TV presenter and author Richard Osman has said he was asked to do the celebrity edition of the BBC gameshow The Traitors.

TV star Richard Osman has revealed that he declined an invitation to star in the celebrity edition of BBC show The Traitors.

The creator of Thursday Murder Club, 54, said he would have only agreed to participate in the inaugural celebrity series of Celebrity Traitors if he was assured of playing the role of a Traitor, reports the Manchester Evening News.

Richard was on ITV’s Good Morning Britain when he was asked if he’d been invited to do the show and replied: “I was, everyone who’s been on Celebrity Traitors won’t tell you anything.”

He added: “Normally people will say if they’ve been on Celebrity Catchphrase, they go, ‘I’d watch that I think I did quite well’, Celebrity Traitors, nobody is saying a single word.

“I’ve been working with Celia Imrie, and she won’t say anything about what happened, none of them will say. I love Celebrity Traitors, but I said I would only do it if I could be a Traitor.”

He went on: “Only because I couldn’t bear if I was a Faithful – that thing where you go back to your room at night and you’re just lying there, and you know that there’s three people up in that tower filming, having a load of fun wearing cloaks and filming something.

“I’d be lying there just going, ‘Well, I mean, I could be murdered any second’, I wouldn’t have that control, and obviously they can’t say, ‘Yes, you can be a Traitor’, so yeah, I’m just going to watch.”

Richard was later warned that he could never participate in the show as everyone would suspect him of being the Traitor, to which he cheekily responded: “Am I double bluffing?”

The star-studded line-up of the hit telly show includes Thursday Murder Club’s Celia Imrie, Olympic diving legend Tom Daley, and acting heavyweight Sir Stephen Fry. They’ll be battling it out in the Scottish Highlands for a chance to bag up to £100,000 for their chosen charity.

Hosted by Claudia Winkleman, the show sees contestants trying to sniff out the Traitors among them while completing challenges to add funds to the prize pot. If a Traitor makes it to the final round, the loyal contestants lose the money and the Traitor walks away with the full prize.

Richard was promoting his latest book in the Thursday Murder Club series, The Impossible Fortune, which hit the shelves on September 25. So far, the TV presenter has penned four books in the series – The Thursday Murder Club (2020), The Man Who Died Twice (2021), The Bullet That Missed (2022), and The Last Devil To Die (2023).

Celebrity Traitors starts on BBC One on October 8.