Richard: My ancestor was in a real-life Thursday murder club
THEY say the truth is stranger than fiction – but Richard Osman’s debut novel unwittingly mirrors a story straight out of his family archive.
The Thursday Murder Club follows a group of friends in a retirement village as they investigate unsolved crimes.
But the TV presenter recently found out his ancestor formed a detective group to solve a real-life murder – centuries before he wrote his book.
Osman’s four-times great-grandfather discovered a dead body and became involved in one of the biggest murder trials of the 1800s.
Gabriel Gilliam, a fisherman born in Brighton in 1789, would secretly smugTimes: gle food for his family.
Osman, 51, made the discovery during an upcoming episode of BBC1 show Who Do You Think You Are? He told the Radio ‘Given the books I write, you just couldn’t make it up!
‘It was extraordinary to discover that Gabriel Gillam formed an amateur gang of detectives. It felt like it would make a good Sunday night TV drama. There are a million stories about the British upper class, from Downton to Bridgerton, but very few about poor communities.’
The Thursday Murder Club was published in September 2020 and quickly became a best-seller.
The global film rights were bought by Steven Spielberg’s production company Amblin Entertainment.
A sequel, The Man Who Died Twice, arrived in September last year. Last month, Osman announced he is stepping back from BBC game show Pointless after nearly 13 years ‘to concentrate on writing’.
He co-hosted more than 1,300 episodes with Alexander Armstrong. Osman will continue to present Pointless Celebrities and his BBC Two show Richard Osman’s House Of Games.
His episode of Who Do You Think You Are? is due to air on June 9 on BBC1.