Richard Osman says he 'feels a sense of shame' after working with David Walliams and failing to 'create an environment where everyone felt safe'

Richard Osman has recalled working with David Walliams and has said looking back at his TV career he wishes he had done more to 'create an environment where everyone felt safe'.Before writing his hit Thursday Murder Club novels, Osman, 55, was an executive producer in television, creating the BBC show Pointless and working on other quiz shows for Hat Trick Productions and Endemol UK.At Hat Trick he worked with Walliams, 55, and his comedy partner Matt Lucas, 52, to write the 1999 Channel 4 sitcom Boyz Unlimited.Osman recalled how he first met Walliams when the comedian was 21 and they worked on a computer game series together, but after Boyz Unlimited says 'we fell out, not for any exciting reasons, shortly afterwards and I didn't work with him again.'Noting that he has 'of course' followed Walliams' career, Osman admitted that 'I think it's hard for any man who worked in television in the 1990s and the 2000s to not feel like they failed, to not feel blind, to not feel some sense of shame about what has happened.' He went on to call for the need to create TV environments where ‘everybody felt safe’, but suggested it was not something that young people starting out in the industry prioritised. Richard Osman has recalled working with David Walliams and has said looking back at his TV career he wishes he had done more to 'create an environment where everyone felt safe' Osman recalled how he first met Walliams 9pictured in 2018) when the comedian was 21 and they worked on a computer game series together'It's not a sin of commission. It's a sin of omission and not understanding you need to create an environment in which everybody felt safe,' he said.'You look back and you think if you'd started this stuff then, if you'd really started understanding what was going on then and understood that the '90s laddy culture was not some kind of natural culture, it was a slightly weird aberration... It's tough looking back and it's horrific.''It's unremittingly grim. I'm delighted to still be around at a time when people are, you know, being found out and people are either going to prison in Russell Brand's case or at least being exposed in the case of Walliams. And there will be more to come I suspect from that generation as well,' Osman continued.He added that this week has felt like 'a reckoning and it's a wakeup call'.'It would be lovely going forward to not make those same mistakes and to be able to put those things right, I think. And there are a generation of TV men who I suspect would agree with me and I suspect would do anything they can to try and find a route through it.''And also to feel just an awful depression and to think about, I don't know stuff that you miss and stuff you take for granted and stuff you don't realise and stuff you could have done and stuff you could have said.'On a previous episode of his podcast Osman reflected on working at Endemol UK at the same time as Russell Brand. Osman claimed he knew Brand was 'awful... right from the beginning', despite the pair never meeting.Osman, 55, worked as a creative director at Endemol UK, the production company which gave Brand his big break when he was hired to present Big Brother spin-off programmes in the mid-noughties. On a previous episode of his podcast Osman reflected on working at Endemol UK at the same time as Russell Brand (Brand pictured on Big Brother in 2006)Osman has said that whilst he 'never worked with [Brand] and never met him... right from the beginning, I thought he was awful. I thought he's talentless,' and added that he had heard the comedian had a reputation for being 'a sleaze'.The TV personality and podcaster served as Endemol UK's Deputy Creative Director in 2004 and Creative Director from 2005 onwards, focusing on developing and producing quiz and game shows.Brand was hired by Endemol in 2004, three years after he was fired from his first TV presenting job at MTV when he arrived to work dressed as Osama bin Laden on September 12, 2001. After attending rehab for drug addiction, he landed a hosting role on Big Brother's spin-off show Big Brother's Eforum, later renamed as Big Mouth, in 2004, which was produced by Endemol UK.Speaking on his podcast, Osman reflected on what he had heard about the rising star during this time. 'I've never worked with him, never met him. Right from the beginning, I thought he was awful. I thought he's talentless, all of that.''He's not someone who can be collegiate. So, I definitely knew that about him.'I sort of knew who he was. He was working on MTV and things. And I was like, "that's not something that interests me". [He] gets more famous. You certainly hear that he is a sleaze, right? Again, not illegal, not nice.'Again, not someone you would want to work with, not someone who I can think of anyone I know who particularly want to work with, but the guy's a sleaze and the guy is sex obsessed and the guy runs around with a group of people who have that same aesthetic.'During his time hosting Big Brother's Big Mouth Brand allegedly turned production staff into 'pimps' to identify audience members to be 'lambs to the slaughter' in his bedroom.It was a Dispatches investigation for Channel 4 in September 2023, alongside The Times and Sunday Times, that led to women coming forward. In their own probe in 2024, Channel 4 chiefs said one complaint had not been passed up the senior management chain.The production firm behind Big Brother, Banijay UK, formerly Endemol, also found staff made informal complaints that weren't escalated.Banijay said in 2024: 'We are extremely sorry to anyone who was impacted by this behaviour and felt unable to speak up or that their voice was not properly heard.'