Richard Osman reveals his mum 'struggled forever' during his childhood as they grew up 'without freedom or money' after his father walked out on the family for another woman

Richard Osman has reflected on his challenging upbringing as he admitted his mum 'struggled forever' after his dad walked out on the family after confessing to an extra-marital affair.The TV star was just nine years old when his dad David announced he was having an affair before leaving his wife Brenda and children in Sussex and relocating to Warwickshire with his new partner.Brenda, now 84, took a range of menial jobs before becoming a primary schoolteacher, but Richard admitted they didn't have 'money, or freedom'.However after a successful career as a best-selling author and TV presenter, Richard has used his earnings to help his mum after she struggled throughout his childhood. 'I’ve made sure my mum doesn’t have to struggle, because she struggled forever. It’s freedom, money. Because I didn’t have freedom and anybody who grew up without money knows that.' He told The Times: 'I’ve got more money than when I was growing up, that’s for sure. I’ve made sure my family are safe and secure.' Richard Osman has revealed his mum 'struggled forever' during his childhood as they grew up 'without freedom or money' after his father walked out on the family for another womanBrenda lives in a retirement home in Sussex which provided the inspiration behind his hit series The Thursday Murder Club.After his father left the family home, Richard explained that the whole side of that family cut contact with Richard's side of the family.'It’s OK. The other side of my family more than made up for it. They’re a lovely bunch. We fetishise our family a bit.'Richard previously said he had no interest in learning about his paternal family during his appearance on Who Do You Think You Are in 2022. Speaking to Radio Times, Richard described his father's walking out as the worst thing to ever happen to him.When they met 20 years later, they didn't bond, which left the quiz show host with no desire to discover more about his forebears when the opportunity for Who Do You Think You Are arose.'My dad's side of the family wasn't something I was interested in because that's not the family I grew up in. It would, in a funny way, be like learning about strangers,' he told the publication.Richard shared a close bond with his grandfather, Tom 'Fred' Wright: 'So much of what I am I owe to him,' he says on the show, adding that he would have loved to have followed in his footsteps and been a detective. He said: 'I’ve made sure my mum doesn’t have to struggle, because she struggled forever. It’s freedom, money. Because I didn’t have freedom and anybody who grew up without money knows that'(pictured with his older brother Mat who is the bass guitarist of Suede) Richard has also been open about how his father leaving the family triggered his 'shameful and bizarre' battle with food addiction.The star believes his issues with food served as a coping mechanism as he struggled through childhood without an adequate father figure.'It's traumatic, that's for sure,' the presenter explained during an episode of John Robins' How Do You Cope? podcast in April. 'It's difficult to put yourself back in your nine-year old brain. What do you know when you're nine? Nothing, but you know family, and you know that there's a certainty when you go home, and that's ripped from you, so that would be a trauma for certain.'I would say that I didn't deal with that trauma. This happened in the 1970s, which was a very different time, and it wasn't the done thing to talk about it. So long as I looked OK, that was OK for everyone else.'He added: 'I was able to subsume it, put it to the back of my brain and not deal with it in any way; the more modern thinking is that's not very healthy. But I've always had a very quick brain so I was able to find routes through this pain I was feeling and through this betrayal that I felt, and show a face to the world that was comfortable, and happy, and secure, and bits of me were, but it catches up with you.'I would say in my late twenties and early thirties, I'd run out of road with this new person I'd created, this person who was able to hide from pain and run from pain, and tell a different narrative.'That was gone, so I had to deal with it then because I didn't deal with it when I was nine, because how could I deal with it when I was nine?'