ALISON BOSHOFF: Murder Club money-spinner nets Richard Osman with an advance of £10 million

Richard Osman — once a star of teatime quiz phenomenon Pointless — has proved successful beyond all expectations as a novelist.

His Thursday Murder Club books, the first of which came out in 2020, have turned into a sales juggernaut.

Set in a middle-class retirement village (inspired by Osman’s mother’s) and featuring a gang of detectives formed of retired spook Elizabeth, stroppy ex-trade unionist Ron, former nurse Joyce and psychiatrist Ibrahim, they have sold around 4 million copies in the UK. His next book in the series, The Last Devil To Die, is out in September.

And it can be revealed that Osman has signed a deal with Penguin imprint Viking to write two more Thursday Murder Club books — and start a new series about a father and daughter detective agency. Sources indicate that this four-book deal comes with an advance of ‘over £10 million’ — a figure which may make some in publishing swallow hard.

But you cannot argue with the sheer volume of sales, worth more than £25 million and counting in the UK alone. And those sales will only rise further once a film is made of the first book later this year, produced by Steven Spielberg, no less.

Philip Jones, editor of The Bookseller, says of Osman’s phenomenal success: ‘There is an alchemy to it and he has struck gold.’

Jones explained that Osman, famously extremely brainy, extremely tall and extremely nice, is ‘like Terry Pratchett’ in that he will go out to the booksellers to do promotions and meet people.

‘Bookshop staff are the ones that sell books, they are the ones that launch books and then word of mouth carries them, so this has been a part of his success,’ he said. ‘He has been willing to put in the hours and travel up and down the country.’

Jones said the Thursday Murder Club series was ‘nearly at Harry Potter levels in sales’, and continued: ‘If he carries on writing it will end up at a similar level, which is a once-in-a-generation phenomenon.’

He reckoned Osman’s familiarity to audiences, thanks to his TV career, hadn’t hurt, either. ‘He didn’t invent cosy crime, but he has expanded it,’ he said. ‘A lot of people are being published now who wouldn’t be, if it was not for him.’

Osman, 52, said in a recent interview: ‘We grew up in an environment where if you have no money left, you’ve got no money left.

‘I’ve always had a work ethic. The idea that maybe you won’t repay an advance absolutely mortifies me.

‘I look at every single sale . . . it’s important to my soul for whatever reason.’ On its publication in 2020 The Thursday Murder Club became the only book to have sold more than one million copies in the same year as its release. And its sequel — The Man Who Died Twice — is the third bestselling fiction hardback ever, pipped only by Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code and J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows.

Osman has two adult children and recently married actress Ingrid Oliver. They live in West London.

He writes a chapter a day, sitting down every morning and not allowing himself to get up until he has completed between 1,000 and 1,500 words.

Cameras are due to roll on the Thursday Murder Club movie this autumn. Spielberg is producing via Amblin Entertainment and the casting process is underway.

Although there has been speculation about the involvement of icons such as Dames Judi Dench or Helen Mirren, a decision has been made to cast younger thespians and ‘age them up’, to allow the films to be a series shot over a decade or so.

It’s now likely that someone such as Lesley Manville, 67, who narrated the first two books for Audible, or Lesley Sharp, 63, will join the cast.

What a doll! Barbie wears British bling 

Brace yourself for Barbie! The hype machine is cranking up for the film, which opens on July 21 and will have its European premiere in London on Wednesday, July 12.

Star Margot Robbie performed the first of many promotional duties earlier this week, wearing custom Valentino in (what else?) pink. Presumably her stylist Kate Young has been sourcing an all-pink wardrobe for months.

In a nice touch Robbie, who lived in the UK for years with her British husband Tom Ackerley, has been accessorising with British jewellery. She chose £32,000 diamond earrings and a £28,000 diamond ring by Jessica McCormack, based in Mayfair, for the photocall.

Why Jack lets Dolly the dog do the talking 

Comedian Jack Dee says he speaks using his chihuahua Dolly’s voice when he wants to get his own way at home.

Dee, 61, says when he and wife Jane have a disagreement, Dolly sometimes (unwittingly) gets caught in the middle.

He told the Oh My Dog podcast: ‘If Jane said, ‘Can you shut the window?’ I’d say, ‘No, I want it open for a bit longer.’

‘But then Jane would speak through Dolly, saying: ‘Oh, Dolly wants the window shut!’

‘So I would have to do it, because Dolly wants it. So I developed this answer where I say: ‘Dolly, do you want the window shut?’ and Dolly says, ‘No, I’m alright actually . . . it doesn’t matter to me.’

‘It’s like a slightly disturbed ventriloquist act really.’

Back to school for Charithra 

Bridgerton star Charithra Chandran — who is 26 — will play a 16-year-old schoolgirl, pictured, in the forthcoming romcom How To Date Billy Walsh.

The film comes out on Prime Video in September and stars Chandran along with Heartstopper villain Sebastian Croft. He plays her best friend, who is secretly in love with her and tries to stop her from dating an American transfer student. Chandran said: ‘I’m excited to play a character that is the polar opposite of Edwina in Bridgerton. Amelia is boisterous, loud, ungraceful and a bit of a menace. Although Edwina will always be a very special role, she was also very restrained and conservative.

‘One of the best parts about being an actor is getting to embody all these different characters!

‘I’m looking forward to being in a movie where people are going to laugh a lot,’ she added.

White Lotus star Leo is ready to serve 

Rising British star Leo Woodall is up for a ‘Breakthrough’ award at the South Bank Sky Arts Awards this Sunday — and I hear that the White Lotus actor, pictured, has just landed another big starring film role.

Charismatic Leo, 26, is to head the cast of an adaptation of the best-selling memoir A Waiter In Paris.

The casting was the talk of Cannes this spring and Leo is being likened by some to a young Jude Law — or even (whisper it) Robert Redford.

There’s been buzz around the book for some time. It features a young Englishman — called simply ‘L’Anglais’ — who is dumped by his snooty French girlfriend and dreams of being an authentic Parisian waiter.

He finds the reality of being poor in the world’s most romantic city hard.

Rights to the book were snapped up by film critic- turned-producer Jason Solomons and I hear that Whit Stillman, best-known for The Last Days Of Disco, will direct.

A graduate of the ArtsEd school, Woodall played Essex lad Jack in White Lotus, on holiday with his ‘uncle’ Quentin, played by Tom Hollander.

In an interview he said of the role: ‘When I did my audition I watched four videos of Joey Essex beforehand. While filming they all had no idea what I was saying half the time. All the Americans in the cast . . . Mike [White, the showrunner], the Italians . . . no one really knew what I was saying.

‘The moment I thought I might have gone too far was when I said ‘dos Jägermeister, dos Red Bull’ when speaking Spanish to the Italian barmen . . . but it’s still in there, so obviously it wasn’t too much.’

Woodall will next be seen in a Netflix TV adaptation of the David Nicholls book One Day opposite Ambika Mod.

Mod was lauded for her performance as trainee doctor Shruti Acharya in the BBC One drama This Is Going to Hurt, starring Ben Whishaw.

The new series was filmed last summer and will be out later this year. (The book was also turned into a feature film in 2011, starring Anne Hathaway.)

Carrie Bradshaw’s quest for romance has been a marathon, spanning 94 episodes of Sex And The City . . . and a further 20 of spin-off And Just Like That, which started streaming series two last week.

Along the way she has been married, widowed and (most recently) singed by an old flame (Aidan Shaw, played by actor John Corbett). In And Just Like That, Carrie tries a dating app — but actress Sarah Jessica Parker admits she could never bring herself to do that in real life. Parker, 58, who has been married to actor Matthew Broderick for 26 years, said this is the one dating taboo she could not breach.

‘If I were single today, I would first rely on friends or acquaintances to help broker a cocktail at a place,’ she said. ‘A dating app to me — I don’t know what it’s like, but it just sounds really hard. I know people do it all day long and fall in love. And even fall in like, which is sometimes as important as love and companionship.

‘But I feel that would be my last choice.’

Phoebe’s shoes do a runner 

Phoebe Waller-Bridge was a true fashion victim at the Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny premiere in London this week.

The actress looked serene gliding up the carpet in her caped Ashi Studios dress and £525 Aquazzura sandals — with clear PVC straps and a 10.5cm heel — on Monday night. But when she re-appeared inside the auditorium 20 minutes later she was barefoot.

Waller-Bridge confides that she had the time of her life shooting the movie with co-star Harrison Ford. ‘We had a lot of time for crosswords,’ she said. ‘We did the New York Times crossword. He’s really good at it — I just filled the words in.’