BBC Blogs - TV blog - Richard Osman: My love affair with the quiz show Richard Osman: My love affair with the quiz show Wednesday 15 April 2015, 13:09 Richard Osman introduces BBC Four's Classic Game Shows Collection , a nostalgic assortment of game shows from the BBC archives. Here are a few questions for you: Who is the longest-serving UK TV quiz host of all-time? How many episodes of Countdown have there been? Who created the notorious quiz show flop 24 Hour Quiz? Why have quiz shows remained so popular on British television? I’ll give you the answers to the first three at the end of this introduction. And if you’re thinking about them right now, then you already know the answer to the last one. I love quiz shows, I’ve been making them for many years, and now I have accidentally stumbled into hosting them too. They rarely win Baftas, they never get reviewed in the posh papers, but the enduring ones capture a place in the hearts of the nation in a way that very few shows do. There are a number of reasons for this, but two are particularly key. Firstly they are, by their very nature, incredibly interactive.

Viewers can’t help but play along, whether it’s trying to name the most obscure member of Westlife (Nicky) on Pointless , or punching the air in delight if you ever get a single question correct on University Challenge . I have always likened quizzes to sport for competitive people who are terrible at playing sport, myself included. Some shows I’ve produced have been successful, some spectacularly unsuccessful, but the development process is always the same. You get an idea, a little hook, and then you play it over and over again. You play it with good quizzers, you play it with bad quizzers, just to spot any little holes in the format, anything that seems unfair or confusing. You then make little nips and tucks to address these problems. Usually these little nips and tucks make the format even more complicated, or drag it too far away from the initial concept and the format is abandoned. But very occasionally something comes along that is robust enough to survive the process, and that’s when the ‘play-along’ question becomes key. Is it fun to play, and, much more importantly, is it fun to watch?

I remember pitching The Million Pound Drop to the head of Channel 4, and he loved playing it so much he kept asking more and more colleagues into his office just so he could watch them play it too. That is exactly what makes a hit quiz show. Victoria Coren-Mitchell has hosted 10 series of Only Connect to date The second reason for the success of quizzes is their sheer volume. Quizzes have always been inexpensive and quick to make. As you have the same set for every episode, you could make many, many episodes of Pointless, for example, for the same money and in the same time frame that you could make one episode of a high production drama. Therefore quizzes become a ‘perfect storm’ for channels. Something economical and relatively quick to make, that viewers actually love. For example, two of BBC Two’s highest rating shows, week in, week out, are two of their most low-cost shows to produce: University Challenge and Only Connect . So how does this perfect storm come about? Viewers usually spot low-cost TV a mile off and will sometimes run for cover. Well, quizzes are inexpensive and quick to make, but they are made with great attention to detail and great enthusiasm.

There has always been a wonderful sub-set of people who work in TV, who simply love making quiz shows. Great producers, great format-tinkerers, and, most importantly the great unsung question writers. You might call us geeks, I couldn’t possibly comment. This sheer volume means that quizzes become part of our daily routine. A regular workout for the brain. Every time Countdown started, my Grandad would take out his pen and his notebook, cup of tea by his side, and play along. I know people do the same with Pointless (maybe not with the pen and pad) and that always makes me feel incredibly lucky, and I know he’d be watching if he were still around. That connection with viewers is very special. Kenneth Williams chuckles on the What's My Line? panel, with host David Jacobs in 1974 Watching some of the wonderful archive the BBC has brought together in the BBC Four Classic Game Show Collection proved to me that this has always been the case. Mostly low-cost, but such an utter joy to watch.

It’s impossible to not play along with an episode of Quiz Ball from the 60s, What’s My Line from the 70s or Ask The Family from the 80s. And because they often lack gloss or pizzazz, they also provide a peculiarly moving snapshot of Britain through the years, from the gasps of the What’s My Line studio audience on discovering that a contestant is a Woman Detective, to the wonderful sight of people answering quiz questions while smoking pipes. So I hope you’ll dip in and gain great enjoyment from some of the shows featured. On a side-note, I would like to commend Quiz Ball for having quite the most complicated rules explanation I have ever heard. It takes about three minutes and is utterly incomprehensible. Promise me you’ll treat yourself. David Vine presents the first episode of Quiz Ball in 1966 I’ll leave you with the answers to the questions I set. According to the wonderful ukgameshows.com website the longest running UK TV quiz show host was Magnus Magnusson, who hosted Mastermind for just 10 days shy of 25 years. If you said Bamber Gascoigne, you’ve been unlucky, as Magnus beat him by just eight days!

The record could be under threat soon however, as Jeremy Paxman is in his 21st year as University Challenge host and Sue Barker in her 18th year on A Question Of Sport . Over 6,000, more than any other British TV quiz or game show. The French show on which it was based has clocked up over 20,000 episodes. Weakest Link managed 1,693, and so far Pointless is just over 800, but we’re not planning to give up any time soon. Me. Sorry. Pointless: Alexander Armstrong and Richard Osman on TV's favourite quiz | Media | The Guardian BBC Pointless: Alexander Armstrong and Richard Osman on TV's favourite quiz Alexander Armstrong and co-host Richard Osman aren't the slickest of quiz show hosts – far from it, in fact. But Pointless is a huge, Countdown-killing hit, and about to air its 500th show ‘We make a virtue of the bits where it all collapses’ … Alexander Armstrong (right) with co-host Richard Osman on the set of Pointless.

Photograph: Graeme Robertson for the Guardian Tuesday 4 June 2013 12.32 EDT First published on Tuesday 4 June 2013 12.32 EDT Share on Messenger Close "Coming up with a quiz show is the hardest thing in the world," says Richard Osman , and he should know. "It's like coming up with a brand new sport." Though the co-host of Pointless is now an on-screen celebrity, he has worked behind the scenes in television for two decades. You could call him a quiz show guru. And, sitting with him in his dressing room an hour before filming, I do. He laughs. "If by guru you mean quite old. But yes, I'll take that." As creative director at production company Endemol , Osman is much more than the show's resident know-it-all. "Every morning I get the ratings coming in from the night before for all the shows we produce. I know good news and I know bad news. For most TV shows, it's bad news, because most TV shows fail. But now and then you get a show and you think, oh, look at that. This is interesting." Pointless began life with a simple idea.

"The first thought," says David Flynn, one of the show's co-creators, "was what about reverse Family Fortunes? What if it's all about finding the least obvious answer? That was the thing that intrigued us: rewarding obscure knowledge, while allowing people to also give obvious answers. It felt like you could start to create a quiz which could be sort of highbrow and populist simultaneously, which is quite a rare phenomenon." Osman was never supposed to be on screen. He stood in as co-presenter when Endemol pitched the show. But the BBC liked him. "They said: 'Would you do it?' And I thought: 'Well, why wouldn't I? I know roughly what the job is. I know it's a little show tucked away on BBC2 that's going to disappear after one series.' You know, it was just one of those things I could tick off and say: 'I once presented a TV show.'" Host Alexander Armstrong knew Osman from their student days at Cambridge. "We were in the same college in the same year. I always liked him. He was quite conspicuous. He was very cool, which I wasn't." Armstrong's involvement in Pointless was almost as unlikely as his co-host's.

A year before, he had publicly turned down the role of Countdown presenter , telling the Independent: "If I'm going to be on telly as a presenter every day, well, I think that makes it less likely that people will give me jobs acting or doing comedy. For the next couple of years that's where I want to focus really." "Countdown caught me slightly off-guard," he explains. "I quite liked the idea because it was a job. I mean, that's an income, and that was a time in my life when we'd had one baby and were about to have a second. I was worried about being typecast, but I was worried about having a job. My heart ruled my head on that one and I said: 'Do you know, actually, no, I can't do it. I just don't think I could do that.'" Osman reasoned Armstrong might be up for something similar but less high-profile. "When we were thinking about Pointless we thought, well, it'd be amazing, if he'd do it. I think the fact that it was me he'd be working with kind of sold it to him." "When we found Alexander, that was when all the bits fell into place," says David Flynn.

"There's a real relationship there, which is something that's very difficult to make up. Of course this was at a stage when we were expecting it to be a nice, fun series on BBC2, that might come back once." The first series of Pointless went out on BBC2 at 4.30pm, from August until October 2009, with a respectable but uninspiring average audience of one million viewers. The format has been altered a little since, but the core elements are the same. The goal is to score as few points as possible by finding the least-obvious correct answer. The questions have been asked in advance to a group of 100 people online, who have given every answer they can think of. Contestants – in four teams of two – score points for every person surveyed who gave their answer. The holy grail is a "Pointless Answer", an answer no one else has given, which adds £250 to the jackpot and, in the final round, wins it. Reading on mobile?

Click here to watch Pointless video clip The name Pointless – and all the running gags that come with it; "the pointless column"; "my pointless friend"; the "pointless trophy" – arrived late in the process. "We originally called it Obviously," says David Flynn. But pointless answers were a sticking point. "We used to call that a plegazoid. Which is a made-up word." After 30 episodes, Pointless was renewed for a second run. "It did well enough that you would give it another go, but it was nothing like it is now," says Flynn. "If you'd asked me at that point: 'Do you think this is going to be a primetime Saturday night hit?' I would have said: 'I would be amazed.'" Armstrong had his doubts about the early shows, too. "I remember watching the second series at the gym once and just thinking, Oh God. All the bits where we had fun have been quite carefully edited out. It was all very slick, and all you were left with was a sort of terribly inept game show hosting from me and some fairly dry stuff from Richard. And I remember going to Dave Flynn and saying: 'Can't all that stuff stay in?

The fun stuff?' "We had a big talk about it after the second series. We had five sets of contestants and we got it down to four, so one fewer round in the show, which meant there was much more time for us to muck about. And it meant that Richard and I could actually make a virtue of the bits where we go off and it all collapses." Regular viewers will know it collapses often. The frequent awkwardness between host and contestants or co-host is unaffected and unintentional, for which Armstrong blames himself. "I'm staggered at how bad I am at this particular job. I'm rubbish at it. I'm hopeless. If you watch someone who's really good at doing these sorts of shows, they're much slicker." But it is, says Osman, part of the charm. "I think it has a real Britishness to it." Back in his office, Osman was keeping a close eye on the viewing figures. "During that second series, it started to get a bit of traction. And then it started creeping up, and TV shows never do that. It just doesn't happen. I thought: this has got the makings of something that actually might run for longer than I suspected.

And then, third series, it went through the roof. And then we were on BBC1, and then it was Saturday night celeb versions." The show is now in its ninth series. An average of 3.6 million people tune in every day to watch, and prime-time spin-off Pointless Celebrities is in its fifth series. Thursday's show – on BBC1, at 5.15pm – will be the 500th episode. The 600th has already been recorded. Has the show's success confirmed Armstrong's fear of being typecast? "Only in terms of time commitment. That's my only regret. By and large I can't go up for things or, if I do, invariably I'm unavailable for them. So I read fantastic scripts for things that I then discover I'm not going to be able to do." Ironically, Pointless now dwarfs the show Armstrong turned down. April's viewing figures for Countdown were its lowest ever: less than half a million. Pointless is, in a sense, a natural successor. "I always felt when I used to watch Countdown it felt like being part of a club," says Osman.

"You just felt part of a lovely group of people who were doing the same thing at the same time of day. And I hope that Pointless feels a bit like that." Could Pointless, like Countdown, survive with a different pair of presenters? "I think it could," says Osman. "It's a really lovely vehicle for two people who get along. I feel immensely fortunate that me and Xander are those two people in its present incarnation. And I'm not going to willingly give it up, because I love it." Armstrong agrees without a moment's hesitation. "I don't know about Richard, but it could thrive with someone better than me." But would he be happy to keep his Pointless job for another 500 Pointless episodes? "I think I'd be happy to do this for as long as – " He pauses, searching for the right words, a little awkward. "I mean, I really genuinely enjoy doing this." Richard Osman | The Guardian browse all sections close Richard Osman Richard Osman is co-host of BBC1's hit quiz show Pointless with Alexander Armstrong.

He is also creative director for Endemol UK May 2014 To celebrate the 2014 Arqiva British Academy Television awards, Richard Osman reveals what TV has done for him, and why Countryfile is a bigger deal than The Da Vinci Code Published: 11 May 2014 Yes, many things and people in life are intensely annoying, and the natural reaction to them is sheer, volcanic hatred. But most of them are also entirely inconsequential, so why bother? Published: 31 Jan 2014 Test your knowledge of the obscure names and weird stories that made the news this year. Your quizmaster: the man with all the answers on the hit BBC game show Published: 23 Dec 2013 Richard Osman: From watching Breaking Bad to climbing Machu Picchu to reading Great Expectations, the 'must do before you die' list is getting too long. You could always just watch Pointless instead Published: 5 Oct 2013 · January 17 at 4:08am · Thank you all for your very kind comments and for watching the 1000th episode of Pointless yesterday.

If you missed it, you can catch it on the BBC iPlayer for ...the next 29 days. It was a thrill to be invited back for a record-breaking third visit. It was also great to have an opportunity to raise money and awareness for two charities we both care about; MIND and Huntington's Disease Association. We became aware of the latter after being asked by Jacqui Harrison to help with her campaigns, #hounds4Huntingtons and #SybilOnTour . Jacqui is a tireless campaigner for Huntington's Disease Association whilst also being a full-time carer for her brother Mark. If you'd like to know more about these two charities, or, even better, make a donation, please click on the links. And once again, thank you for watching and being so supportive of our daft efforts. xxx Richard Osman - IMDb IMDb 17 January 2017 4:34 PM, UTC NEWS Richard Osman was born on November 28, 1970 in Billericay, Essex, England. He is known for his work on Pointless (2009), Pointless Celebrities (2010) and Beat the Nation (2004).

See full bio » Born: Famous Directors: From Sundance to Prominence From Christopher Nolan to Quentin Tarantino and every Coen brother in between, many of today's most popular directors got their start at the Sundance Film Festival . Here's a list of some of the biggest names to go from Sundance to Hollywood prominence. a list of 142 people created 24 Jun 2013 a list of 4 people created 9 months ago a list of 1955 people created 4 months ago Do you have a demo reel? Add it to your IMDbPage How much of Richard Osman's work have you seen? User Polls Pointless Celebrities Himself - Assistant / Himself / Himself - Presenter (2010-2016) - Episode #1.1 (2005) ...

(executive producer) 2011-2013 10 O'Clock Live (TV Series) (executive producer - 33 episodes) 2010 Alternative Election Night (TV Movie) (executive producer) 2004 Ban This Filth (TV Series) (executive producer - 6 episodes) 1999 Boyz Unlimited (TV Series) (producer) Hide - Episode #10.5 (2014) ... (additional questions) 2011/II Winter Wipeout (TV Series) (script editor) Total Wipeout (TV Series) (script editor - 36 episodes, 2009 - 2011) (program associate - 9 episodes, 2009) 1999 Boyz Unlimited (TV Series) (co-creator) 1995 For Amusement Only (TV Series) (series writer - 12 episodes) 2015 Danger Mouse (TV Series) Professor Strontium P.

Jellyfishowitz 2014 Not Going Out (TV Series) Richard Osman 2016-2017 Insert Name Here (TV Series) Himself - Team Captain - Ben (2017) ... Himself - Team Captain - Mary (2017) ... Himself - Team Captain - Alex (2017) ... Himself - Team Captain - Christmas Special (2016) ... Himself - Team Captain - Chris (2016) ... Himself - Team Captain 2010-2016 Pointless Celebrities (TV Series) Himself - Assistant / Himself / Himself - Presenter 2016 The Last Leg (TV Series) Himself - Guest 2014-2016 The One Show (TV Series) Himself / Himself - Guest 2015 Loose Women (TV Series) Himself 2015 Alternative Election Night (TV Movie) Himself - Presenter 2014-2015 World Championship Snooker (TV Series) Himself - Potless Presenter / Himself - Celebrity Player / Himself - Celebrity Predictions / ... - Episode #1.4 (2014) ...

Himself - Co-creator & Co-host, Pointless - Episode #1.3 (2014) ... Himself - Co-creator & Co-host, Pointless - Episode #1.2 (2014) ... Himself - Co-creator & Co-host, Pointless 2014 All About TWO (TV Movie) Himself 2014 Room 101 (TV Series) Himself 2013 Doctor Who Live: The Afterparty (TV Movie documentary) Himself (uncredited) 2013 The Boat Race (TV Series) Himself - Guest 2012 Only Connect (TV Series) Himself - Fowls 2012 10 O'Clock Live (TV Series) Himself - Episode #46.11 (2013) ... Himself - Guest Presenter 2015 Backchat (TV Series) Did You Know? Personal Quote: The overnights answer all the questions that can sometimes leave us baffled about television. Why did that show I love get axed? Why does that show I hate keep returning? How does Piers Morgan keep getting work?

See more » Trivia: The first album he bought was "Kings of the Wild Frontier" by Adam and the Ants (by a remarkable coincidence, that was also Alexander Armstrong 's first album). See more » Trademark: TV's Richard Osman tells Mail on Sunday about his eye condition | Level Playing Field Transport and Travel TV's Richard Osman tells Mail on Sunday about his eye condition ‘My eyes are so wobbly that trying to read an autocue is POINTLESS': Richard Osman reveals why nystagmus has helped make him a star... and a 'weird crush' for fans Richard Osman has been called the guru of the TV quiz show. For the past 20 years, it has been impossible to turn on the television without seeing something he dreamt up, wrote or produced. From the satirical Have I Got News For You and Whose Line Is It Anyway to crowd-pleasers such as Total Wipeout, Million Pound Drop and Deal Or No Deal, he's been involved in them all. For the past 12 years, the 6ft 7in inch Osman has worked for TV company Endemol, of Big Brother fame, which he has helped shape into the biggest production company in the world.

Now aged 42, Osman has moved in front of the camera, co-hosting more than 600 episodes of the BBC teatime hit quiz show Pointless with his friend Alexander Armstrong. It attracts a stalwart three million viewers daily and has won him an army of female admirers who crowned the bespectacled, toothy Osman their top 'Weird Crush' of 2011. With such a pedigree in TV, it might seem strange that last month Osman sent a tweet saying he was extremely nervous about hosting Have I Got News For You for the first time. When the show went on air, a die-hard fan noticed Osman shaking slightly at the start and asked if he'd been drunk. He hadn't, and nor was he nervous. Osman has nystagmus, an eye condition that dramatically reduces his vision. He was born with it and there is no cure. It meant that when filming Have I Got News For You he had little chance of being able to read the autocue, just a few feet away. 'I also find looking directly at the camera pretty difficult,' he explains. What viewers were actually witnessing was a neurological battle. One part of Osman's brain was telling his eyes to look at the camera.

The other was then allowing them to slip sideways. Each slip and correction causes the eyes to flicker. What is so astonishing about nystagmus is that this happens at lightning speed. Within a fraction of a second, the battle starts again, over and over. When Osman tried to look at the camera, the effort he put into trying to move his eyes back to the front led his head to appear as if it was subtly shaking. 'Staring at a fixed point when your eyes are constantly moving can make you feel nauseous and you want to look away,' he adds. 'I prefer my head and body to be off-centre, like in Pointless.' Strangely, people with nystagmus cannot see their eyes flicker, and Osman has never noticed it in either a mirror or when he sees himself on screen. Put simply, sufferers cannot see this level of detail. Given the effects that nystagmus has, Osman's success in a visual medium would seem all the more impressive. But he counters this argument, saying it has played to his advantage. 'I don't think I'd have the career I have now if I didn't have poor eyesight.

When I am editing a TV programme, there is no point asking me about a certain camera angle or the lighting. I can't really see it. I want to talk about the feel of the show. 'I've found that while everyone else is thinking about what the set looks like, I am thinking hold on, that joke did not work or that relationship between those two people is not where it should be, and that is all I am focusing on, which is a useful skill.' Nystagmus affects one in 1,000 people in this country. Experts still don't understand what triggers it. The result is eyes that relentlessly move to and fro, or up and down and, in rare cases, round and round. It means the eyes have less time to focus on what is in front of them because they quickly slip sideways. Anything more than a few feet away is rather blurry and detail is lost. It also makes it hard to see a small, fast-moving object - such as a ball - as it whizzes past. Many also struggle to spot the tiny visual clues we give in expressions, from a twinkle in the eye to a momentary frown.

Incredibly however, those born with nystagmus do not see the world as constantly shaking. The brain manages to 'edit' the bit when the eyes slip sideways and translate the remainder into the same, still world that the rest of us live in. Osman grew up in Sussex with his mother Brenda, 72, who also has nystagmus, and his older brother Mat, bassist of the rock band Suede, who does not. His mother was instrumental in making him believe he could do whatever he chose in life. She allowed him to sit close to the television because she understood it allowed him to see detail that he would miss in everyday life. He was instantly enthralled, and this love affair with TV has never stopped. She also never told him that his childhood dream of becoming a policeman would be impossible with his poor eyesight. The reality of what she felt was, of course, hidden from the young Richard. 'Nystagmus was never brought up in terms of what you can and cannot do,' he says. 'My mum never, ever made a big deal of it.

It was only when I first had kids, when I had a daughter 15 years ago, that I remember my mum saying, after all the excitement had died down, “Have you noticed anything about her eyes?” I said, “No. Nothing at all,” and there was this look of relief on her face. 'I thought, you've been keeping that bottled up for 27 years and you've never told me you thought it was a big deal. 'What a wonderful mum you've been that you have been upset about this for so long and you have never, ever shown it to me, to not make it an issue for me and it worked.' Osman was never bullied at school over his poor eyesight and refused to be 'that kid who sits at the front'. He learnt to sit back and just listen. Despite having no extra time in exams to compensate for his eyesight, he won a place reading Politics and Sociology at Trinity College, Cambridge. After graduating, he immediately moved into researching and then writing for TV. 'I don't think people realise what an important medium TV is, especially for anyone who has something that restricts their life,' he says.

'It's why I absolutely love TV so much, because of what it can bring to people.' Osman is separated and has two children, a daughter aged 15 and a son aged 13, who live in Cambridge with their mother. He says his visual impairment has also made him kinder, which has in turn made him popular on Pointless. I hope that all my life I have been on the side of the underdog, because I always slightly feel like one,' he says. 'I always knew the world was going on a bit without me. I know lots of people feel like that, either because of physical limitations or emotionally. And that is what I love about being on Pointless, loving that wonderful feeling of Britishness and kindness and underdogness that you get in people. A lot of that comes through having what is supposed to be a disability but is maybe an ability.' It can also offer him unique comedy moments. 'I was in a hotel in New York recently and at the end of a long corridor was this amazing piece of modern art. As I walked towards it, I thought, "Wow, I'm absolutely going to find out who that is by as it's gorgeous, red and white swirls." It was beautiful.

But when I was a few feet away, I realised it was a fire hose curled up on the wall.' Osman admits that being visually impaired can also be lonely. He loves sport but cannot play ball games. At school he could never see the cricket ball as it hurtled towards him, so he quickly realised his limitations, sticking to close-up sports such as pool and darts. He watches Fulham FC but cannot make out the players or the ball, until they are right in front of him. When he tells people he has nystagmus, they rarely understand why stronger glasses won't help. The trademark dark, square glasses he wears simply correct short sightedness but do nothing for the flicker. And like most sufferers, he cannot drive because his eyes are unable to gauge a busy road fast enough. He reads slowly too, finding it tricky to scan words across a page. He also worries about blanking people, both colleagues and fans. He says he cannot recognise faces of friends just across the street and walks past oblivious. He can spot his daughter from a little further away because he recognises the way she walks and her long black hair.

Pointless star Richard Osman on the show that made him a TV heart-throb | Radio Times Twitter Pointless star Richard Osman on the show that made him a TV heart-throb "It’s 5.15, we’ll all get together and have a bit of fun," Osman tells Alison Graham of the BBC quiz show phenomenon Comments Alison Graham 12:39 PM, 10 June 2013 Richard Osman’s 14-year-old daughter is mortified by her dad’s new-found status as a heart-throb. Osman, Alexander Armstrong’s “Pointless friend” on the hit BBC1 quiz show, was voted a celebrity magazine’s Weird Crush in 2011 and regularly receives marriage proposals on Twitter. “My daughter is appalled by it at all times, but you know you have to appal your 14-year-old daughter otherwise you’re not doing your job as a father.

I’ve got a 12-year-old son but all he cares about is his PlayStation, which is fine.” Fame and unlikely sex-symbol status came out of the blue for 42-year-old Osman five years ago when, as UK creative director of the TV production behemoth Endemol, he pitched an idea for a new quiz show to the BBC. “As always with quizzes, when you try to sell them [to a channel] you have to play them through, because they are impossible to explain. It gets very complicated, so I played the co-host.” When the run-through was over, the BBC asked if he’d consider doing the job for real when Pointless made it to air. “I said yes; I was very chuffed. A small run was commissioned for BBC2 so I thought, ‘That’s fun, at least I can say I’ve made a TV show.’ Four years and more than 500 episodes later, we are still here.” Pointless, which quickly moved to BBC1, was an immediate hit and has a huge, devoted following of well over three million at 5.15pm, which, in many households, is Pointless time.

Everything stops for 45 minutes as fans rattle their brains to think of the most obscure, correct answers to questions about anything and everything, from “words ending in –low” to “WTA number one ranked tennis players”. I meet Osman at Endemol’s offices in west London. He is unnaturally tall – 6ft 7in – so tall that I have to tip my head back a little bit as I say hello and shake hands. It’s like looking at a bookish owl at the top of a telegraph pole. He’s cheerful and friendly, with a sunny outlook on life. His favourite word is “lovely”. Just the day before, he and Armstrong filmed this year’s Pointless Christmas special. “Wizzard played I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day, the real Santa was there, as were the Chuckle Brothers, and Xander and I wore Christmas jumpers.” Xander is, of course, the friendly diminutive for his big mate Alexander Armstrong. The pair’s easy-going, softly insulting friendship lies right at the heart of the Pointless appeal. It’s the dynamic that keeps people tuning in. They’ve known each other for years, since both were at Cambridge University.

“After we left, I went into telly and he went into comedy. We’d bump into each other every now and again and have a little chat. I’ve always wanted to work with him. When Pointless came up there had been talk in the papers about Xander doing Countdown, though I don’t know how true that was. But the team here was aware he might want to do a daytime show so it approached him.” It’s impossible to imagine Pointless in any other hands and Osman is effusive about his friend and co-host. “He has so much to do in terms of explaining the show and keeping it on track, he’s effortlessly funny, the contestants love him and he lets me take the mick out of him something dreadful, all day, every day. None of it is scripted – we record four shows a day, there’s no time for that – we just throw stuff out there.” As Armstrong’s “Pointless friend”, Osman sits at a desk with a fake laptop (“It’s a prop”) to check contestants’ answers.

The aim is to secure a pointless answer to a question first asked of 100 people in 100 seconds, to win the daily jackpot and, most importantly, get your hands on a “coveted Pointless trophy”. Contestants play in pairs and it’s always thrilling for snobs like me to sneer at the holes in people’s general knowledge (my personal Pointless Waterloo round involved Robert Redford films; no one had heard of Robert Redford). But neither Armstrong nor Osman is ever unkind, sarky or insulting to contestants. Neither will Osman be drawn into spilling the beans on contestants who might have got on his wick. “I like every single one of them equally.” Both he and Armstrong love the participants. “If you didn’t like people, doing four shows a day would drive you mad. But I always try to stay aware of the fact that they are only going to be on Pointless twice, so we have to make it special so they can have fun. Everyone constantly surprises you – it gives you such a brilliant view of human nature, all of these people with hidden depths.” Come on, you must see an awful lot of thickos, I wonder.

He’ll only go this far and no further: “People can come along, especially students, who want to make an impact and subvert the game and you think, “Ah, no, not on my watch” and within one question we bring them onside. Whenever students are on they are either much worse than you would expect, or they are brilliant. There is never any middle ground.” But what about these 100 people to whom Pointless gives 100 seconds to answer questions. They must feature a goodly proportion of lame-brains, considering their lack of knowledge about, say, politics. Besides, who are these mysterious 100 people? “It’s all done online. We go to an online polling company whose job it is to take a representative sample of the population and they ask the questions. They are random people who don’t know they are doing it for Pointless, though I suspect if you are a Pointless viewer and you were asked, you’d work it out very quickly.” The questions are compiled by a group of eight people “who spend their lives scouring lists and finding new lists. Verification takes for ever; you can’t just go to Wikipedia and say, ‘This is right’.

We have to get three separate sources [to verify] everything. I get people on Twitter saying to me, ‘You got a fact wrong about this or that’. I always look into it and the people on Twitter are always wrong and the Pointless team is always right.” And talking of Twitter, what about those marriage proposals? Osman is single, so is he tempted? “I am almost certainly not going to say yes to a Twitter marriage proposal.” Sorry ladies. You’ll have to continue worshipping from afar with your weekdays-only 5.15pm date, a civilised time for civilised people. Osman continues: “The truth is, almost everyone in the world is lovely. But the world is ruined for us by the sociopaths and those who aren’t lovely. They are the ones who make all the noise and make the news. The rest of us just think, ‘It’s 5.15, we’ll all get together and have a bit of fun’.” Richard Osman reveals why nystagmus has helped make him a star | Daily Mail Online comments Richard Osman has been called the guru of the TV quiz show.

For the past 20 years, it has been impossible to turn on the television without seeing something he dreamt up, wrote or produced. From the satirical Have I Got News For You and Whose Line Is It Anyway to crowd-pleasers such as Total Wipeout, Million Pound Drop and Deal Or No Deal, he's been involved in them all. For the past 12 years, the 6ft 7in inch Osman has worked for TV company Endemol, of Big Brother fame, which he has helped shape into the biggest production company in the world. Now aged 42, Osman has moved in front of the camera, co-hosting more than 600 episodes of the BBC teatime hit quiz show Pointless with his friend Alexander Armstrong. It attracts a stalwart three million viewers daily and has won him an army of female admirers who crowned the bespectacled, toothy Osman their top 'Weird Crush' of 2011. With such a pedigree in TV, it might seem strange that last month Osman sent a tweet saying he was extremely nervous about hosting Have I Got News For You for the first time.

When filming Have I Got News For You Osman, 42, had little chance of being able to read the autocue When the show went on air, a die-hard fan noticed Osman shaking slightly at the start and asked if he'd been drunk. He hadn't, and nor was he nervous. Osman has nystagmus, an eye condition that dramatically reduces his vision. He was born with it and there is no cure. It meant that when filming Have I Got News For You he had little chance of being able to read the autocue, just a few feet away. 'I also find looking directly at the camera pretty difficult,' he explains. What viewers were actually witnessing was a neurological battle. One part of Osman's brain was telling his eyes to look at the camera. The other was then allowing them to slip sideways. RELATED ARTICLES Share this article Share Each slip and correction causes the eyes to flicker. What is so astonishing about nystagmus is that this happens at lightning speed. Within a fraction of a second, the battle starts again, over and over. When Osman tried to look at the camera, the effort he put into trying to move his eyes back to the front led his head to appear as if it was subtly shaking.

'Staring at a fixed point when your eyes are constantly moving can make you feel nauseous and you want to look away,' he adds. 'I prefer my head and body to be off-centre, like in Pointless.' Strangely, people with nystagmus cannot see their eyes flicker, and Osman has never noticed it in either a mirror or when he sees himself on screen. Put simply, sufferers cannot see this level of detail. He says staring at a fixed point when his eyes are constantly moving can make him feel nauseous and want to look away. He prefers his head and body to be off-centre, like in Pointless Given the effects that nystagmus has, Osman's success in a visual medium would seem all the more impressive. But he counters this argument, saying it has played to his advantage. 'I don't think I'd have the career I have now if I didn't have poor eyesight. When I am editing a TV programme, there is no point asking me about a certain camera angle or the lighting. I can't really see it. I want to talk about the feel of the show.

'I've found that while everyone else is thinking about what the set looks like, I am thinking hold on, that joke did not work or that relationship between those two people is not where it should be, and that is all I am focusing on, which is a useful skill.' Nystagmus affects one in 1,000 people in this country. Experts still don't understand what triggers it. The result is eyes that relentlessly move to and fro, or up and down and, in rare cases, round and round. It means the eyes have less time to focus on what is in front of them because they quickly slip sideways. Anything more than a few feet away is rather blurry and detail is lost. It also makes it hard to see a small, fast-moving object - such as a ball - as it whizzes past. Many also struggle to spot the tiny visual clues we give in expressions, from a twinkle in the eye to a momentary frown. Incredibly however, those born with nystagmus do not see the world as constantly shaking. The brain manages to 'edit' the bit when the eyes slip sideways and translate the remainder into the same, still world that the rest of us live in.

Osman grew up in Sussex with his mother Brenda, 72, who also has nystagmus, and his older brother Mat, bassist of the rock band Suede, who does not. Osman was never bullied at school over his poor eyesight and refused to be 'that kid who sits at the front' His mother was instrumental in making him believe he could do whatever he chose in life. She allowed him to sit close to the television because she understood it allowed him to see detail that he would miss in everyday life. He was instantly enthralled, and this love affair with TV has never stopped. She also never told him that his childhood dream of becoming a policeman would be impossible with his poor eyesight. The reality of what she felt was, of course, hidden from the young Richard. 'Nystagmus was never brought up in terms of what you can and cannot do,' he says. 'My mum never, ever made a big deal of it. It was only when I first had kids, when I had a daughter 15 years ago, that I remember my mum saying, after all the excitement had died down, “Have you noticed anything about her eyes?” I said, “No.

Nothing at all,” and there was this look of relief on her face. 'I thought, you've been keeping that bottled up for 27 years and you've never told me you thought it was a big deal. 'What a wonderful mum you've been that you have been upset about this for so long and you have never, ever shown it to me, to not make it an issue for me and it worked.' Osman was never bullied at school over his poor eyesight and refused to be 'that kid who sits at the front'. He learnt to sit back and just listen. Despite having no extra time in exams to compensate for his eyesight, he won a place reading Politics and Sociology at Trinity College, Cambridge. After graduating, he immediately moved into researching and then writing for TV. 'I don't think people realise what an important medium TV is, especially for anyone who has something that restricts their life,' he says. 'It's why I absolutely love TV so much, because of what it can bring to people.' Osman is separated and has two children, a daughter aged 15 and a son aged 13, who live in Cambridge with their mother.

He says his visual impairment has also made him kinder, which has in turn made him popular on Pointless. Flickering starts in a baby's first weeks Dr Jon Erichsen, a visual neuroscientist and director of a research unit for nystagmus at Cardiff University, says: 'It is probable that nystagmus begins when something in a baby's eye stops their brain from being able to clearly pick up images in the first weeks of life. 'We know there is a gene that can delay eye development during this period of life. This in turn causes the eyes to flicker at about eight weeks old, or sometimes earlier. Even if the fault in the eye heals itself, by this point the flicker has been hard-wired into the brain. 'Most neuroscientists now believe that there is a window of opportunity shortly after birth in which nystagmus could be prevented from starting. 'If we learn to identify children at risk, either through their genes or other signs that something is not right, then we might be able to intervene.

'When you think about children born with a lazy eye - known as strabismus - when one eye turns inwards, this is now easily and cheaply cured as the children wear a patch over the strong eye forcing the weak eye to look forward. Eventually the brain rewires itself to keep it straight. 'Preventing nystagmus might be similarly simple. We just need to do the research to find out exactly what the solution is.' While the charity Nystagmus Network is trying to raise awareness of the condition, a new charity called IN -Vision wants to raise the £100,000 a year needed for key research. At present, little money goes towards nystagmus because scientists and charities prefer to concentrate on more serious eye problems that lead to blindness. 'I hope that all my life I have been on the side of the underdog, because I always slightly feel like one,' he says. 'I always knew the world was going on a bit without me. I know lots of people feel like that, either because of physical limitations or emotionally. And that is what I love about being on Pointless, loving that wonderful feeling of Britishness and kindness and underdogness that you get in people.

A lot of that comes through having what is supposed to be a disability but is maybe an ability.' It can also offer him unique comedy moments. 'I was in a hotel in New York recently and at the end of a long corridor was this amazing piece of modern art. As I walked towards it, I thought, "Wow, I'm absolutely going to find out who that is by as it's gorgeous, red and white swirls." It was beautiful. But when I was a few feet away, I realised it was a fire hose curled up on the wall.' Osman admits that being visually impaired can also be lonely. He loves sport but cannot play ball games. At school he could never see the cricket ball as it hurtled towards him, so he quickly realised his limitations, sticking to close-up sports such as pool and darts. He watches Fulham FC but cannot make out the players or the ball, until they are right in front of him. When he tells people he has nystagmus, they rarely understand why stronger glasses won't help. The trademark dark, square glasses he wears simply correct short sightedness but do nothing for the flicker.

And like most sufferers, he cannot drive because his eyes are unable to gauge a busy road fast enough. He reads slowly too, finding it tricky to scan words across a page. He also worries about blanking people, both colleagues and fans. He says he cannot recognise faces of friends just across the street and walks past oblivious. He can spot his daughter from a little further away because he recognises the way she walks and her long black hair. But Osman, as usual, is positive. 'I can see the huge benefits it has brought me. I'm probably a nicer person for having it, I know that is true. I'm better at my job. It has genuinely brought me many, many things, this lack of being able to see what is going on.' Given all that, would he have it cured? The speed of his reply says it all. 'In a heartbeat.' This week will see the first global awareness day for nystagmus organised by the charity Nystagmus Network. 'Wobbly Wednesday' on November 6 aims to raise funds for research and support for sufferers.

For more information and help, go to nystagmusnet.org and in-vision.org.uk Learn and talk about Richard Osman, Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge, BBC people, Endemol, English television directors Television[ edit ] Since 2009, Osman has co-presented the BBC One teatime quiz show Pointless with host Alexander Armstrong , He created the show where he is jokingly known as Armstrong's "pointless friend". Having previously worked exclusively in behind-the-camera roles, Osman got the job as co-presenter/assistant when he pitched the idea for the show to a panel of BBC daytime heads, taking the role of the assistant in the demonstration. [5] [6] Osman has also appeared multiple times on Would I Lie to You? and Let's Play Darts . In 2014, Osman began presenting a new BBC Two quiz show called Two Tribes . A second series began airing in February 2015. [10] Since October 2014, Osman guest presented numerous episodes of The One Show with Alex Jones . Since 2016, Osman has been a team captain on the BBC Two comedy panel show Insert Name Here , hosted by Sue Perkins .

A second series was commissioned to begin airing in January 2017. In February and December 2016, Osman presented Dragons' Den: Pitches to Riches, two special episodes which looked back over the past thirteen series of Dragons' Den on BBC Two . Since 2016, Osman has presented Child Genius on Channel 4 . [11] Osman acts as script editor for BBC One's Total Wipeout and in 1999, created and wrote the Channel 4 sitcom Boyz Unlimited with David Walliams and Matt Lucas . In 2005, Osman co-created and co-wrote the animated Channel 4 sitcom Bromwell High . [12] [13] [14] The 100 Most Pointless Things in the World was published in the UK by Coronet, an imprint of Hodder & Stoughton, in October 2012. Personal life[ edit ] Osman is a season ticket holder at Fulham F.C. [15] and has two children from a previous relationship; a daughter, Ruby (born 1998), and a son (born 2000).

His older brother Mat is a founding member and bassist in the band Suede and produced music for 8 Out of 10 Cats and You Have Been Watching! On 6 December 2011, Osman became an "unlikely heartthrob" after winning Heat 's Weirdest Crush Award. [16] Original courtesy of Wikipedia: — Please support Wikipedia. This page uses Creative Commons Licensed content from Wikipedia . A portion of the proceeds from advertising on Digplanet goes to supporting Wikipedia. We're sorry, but there's no news about "Richard Osman" right now. Limit to books that you can completely read online Include partial books (book previews) Oops, we seem to be having trouble contacting Twitter Support Wikipedia A portion of the proceeds from advertising on Digplanet goes to supporting Wikipedia. Please add your support for Wikipedia! Searchlight Group Digplanet also receives support from Searchlight Group. Visit Searchlight Copyright © 2009-2016 Digparty. All rights reserved.

Richard Osman: Alexander Armstrong is cleverer than me but he's a bit posh | Metro News Richard Osman: Alexander Armstrong is cleverer than me but he’s a bit posh metrowebukmetro Tuesday 23 Oct 2012 2:31 pm Pointless quiz master Richard Osman, 41, talks to Metro about his TV sidekick Alexander Armstrong, his impressive Twitter following and how it felt to be named Weird Crush of 2011. Pointless host Richard Osman was named Heat magazine’s Weird Crush of 2011 (Picture: Darren Goff/GoffPhotos.com) Pointless is as big a hit as Countdown was in its heyday. What’s the appeal? Smart people love it because there are lots of obscure answers and normal quiz fans love it because you can always have a go at everything. But I hope it feels like a bit of a club as well – there’s lots of mucking around and joking about. It’s not a mean show. Granted, it’s not University Challenge, but what goes through your mind when contestants give really stupid answers? You do get stupid answers, you really do.

Sometimes, to be fair, it’s because there’s a lot of pressure being out there. But sometimes people just say things where you think: ‘I honestly don’t mind that you think Gordon Brown is a Tory – I’m sure you do other things that are very useful. But don’t go on a quiz show, that would be my only note.’ Fans love your genial banter with Alexander Armstrong. Are you really as pally off-screen? I love Xander to bits but he’s so posh – you can almost endlessly wind him up, which is great. And I’ve known him a long time – 20 years, since Cambridge. I did sociology and politics there. He did English because he’s a bit cleverer than me. Who has the biggest Twitter following? I’ve got about 50,000 followers, Xander has about 100,000. If anyone at Metro wants to follow me, we’ll see if I can’t catch up with Xander one day. He stays about 50,000 ahead. What’s on your famous Pointless computer? There’s nothing on it, it’s just a prop.

It’s one of those TV things where people think you can’t have an empty desk. And it gives me an air of authority. I have the answers written down for me. I’m always making little notes on the bits of paper on my desk. And I doodle. A lot. I find it very calming. If anyone kept hold of all the bits of paper, I might be locked up. What have you learnt about the British public’s general knowledge? Anyone that was famous in the 1970s or 1980s is gonna be famous forever. People like Chas and Dave, Eddie ‘The Eagle’ Edwards, Steve Davis – they get big scores all the time. Books and politics, on the other hand, people know nothing about. We’ve had a few questions on art, which were probably the lowest-scoring questions we’ve ever had. What people actually do most of the time is watch telly, if they’re really honest. Are you invited to lots of quizzes? Whenever I turn up to pub quizzes now, I see people going: ‘Urgh, that’s the guy who knows everything.’ Of course I don’t know everything. They almost think you’re cheating by turning up.

The celebrity edition of the show has recently returned. Who has been your favourite celeb from previous series? Brian Blessed was brilliant because he’s just a lunatic. He was on with his daughter, which was lovely because rather than just seeing Brian Blessed do what Brian Blessed does, you also see his long-suffering daughter and you think, right, you have to spend Christmas with this guy… You were Heat’s Weird Crush of 2011. How was that? That was weird. Somewhere in the middle of amazing and awful. Suddenly I find myself doing a photo shoot in a gold lamé jacket and I think, that didn’t used to happen to me three years ago when I was just a TV producer. If that was your whole life, that would be awful. I think just being a TV presenter, you must lose sight of any sort of reality because you’re very infantilised and cossetted. I can go back to my producing day job, where I’m looking after other people. I remember what the real world is. You stand at a mighty 6ft 7in. What’s the best and worst thing about being so tall? The best and worst thing is probably the same – it makes you very memorable.

Sometimes that’s incredibly useful and people come up to me and start conversations about it, and I really like that. But sometimes I think, you know what? I want to keep my head down and be invisible today and you can’t ever do that. Some people just shout out of cars and tell you how tall you are and you think, you know what, I do know. Telling a tall person they’re tall is one of the most pointless things you can do.Sharon Lougher Pointless is on weekdays on BBC1, with Pointless Celebrities on Saturdays. The Pointless book, The 100 Most Pointless Things In The World, is out now. More

Question: On which quiz show does Richard Osman appear?
Answer: POINTLESS