Richard Osman reveals his food addiction is still ‘absolutely ever-present’ in his life after a four decade long battle which stemmed from childhood heartbreak aged nine

Richard Osman has opened up about his four-decade battle with food addiction as he admitted it was caused by childhood sadness.

The TV presenter confessed that he had struggled with overeating since he was nine years old, when his father left home.

He admitted that the addiction was “absolutely ever-present” in his life, as he explained: “Generally speaking, addiction is running away from your pain.”

Speaking candidly on Elizabeth Day’s How To Fail podcast, the former Pointless host, 53, candidly discussed his addiction, as he began: ‘It’s so ridiculous, this food.

‘Alcoholics will tell you the same thing, as if it’s absurd that there’s a bottle of vodka in front of you or a packet of chips in front of you and it’s more powerful than you.

‘It does not make any sense. People are very judgmental in this world. I think, “How can you judge anyone in this world and how they behave, or how they act, or what their immediate response to something is when you often have less power in your life than, say, a big bar of chocolate in your life? ” for you?”.

He continued, “We all have human minds and we’re all crazy in slightly different ways.

“That’s been my version of it since I was probably nine years old. It has absolutely always been present in my life – weight, food, where I stand in relation to that, where I stand in relation to happiness because of it, the hiding of it.

“All that stuff, it was definitely like the drumbeat of my life.”

Richard has previously spoken about the life-changing moment his father called the family into the living room and announced he was having an affair.

The presenter said during an appearance on Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs: ‘My father left when I was very young, when I was about nine. And that was probably the end of that innocence, I guess.”

For months, Richard traveled by bus from the family home in Sussex to Rugby to see his father, but soon cut ties.

The two were reconciled when Richard became a father in his twenties.

As he delved into his addiction, he told Elizabeth, “Generally speaking, addiction means running from your pain.

‘I was obviously in a lot of pain, but you know, I was nine or ten…’ . . I don’t particularly want to be in pain, I don’t want to miss my dad, I want to say, “This is okay, everything is okay.”

“When you begin to deviate from your true north, from who you really are, the further away you go, the greater the leap you have to make back.

“And so anything that can make you stop thinking or numb you, or something like that, is incredibly helpful for you, because when you start thinking, you’re like, ‘Yeah, but wait a minute, maybe I miss him.’

‘Then you say: ‘Wait a minute, there’s some food in the fridge, I’d like to have that.’ Nine-year-old me and another version of me kind of came together at the age of nine, and the part of me that came together was fueled by food and fueled by secrecy and fueled by shame and all those things.”

Speaking about his recovery, Richard revealed that he started therapy later in life, and although he has relapsed, he knows how to cope better.

He said, “I have no personal shame anymore. Addiction is shame. If you eat too much, you will feel ashamed of it. Shame makes you eat too much. It’s a spiral.

“So you have to learn to absolutely cut it off at the source, and when you feel shame, just say, ‘That’s okay,’ because shame breeds more shame.” I have to accept that it’s not embarrassing.

‘If people really told you their secrets, we would all be devastated on the streets. We all have terrible things, we all have things that we think are crazy. That’s because we’re all human.’

Richard said the first person he told about his food addiction was Jimmy Mulville at production company Hat Trick, with whom he created the comedy series Boyz Unlimited, and he recommended a therapist named Bruce Lloyd.

When Elizabeth asked how much difficulty he now has in controlling his addiction, Richard said, “Non-stop, I would say, but to the extent that it’s so daily that you don’t even notice bits of it anymore. It becomes second nature.

“I’m always in control or not in control. There’s no point where I think, “Oh yeah, I’m just going to chill today, I’ll just have a salad for lunch.”

‘I am always aware that I am eating or not eating. It’s much easier than it was to understand.

“I know that if I fall off the wagon, I’m very forgiving of myself. I have strategies to deal with it. But it’s always there.

“You will never become an addict, but you have to try to find a way to live with it.”

Richard also blamed manufacturers for people’s food problems and obesity, while emphasizing that there is an obesity epidemic. ‘There is an absolute epidemic of food addiction.’

‘Billions and billions are made by people combining fat and sugar in the absolute perfect way that keeps us from feeling full and leaving us wanting more.

“Every trick of a psychologist, every thing that can appeal to every pleasure center in our brain, is applied to food.

“I think there will come a time when the food generation we grew up with will be looked at in the same way as cigarettes.”