Richard Osman has opened up about the visual impairment that has left him seeing the world as if he were “driving in dense fog”.
The 54-year-old former Pointless presenter and bestselling author of The Thursday Murder Club series was born with a condition called nystagmus, which the NHS describes as “involuntary, usually constant eye movement (often described as wobbling or dancing eyes)” that “typically results in some degree of visual loss”.
“I’m constantly moving from left to right,” he told the i.
“I see the world as if I was driving in dense fog, although I can’t drive. I can see that there are things there, but everything is blurred. Nothing has sharp definition. Lights have huge halos around you that blind you. I’ve had it since birth so that’s all I know.”
Osman wears glasses as a corrective measure to assist with the condition, but he said that they are not “fixing the issue”.
“I can’t see birds in the trees. I can’t see a cricket ball or a golf ball; anything fast moving and small. I love sometimes just taking my glasses off and literally being able to see nothing at all. I find that quite relaxing.”
But it means he has learned to heighten his other senses.
“The fact that I couldn’t read the blackboard at school meant that I became unbelievably good at listening,” he explained.
“I’ve learnt to maximise what I’ve got. I can’t read an autocue which means I have to be more reactive to what’s going on. I once presented Have I Got News for You and they gave me Bruce Forsyth’s autocue which was massive and I said, ‘I still can’t see anything,’ so they just moved the camera really close with this enormous font and people on Twitter were saying, ‘Richard Osman is drunk,’ but I wasn’t. My eyes just can’t focus.”
He added that the condition has brought unexpected benefits and inspiration to his writing. Osman’s books have been a runaway success, with his characters a group of elderly people in a retirement village. The first instalment has been adapted into a Netflix film starring Helen Mirren and Pierce Brosnan, which is set to be released this month.
“The thing with my books is that I never describe people because I don’t care,” he continued.
“In my life, I’m not judging people by what they look like, because I don’t really see it. I read books sometimes and someone will say, ‘someone has a twitch of their lip,’ or ‘their eyes do something,’ and I’m like, ‘I’ve never seen that. I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ That’s not how I see the world. I don’t see what people look like, but I do get a very strong vibe of the world, how people talk, the attitude that people have.”
The Thursday Murder Club is out on Netflix on 28 August.
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