Richard Osman on his latest novel and why the world is blurry to him

EMMA - Hello, I'm Emma Tracey. This is Access All, the BBC's disability and mental health podcast. And my guest this time is Richard Osman.

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RICHARD - If you are 18 or 21 and you have had to think outside the box your whole life, you will have skills that every single other person out there will not have. You will have things that will make you different to other people. And the one thing that there's going to be a huge premium on in the next 10, 15, 20 years is people who can think unusually.

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EMMA - Subscribe to Access All on BBC Sounds in the UK or in the rest of the world. It's wherever you get your podcasts from. You can contact me, e-mail accessall@bbc.co.uk.

Now Richard Osman has a lot of very successful strings to his bow. He is an internationally best-selling author of the We Solve Murders and the Thursday Murder Club book series. He's also created and hosted Pointless and Richard Osman's House of Games TV quiz shows, and he co-hosts the hugely successful podcast, The Rest is Entertainment. And you might be forgiven for wondering why Richard Osmond is on Access All, well he is visually impaired and I got to sit down and chat to him about that and so many other things. And I really hope you enjoy it.

Can we talk about your book first? Because I know that's what people will be very excited about coming out very, very soon. What can you tell us about it?

RICHARD - It is. So I did the Thursday Murder Club series, which was the first series I started doing, which is four senior citizens in a retirement village who solve murders. And I wanted to do a new series, which is this We Solve Murders. And I wanted it to be a little bit more globetrotting. I wanted to do something a bit more airport thrillery, but it still has the exact same sort of British humour of the Thursday Murder Club books as well. I just thought it'd be funny to write a book where people are on private jets and sipping martinis by a pool, but with a very, very sort of suburban British humour in it as well. So I have three heroes, Steve, who is a retired cop and has no interest at all in being on private jets or going to St. Lucia or sipping martinis by a pool. He just wants to stay at home with his cat and do the pub quiz. His daughter-in-law, which is a nice relationship, is a close protection officer for billionaires and so she's always going around the world and is always up for a fight. And then they team up in the first book with a woman called Rosie D'Antonio, who is the world's best-selling author, if you don't count Lee Child. And Rosie essentially kind of bankrolls all the things that they do. They form this detective agency, We Solve Murders. And yeah, We Chase Shadows is the brand new one out September the 10th all around the world.

EMMA – And what can you tell me about that one?

RICHARD - I always set them in places I've been. So we go around the world and people go, oh, that must be great because it means you can go to visit loads of places, but because I'm like Steve and I don't really like travelling, I mean, you know the hassle of travel. I like to end up somewhere, but airports and unfamiliar places I often find difficult. So I don't love travelling. So I always set it in places I have already been. So this one starts in Tuscany, a body is found on the steps of a beautiful villa. There's a note in the pocket, a mysterious note from a mysterious man. We have to work out who killed this person, who this note is from, and the killer is hiding in there. the last place you might suspect. And we go from Tuscany, we go to Barcelona, there's a little stop-off in Stockholm, we go to Palm Springs in the United States, which is a really, really beautiful city.

EMMA - You mentioned a lot of places there. Have you actually used up all your travel kind of places now that you've been?

RICHARD - I think so, yeah. I think certainly if a lot of the, because as I say, I do try and set it in places I've been, so if a lot of the next We Solve Murders book is set in Chiswick Nando's, you'll know why. Because I think, yeah, I might have run out of places I've already been to.

EMMA - Or maybe you could actually do some travel. But what is it? So what is it? Tell me about travel and why you don't like travelling.

RICHARD - Well, there's a lot going on with travel. There's a lot of process with travel. There are a lot of documents. There are a lot of queues and there's a lot of signage. There's a lot of, there's just a lot that if you're not processing things visually particularly well can be quite stressful. And I've travelled my whole life, so I must, I don't know how many planes I've been on, but it's a lot, and every time I go to the airport, I experience it like it's the first time I've ever been because my brain is on red alert because there's so much going on around me and I can't see the detail of any of it. And my brain goes into panic mode every single time, even though I've done it over and over and over again. On my way there, my brain is constantly saying, okay, the first thing you do is you go to this place and where that is because you've been there before. So you do that, they'll send you through to that bit and you know there's two queues there because you've seen that before and there's, you know, the one on the left is the one you don't take, the one on the right is the one you. So I'm constantly in my brain going through all of those things, working out where to be. But then, you know, I'm about to go on a US tour, so you do a book tour and you have to fly from New York to Miami to Dallas to Austin. You're going through all of these airports, all of which are brand new and all of which, by the way, I don't know where the desk I have to go to is. I don't know where the lane I have to go to is. I know there's going to be a sign saying, you know, go this way for this thing, but I'm not going to be able to see.

EMMA - So what do you have trouble seeing? You've trouble seeing what's written on the signs.

RICHARD - Yeah, exactly. I can see, and also there is a lot, because everything is in a fog with nystagmus, so there's a lot of stimulus, there are a lot of colours, there's a lot of brightness, there's a lot of neon, everything is lit up to make it easy to see, but so many things are lit up, it's like a kind of looking through a kaleidoscope, and yeah, I have to go very, very close to any of those signs to see what that sign says. So when I, people must think that I'm, surprised I never get picked up by the security services. So I walk from one end of a terminal to another because I see there is a sign and I think perhaps that's the sign I'm looking for, and I guess I walk kind of half a mile to that sign and go, oh, it's the exact opposite sign to the one I was looking for and then I walk all the way back until I find the right sign and I think, okay, that's the direction I need to go in.

EMMA - Would you consider getting assistance through the airport?

RICHARD - No, it's because this is the ridiculous thing about it, especially with nystagmus, it's because I can see, and I would feel fraudulent saying that I couldn't because, you know I can go up to that sign. When I find the sign, I can go up nice and close to it, I can see what it says and that, I just need to make sure I'm there early and I feel that my panic is my panic. If I'm with my wife or anything else, I'm absolutely fine. It's only if I have to travel by myself and then I feel so stupid in an airport. And also I have this thing, I know this is crazy, but I know that I'm six foot seven and I know that I'm walking through an airport like looking like I don't know where I am and then going up really close to signs and staring at them. And I know that people are looking at me going, oh, that's that guy from the TV. So I also feel self-conscious.

EMMA - Yeah.

RICHARD - And then I'm like, oh God, this is.

EMMA - That just sounds like a horrible experience. You know, you talked about everything being in a fog and needing to go right up to something to see it. Can you explain your nystagmus and how you see?

RICHARD - I see that you're sitting opposite me. I see behind you there is a screen. I see that screen has a brown around it and it has a sort of a purple in the middle of it. So I absolutely see that. There's some writing on it in white. I get all of those things. It happens to be there's one next to me which says Access All on it. So I can work out that the white behind you also says Access All. But everything has got like a halo around it. The way I describe it to people who can see well is it's like driving in fog. You know so everything is suddenly shrouded. And so you know there's a car in front of you, can see lights in front of you, but they've been completely blurred. So the world is just blurred to me.

EMMA - And is that because your eyes move around? Is that literally that's what causes it?

RICHARD - That's what nystagmus is, your eyes are constantly moving, so your eyes, there's an inability to focus. And your brain, I'm not seeing the world constantly moving like that because my brain has worked out a way of dealing with it. But the way it deals with it is to have like a halfway house between all the different things I'm seeing, which is a blurred version of things.

EMMA - Okay, I've listened to lots of interviews with you and I do find that the presenters gloss over the visual impairment a little bit and talk about, it's obviously not the most important thing about you, Richard, but they do find it hard to talk about it, I think. Do you think?

RICHARD - I think people don't understand it, right? I think it's also because I wear glasses, weirdly, which is for a different eye condition, but they go, oh, you wear glasses. And we know that people with bad eyesight wear glasses and then they have good eyesight. So the idea I wear glasses but I still have incredibly bad eyesight. It doesn't compute with people at all. Which is the case with lots of disabilities, right? You have something where people go, but sorry, I don't understand why that's still an issue for you. I don't think there's anyone's got a, there's a lack of empathy there from anyone or a lack of sympathy. I think people just don't get it at all. And I think because of my personality type and because of the generation I grew up in, I also never really draw attention to it. I love being in a forum like this where everyone gets it, where I can talk to people who really understand it. But outside in the real world, I just, my life is too short for me to tell people everything that I need all the time. And so I've always learned to try and make do. I've got loads of producers I work with who absolutely understand my eyesight completely and never put me in a position where something's going to be difficult for me to understand and that I can never use an auto cue, all of those things. But quite often there's situations I was doing an event the other night where I was chairing something and they said, afterwards there's a Q&A and so you just pick people out of the audience and who you want to ask questions. And I was like, but I can't see anyone in the audience.

EMMA - Did you tell them that?

RICHARD - No, so I got the people on the panel to choose someone to do it, which actually was quite a fun way of doing it. So I turned something which is me thinking, oh God, I really don't want to go through this into something where I go, oh, that's quite an unusual and different way of doing something.

EMMA - We are the kings and queens of workarounds.

RICHARD - Yes, I think that's exactly it. So I think there's two things there. Firstly, the workarounds in my life have sometimes been the best things I've ever created. And secondly, is that thing of not always wanting to ask for help, right? If you're ever in a situation where you don't have to ask for help, I'm guessing that's a wonderful place because you're so used to having to ask for help that if you don't have to, you're like, oh, this is like a day off.

EMMA - It is, it is quite nice. Of course it's nice not, you know, when AI arrived and we could get photos described and I can take pictures of things and know which one's the shampoo and which one's the conditioner.

RICHARD - AI genuinely, this is one of the few. No, this is one of the few rooms where we can say it's incredibly helpful to me if ever something goes wrong in the house or something, you know, because I can't see, you know, if it's like a boiler or something, you know, I can't see the buttons here, I can't see the systems here, I can't see the switches here. You can take a photograph of it and AI will tell you exactly what it is.

And it started when I was at school really you know, I couldn't see the blackboard, I couldn't see, I was at the sort of school where we shared books, I couldn't see a book that I was sharing. So I've got two options. Either I say that and suddenly I feel like there's a label on me, not exactly that, but certainly attention has been drawn to me and I don't want attention drawn to me. Or I can do a workaround, which is I'll listen, I'll write down stuff I think sounds relevant and then I'll work out my own way of doing it. And I remember that like it was yesterday, my whole school career. I never said, I can't see what you've written on the board or I can't see this other textbook this person's looking at. And I think that's become ingrained in me.

EMMA - You got to Cambridge, you're obviously incredibly intelligent, etc. But you know, how do you feel about not asking for help then?

RICHARD - It's hard, isn't it? And lots of people listening to this will know this exact situation, which is hard sometimes to separate what is your disability and what is just your personality. I tend to skim across the surface sometimes of life. I tend to sort of not get fully involved. I tend not to put both feet in the bath of life because I do get frightened of not immediately being able to work out where I am or what's happening. I can skip a lot of what a lot of other people do in creative jobs. Now that might be because I've trained myself from a very early age to be able to do that or it might just be that's who I am. I might just be someone who likes the quickest possible solution, the easiest route through something without having to... the idea that I could read a 50 page journal on this gun that I'm writing about in a book or I could just invent a gun. I can do one of those two things. Now, the fact that I'm not reading that 50 page thing, is that because I can't read it? The print is too, might get a headache if I read for too long. Or is it because I can't be bothered? You know, is it the eyesight or is it just who I am?

EMMA - And have there been any negative consequences of that? I mean, as I say, you got to one of the top universities without being able to see the board or your books.

RICHARD – Yeah, I definitely did not engage in my studies. I don't remember anything I did. And again, it might be because I couldn't or it might just be because I wouldn't have done that anyway. But yeah, it was definitely negative in that way. I can't, even now, if there's something that needs it, like when people talk about a deep dive into something. I'm always like, but there's quite a lot involved to doing a deep dive. And deep dives to me usually mean quite small text, if that makes sense. I'm always going to have to look at something where I'm like, I just, you know, I just don't have experience of doing this. And so I've always avoided it.

EMMA - How did you get through all your exams then? How did you do so well?

RICHARD - Because I was from the era where you didn't have to do any coursework. It was literally you were judged on like 1 exam at the end of two years. I understood what it was they were going to ask in the exam, roughly. I worked out the 10 things to say about all of those things and then I just wrote that and I wrote it really, really quickly. You know, that's something I was able to do and I never, ever thought, oh, I have to do this, I have to explain this. I just worked out the thing that I was being asked to do and did that

EMMA - That's very clever, but actually…

RICHARD – It's not very clever though

EMMA - …you have made me realise that I did university in a similar way. I went into the library once or twice and I found the swipe card so stressful and the revolving doors that I didn't go back.

RICHARD - It's like me at an airport. And it's interesting talking to you about it now because I never thought about it. I've always thought of it as a positive that I was lucky enough that, you know, I had this skill set to get away with, you know, just getting through my education and getting out into the world of work and doing what I wanted. But actually, listen, if I've been looking at textbooks from the age of five and looking at the board, then perhaps I would have a brain that did slightly different things. But, you know I have the brain I have, it makes me very happy. So it's, I guess, I hadn't thought about it in quite that depth before, but I think, of course I missed out on stuff. But I want to emphasize that I also gained a lot as well.

EMMA - Yeah, okay. Don't try this at home kind of.

RICHARD – Oh my God, definitely don't try that home unless you can get away with it, in which case do.

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EMMA - You're listening to Access All. I'm Emma Tracy and with me is writer, quizzer and visually impaired person like me, Richard Osman.

So your main characters in both of your book series are underestimated. So Thursday Murder Club, they're in their 80s, they're in a retirement village, and then We Solve Murders, you've got this guy who just likes going to the local pub and has a cat and is retired. I mean, does that, do you feel like you've been underestimated or that you've underestimated yourself as someone who's visually impaired, who's maybe taller than most people who struggle a bit with mental health maybe as well.

RICHARD - What I try and write is strong underdogs and what I try and write is I quite like an alpha empath because that seems to be quite... Well, you know, there's a lot of alpha people in this world. There's a lot of people who are able to use their power and their force to kind of get power over people so that there's, you know, very dominant personalities. And it's nice when you get someone who's alpha, so is able to command a room, you know, control the room if they need to, but he uses that force for good. That's what I was thinking. I was thinking my grandfather, who was a police officer and absolutely hard as nails, but also soft as butter. He was like, so he was very strong and very powerful, but he used that to look after people. That's what I've always found a powerful thing in terms of the... underdog, again, it's fun to write because, older people, one of the key things in those books is they get to a stage in life where they feel they have an invisibility, and that they're sort of not seen in our culture. And I worked out very early on that if you want to be a detective, then being very wise and invisible is about the perfect combination. So it was a gift to me that really. But yeah, I'm always on the side of people who don't quite fit into the world, who are not the shape or size or have the abilities that the world seems to want. But I think most readers are because most people self-identify one way or another as being different and as being awkward and as being outside the norm and so I think it resonates with most people.

EMMA - But do you feel like you don't fit into the world?

RICHARD - Oh my god, yeah of course. But the idea that you can't really see and you're six foot seven. It absolutely, of course I feel there's a barrier between me and the world as it's lived. So many of the things I see people doing, and you get it on social media or places they've gone or activities they're doing, I think that would be impossible for me. And it's the way they take it for granted is the only difficult thing. I don't resent anybody for doing that stuff, but the way it doesn't even occur to them that this would be a privilege to be able to do. So yeah.

EMMA - So what kind of things?

RICHARD - Oh, I don't know when you see people sort of parasailing or just, hiking out in some woods where they don't know where they are. I just, stuff that I would be too frightened to go and do, which again…

EMMA – Would you want to though?

RICHARD - …perhaps some, well, I don't know. I haven't been able to explore that part of my personality. But you know, you could well be right. But I just think it's interesting, but I think most people feel like they don't fit.

EMMA - I'll ask you now about the writing and how you describe characters and how you describe places. Do you think the way you see and the way you think about the world informs how you do that and how?

RICHARD - Yes, it really, really makes a difference to me and I'm always the only notes I ever get back from my editors. So I'll write all this stuff and these characters are very, very real to me, all my characters.

EMMA - They're very real to me as well.

RICHARD - Oh, thank you. And I try and make every minor character very real as well. That's what I try and do, because I feel who they are. And the notes are always, yeah, Richard, you don't describe at any point what this person looks like. And I'm like, oh, well, yeah, I don't really care. It doesn't interest me what they look like. And so what I always think, if I'm writing a character, I don't go, oh, tall guy with ginger hair and he's got this. I just, I get a vibe of the person, which is how I experience people. Right? You know, when you meet people, you get something in their tone or their manner or whatever it is, you get a vibe of that person, you work out who they are. And that's how I've always related to people. And I think it's an incredibly useful way of writing characters. I do the bare minimum is what I try to do. Sometimes I read books and they'll say something like, and he looked across at her and he saw a twitch in her left eye and he knew that she was nervous. You're like, I've never seen a twitch in anyone. What do you mean? Or they'll say something about her face where you go, there'll be a scar or something. Sorry, how are you seeing that?

EMMA - But there are other ways of telling someone that someone's nervous, right?

RICHARD - But that's where it's an advantage to me because I have to show through dialogue or I have to show through behaviour what this person is like. You know, I can't sort of go, and he was evil and he had a like a, you know, an eye patch. And he's like, you have to just get someone's vibe. And I've always done that.

Funnily enough, I was lucky enough to interview Stephen King…

EMMA – Wow

RICHARD - …who also has had visual issues in his life…

EMMA - Really

RICHARD - …and I said to him, as a writer, because I talk to other writers about this all the time, what are you bad at? I said, what's the bit that you can't do in other writers? You're like, I wish I could do that. He said, I can't describe people. He said, and I don't describe people. And he said, the same thing, my editors, they just say, what do they look like? And I was saying, they just look like some guy. And he was going, yeah, they just look like some guy. He said, the only time he'll describe a character is if in a bit of action, they literally see themselves in a mirror. So he's always inside the heads of his character rather than looking at them. And that's where I always am.

EMMA - So what would you say if someone asked you what are you bad at?

RICHARD - What am I bad at? Again, I'm very bad…sometimes, you know, you read these books that sort of set the scene so beautifully. There's my favourite book ever, it's called A Month in the Country by J L Carr. And there'll be this sort of two page where someone's walking down a country lane, and they describe what they're seeing and they describe, you know just a description of the world as it is. And that's the stuff, it's not like I try it and I can't do it. I just, I don't have the capacity for it. So sometimes I think that thing of when you can really set a, like a sense of place, a sense of exactly where you are. I can do block colour versions of it, but I can't do those tiny little details of, a ladybug on a blade of grass and that sort of stuff. But, I can do that with characters, I think, and, some people can't.

EMMA - I like that you like reading it though, because, it might be the best imagining of a country lane you've ever had, cause you've not seen it.

RICHARD - Yes, exactly, because I can sort of see what they mean, because on TV sometimes I can sort of see sometimes they even like on Bake Off, they'll do like a really, like a close-up of a bee on a flower. And I'm like, hah…oh, that's what that looks like! That's really cool. And yeah, in a book, yeah, they can just sort of say things. I'm like, sometimes I just think, oh wow, that must be amazing. Yeah, I can imagine, I can see, what that is doing to you. I can feel the love you have for the thing you're seeing here, which is not something I'm going to see and there's plenty of things that I love that you'll never experience. But yeah, when I get the sense of somebody genuinely loving something that I don't have experience of, that excites me. I find that interesting.

EMMA - And when you're writing your books, some people have post-it notes everywhere, spreadsheets, whiteboards, special software. What do you do?

RICHARD - I have nothing really. I have, yeah, there's no kind of big spider diagrams because I don't write my plots in advance. You know, I sort of have an inciting incident, an idea, and then maybe a thought of where we might be heading. And I think of a few characters. I think, oh, that would be an interesting person. And then I get those new characters to start talking to each other. And so I get to hear who they are and work out who they are. And once they've done that for a bit, I'll sort of write a couple of chapters and I'll murder somebody. And then I think, well, who did it? And I think, well, I've got these new characters, I wonder if one of these people did it. And then, later on in the book you think, no, actually I need to introduce a little B plot here where this happens just to help out. And then I think, oh, this person in the B plot, maybe they're not really from the B plot, maybe they're from the A plot, or maybe they did it. And that's how I write. I usually got an idea two or three chapters ahead where I'm going to go. And when I'm about just over halfway through the book, I've got a pretty strong idea of where it's going to finish. but I'm not someone who writes, again going back to my school days, I'm not someone who writes long detailed plans and then fills in the gaps because I'd be bored. I want the story to tell itself to me as I go along and I want the characters to tell me who they are as I go along and I want my characters to be surprised and me to be surprised all the way through and that feels like a useful way to write a book.

EMMA - And do you know what? I'd be worrying and panicking that the rest of it wouldn't come to me.

RICHARD - Well, I did for the first book certainly for Thursday Murder Club and that took me about 3 years because I kept stopping because I kept thinking, this can't be right surely and I don't know where this is going. And when I'd done that and I worked out what the process was, and then the second one again, I'm a bit nervous, I'm thinking, oh God, what if the first time was a fluke and what if it doesn't fall into place this time? And when it fell into place there as well. And now, you know, I'm writing book 8 and I just trust the process. It's really hard. And I won't say I never panic, but I trust the process. I know that I'm laying groundwork in these opening chapters that something will happen and something will spring out of there that will be very unexpected and will, you know, make for a great plot. But all I'm really concentrating on is characters that you love or hate.

EMMA - And do you do nine to five like?

RICHARD - Oh my God, no. Can you imagine! No, I do about two hours and after that my brain gets a little bit too tired. But that two hours is like, you know, my fingers don't leave the keyboard when I do and I try and do about 1500 words a day, which for me is a chapter, because I write short chapters, which is what I like to read. And so I get a real sense of completion each day, that I will write a chapter each day, and tomorrow I know I'm in the head of a different character, I'm in a different place, I'm writing a different scene, and so it's quite a satisfying way to write a book.

EMMA - Love it. I'm going to go on to your TV, one of your other careers now, your TV career…

RICHARD - I'd say it's all one career.

EMMA - …how did you go from university to working and were you anxious about it?

RICHARD – Yeah, I was anxious. I'm not from a background where there's any money. So I'm from a background where if you're 1 pound in debt, you don't really have a way of paying it. So me and a bunch of uni friends moved straight to London because back in those days you still had housing benefit, you had all these things which now are no longer available to younger people. So we moved into a flat and I saw a job advertised in The Guardian for a researcher for a computer games television programme. And I'd just written some articles about computer games programmes for a golf magazine, weirdly. I mean, this is why there's no point trying to plan a career. So I'd written an article for Golf Monthly and then the next week there's this thing and I thought, oh, I just wrote about a computer game. I could do that. And I went in for an interview for that. And I hadn't heard back when I was just about to go and do like a telesales job or something because I had to get some money. About 20 minutes before I was heading off for the interview for the telesales job, I got a call from this company saying, oh yeah, we'd love you to come and start as a researcher on this television programme. And you know, I walked into that room, I thought, of course I should be working in television, it's like, it's what I spent my entire childhood doing, sitting two inches in front of the screen, looking at the world through television and seeing these formats and being made to laugh and all that stuff. And yeah, I just, I found myself in that world and I found it very easy to get on because I watched television and most people at that time didn't watch television and so I just had a natural instinct for it and it's peculiar that I had that I walked straight into a visual medium but again TV for me is not a visual medium it's a vibes medium.

There's always other people around you, editors, directors, who will take care. If there's something weird visually, they will take care of it and they won't let that get onto screen. But it's never something I'm on the lookout for. I'm always on the lookout for pace, I'm always on the lookout for mood. I'm just thinking about how people are feeling when they're watching this and actually sort of not being able to see it is again fairly useful in some ways because it means I'm not distracted by stuff that viewers don't really care about.

EMMA – Is that kind of a bit of advice then, this is something I often say to disabled people coming up and work is focus on your strengths, like work hard at what you're really good at.

RICHARD - Yeah, I think so. And also sometimes recognise that because of the workarounds you've had to make. Actually I was thinking with cabbies having done the knowledge, right, they do this extraordinary thing where they've learned every single street in London and you know, A, they can do that, but B, it does something else to their brain, which means they can do other things. And I think when you've grown up with any sort of disability, the workarounds you've done means you've got 10,000 hours of experience of thinking in a way that other people haven't. It will not be readily obvious to you what that way of thinking is because it's just your natural way of thinking. But when you go into the world of work with people who don't have that, you suddenly go, oh, actually I do see the world slightly differently. I do think about the world slightly differently and I have solutions that other people don't have for things. We've always, on House of Games and Pointless, we've always tried to, specifically in the world of question writing, for example, which is full of the world's smartest and quirkiest people, and we've always tried to make sure that that's something people can do from home and that it's readily accessible to everybody. And something like House of Games, where the questions can often really come out of left field, and there are only a certain group of people who can do that and that often comes from not being able to do something else, I have noticed. It's not something I wouldn't want to put a statistic on it, but I've noticed many times that people who feel that, you know, that there aren't avenues open to them suddenly find themselves in a job where they go, oh hold on, I can do this much better than anyone else because I've been doing this all my life without realising it and that's felt like a lot of my career has been taking advantage of the fact that my brain has worked in a way for such a long time because it's had to, that other people's brains haven't. And listen, I've got the personality type where I can take advantage of that. I absolutely get that. But if you don't have that personality type, if you are shy or more nervous about things, have a little think about what it is in your thought processes that are different to other people's and how you might be able to use that. The skills in a world of AI, everyone will be able to think in the same way, right? Almost all jobs, entry level jobs, AI can do those jobs for them. If you are 18 or 21 and you have had to think outside the box your whole life, you will have skills that every single other person out there will not have. You will have things that will make you different to other people. And the one thing that there's going to be a huge premium of in the next 10, 15, 20 years is people who can think unusually. Because AI can think usually, that's taken care of. If you want people who can think normally and do the obvious thing, it's absolutely taken care of. If you've grown up in an environment where you are forced to think in an unusual way or find unusual solutions to things that wouldn't be problems to other people, you have a skill set that's going to be extremely valuable.

EMMA - I think a lot of people will be very pleased to hear that advice, especially our audience on Access All.

RICHARD – Good.

EMMA - Richard, what a lovely conversation. Thank you so much for joining me on Access All.

RICHARD – Oh, it's a been an absolute privilege, thank you.

EMMA – That's about it for this episode of Access All.

You can get in touch with me, e-mail accessall@bbc.co.uk with your thoughts on this or any other episode of the podcast. You can also tell me what you'd like to see in future episodes. Subscribe to Access All on BBC Sounds or wherever you get your podcasts from and I'll see you next time.

Bye.