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Richard Osman has very famous 90s rock star brother in one of UK’s top bands
House of Games star Richard Osman has become a household name but many don’t know that his brother is also an icon of the Britpop music scene.
Richard rose to fame as the genius fact checker for the BBC quiz show Pointless, working alongside the Masked Singer’s Alexander Armstrong.
He’s branched into larger presenting roles on House of Games and Two Tribes as well as being a regular panelist on Insert Name Here and The Fake News Show.
The 53-year-old author releases his new murder mystery novel – We Solve Murders – today, and his hit book The Thursday Murder Club is being made into a Netflix film.
Thursday Murder Club is set to be directed by Chris Columbus, the visionary behind Harry Potter, Mrs Doubtfire, and Home Alone.
The cast is just as impressive Dame Helen Mirren, Sir Ben Kingsley, and James Bond himself, Pierce Brosnan, are all attached to the film.
But while Richard’s writing career is taking off from best-selling lists and onto the screen, not many people know has an older brother named Mat Osman.
Mat’s name may be familiar to anyone who listened to the charts in the 90s as the other Osman is a massive music star.
To this day, the 56-year-old is the bassist in chart-dominating Suede, who in 1993 released the fastest-selling debut album in almost ten years.
Is Richard Osman’s brother in Suede?
Suede, which included Mat, singer Brett Anderson, and guitarist Justine Frischmann, was part of the Britpop ‘big four’ alongside Oasis, Blur, and Pulp.
Forming in 1989, only Mat and Brett remain of the original founding lineup with drummer Simon Gilbert, Richard Oakes, and Neil Codling.
The band is still active and in 2022 supported the Manic Street Preachers on a tour around the US, plus dates in Canada and performing at the Formula 1 Singapore Grand Prix.
Richard has previously said how much of a fan of Suede he is, telling The Douglas Anderson Show: ‘I have always been a fan. And then it broke for them very, very big in the early 90s, and it was amazing.’
They went on hiatus in 2003, with Mat then providing music for TV shows like 8 Out of 10 Cats and You Have Been Watching before returning to the band in 2010.
Writing runs in the family as Mat also has written novels, including The Ruins and The Ghost Theatre.
Who are their parents?
The boys were raised by their single mother, Brenda Wright, after their dad David Osman left when Richard was nine years old.
Richard has said the split derailed him and is something he’s spent much of his life healing from.
‘It was the worst thing that ever happened to me,’ Richard previously told The Mirror. ‘He just left and I didn’t see him again for 20 years – that’s hard.
‘When you’re a kid growing up you’re all right so long as you have a parent who loves and cares for you. It is only when you get older that you realise you really missed that male role model.’
Brenda went to teacher training college but money was hard to come by as she raised her two boys alone until she landed a full-time job.
Despite the difficulty in their upbringing, Mat and Richard are very close and the Suede legend shared: ‘The biggest difference between my world and his is that Rick has no interest in being cool. And he never has – it’s quite impressive.
He continued to The Guardian last year: ‘At the age of 15, he was writing for a golf magazine. He loves Saturday night TV, he loves Ant and Dec, he loves Busted. He doesn’t want to be Martin Scorsese and I’ve got so much respect for that.’
Who is Richard Osman’s wife?
Famous family connections don’t stop with this brotherly duo as Richard’s wife Ingrid Oliver is also an actress.
Starting out in comedy, she has worked with Lorna Watson – better known as Watson & Oliver – since 2005, performing sellout shows at Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
Ingrid has been in numerous British shows such as her recurring role in Doctor Who as UNIT’s Petronella Osgood.
She also appeared alongside Martin Clunes in Doc Martin, as Natalie in Peep Show on Channel 4, and as Miss Stamp in Angus, Thongs, and Perfect Snogging.
The pair met when Ingrid was a contestant on Richard’s House of Games and romance sparked as they began dating in 2020 before tying the knot two years later.
Richard has two children who he spends much of his time with from a previous marriage with a woman whose name has never been made public.
He then dated jazz singer Sumudu Jayatilaka in 2018 but this ended quickly and it wasn’t long after that the star met ‘the one’ in Ingrid.
This article was originally published on January 20, 2024.
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