here's an impossible problem, but by the end I promise you there's a solution. I promise you it's all going to be fixed.’ I like that. If you have a murder mystery, you can write about any world that you want. You can have any characters that you want, because you know the journey you're going on. So the question is, who do you spend that journey with? And for me, books are all character. The lovely thing of having this framework of a crime fiction that you know there's a murder, you know we're going to solve it, but let's enjoy the ride with these characters along the way.
Do you think you’d make a good murderer?
People usually ask if I’d make a good detective! I think, like when you watch The Traitors, and you think, ‘I'd be a good traitor’, anyone who thinks they'd be a good murderer would be a bad murderer. There’s so much that could go wrong with a murder – I can't believe you’re making me discuss this – I just think you would overlook something. You would miss something, I'm absolutely sure. So, honestly, my rule for life is, I try to stay away from murder if I can.
That’s probably a good rule…
Listen, let’s not rule it out. But, for now, I have no plans.
But it would be a terrible ethos for some of your characters…
A lot of my income now relies on people being murdered. I’m like a criminal lawyer…
Can you tell us anything about the Thursday Murder Club film?
I've been down to the set a few times. I mean, I’m absolutely keeping my distance from it, and I'm leaving it to them. It’ll be different to the book, and it'll be someone else's vision of the thing. Because a film is very different – it’s two hours long, when a book would probably be seven and a half hours. But watching Chris Columbus direct – he's the nicest guy in the world – watching Helen Mirren and Ben Kingsley and Celia Imrie and Pierce Brosnan act, that's incredible.
Will you be making a cameo?
No, I don't think so. I think I might be too recognisable.
You need a Stormtrooper equivalent in the book, so you could be in costume…
Oh my god, or a Wookie. Stupidly I didn’t write any of those into the story.
Something to bear in mind for TMC book five – and how is that going?
I literally wrote the words ‘Thursday Murder Club’ down on a bit of paper, two days ago. I just started writing my very, very first notes. But I'm really, really looking forward to spending a bit more time with those characters, and having given them a year off, I’m gonna put them through their paces again I think.
You’re obviously very busy – what else are you up to?
We're going to do a play version of The Thursday Murder Club, which I am going to write with a really great writer called Tom Basden. I've got that and the book and more [TV quiz] House of Games. But most of my next few months, I think, will be spent looking after this new kitten. That's the sort of creative endeavour I'm particularly interested in.
We Solve Murders, the new series by Richard Osman, is out now (Viking, £22)