Richard Osman has poked fun at comparisons to the new Prime Minister Andy Burnham. The presenter and author, 55, shared a screenshot of an article from The Independent which revealed a host of UK voters had confused him with Burnham, who officially became PM on Monday. The headline read: “Brits mistake Andy Burnham for Richard Osman and Mel Gibson in surprise new poll.”
Poll results spark jokes
The JL Partners survey revealed 18 million Brits (38 per cent of voters) could not identify the new PM, 56, from a picture. Joking about the results, Osman referenced his former BBC show Richard Osman’s House Of Games by writing: “Richard Osman's House Of Commons.”
His wife Ingrid Oliver couldn’t resist wading in with a comment about her husband’s love of snooker, quipping: “Running on a platform of devolution of power away from Westminster towards the World Snooker Federation.”
Osman responds
Osman responded: “My Chancellor? Ronnie O'Sullivan.”
The survey revealed “some voters mistook Burnham for figures such as quiz show host Richard Osman, actor Mel Gibson, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and even his predecessor, Sir Keir Starmer”.
Fans were quick to share their amusement, with one referencing Osman’s hugely popular book series with the comment: “The Thursday Ministry Club.” Another joked: “This is why you stepped back from House of Games?” “I wondered why Andy was suddenly 6 ft 7 inches tall,” someone else quipped, alluding to Osman’s exit from the show in March.
Osman on celebrity politics
While Osman was happy to joke about the Burnham comparisons, he has previously been vocal in his beliefs about celebrities discussing politics. In 2024, he told famous faces to stop discussing their political opinions in public because “nobody is listening to you”.
“I genuinely think this is every single election over here and in America...” he said on The Rest Is Entertainment. “Showbusiness does get involved and we hear the opinions of celebrities and we hear about the importance of their views on the records of different candidates and their views on the direction of the country they live in... Nobody has ever given the first toss about anything anyone from the entertainment industry has ever said about any political issue... There's a load of little things that happen in this country and you can send a tweet and people go, 'Oh yeah, that was an interesting take on that.'”
Insisting an election is “way beyond the entertainment industry,” he added: “You can have all the opinions you want, you can spout whatever you want to do on whatever forum you want to... You can talk on whatever chat show you want to, nobody is listening to you. Because in elections, people are thinking about their house, their neighbors, their school, their town, their infrastructure, their safety... That’s all they’re thinking about and every single time somebody in show business gives an opinion on an election, it does the exact opposite thing of what it’s supposed to do, and yet they still do it.”
