Richard Osman has decided to quit the show that made him famous so he can write full-time, after the huge success of his first two novels.

The quiz presenter has announced he is to leave BBC One’s Pointless after nearly 13 years of contributing erudite and obscure facts in his trademark deadpan manner.

Mr Osman said he would now spend more time writing following the runaway success of his debut novel, The Thursday Murder Club, which became a Sunday Times bestseller after being published in September 2020. 

Its global film rights were later bought by Steven Spielberg’s production company, Amblin Entertainment. Mr Osman said the success of the novel, featuring an elderly gang of amateur detectives, was an “absolute dream come true”.

It became only the second adult hardback fiction novel, after The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown, to sell more than one million copies in the UK this century.

A sequel, The Man Who Died Twice, was published in September last year and became one of the fastest-selling novels since records began – selling 114,202 copies in its first three days on sale.

Mr Osman said on Friday that The Thursday Murder Club “has become such a juggernaut around the world I simply couldn’t keep up with my schedule”.

Mr Osman signed a reported £1.1 million book deal for the novel after a bidding war between publishers.

After his departure from Pointless was announced, Mr Osman wrote on Twitter: