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Author and presenter Richard Osman has explained why he mistakenly placed a Waitrose in Tunbridge Wells in one of his Kent-based books, leaving residents “furious”.
The Sussex-raised author caused an uproar when he wrote that a character parked outside the Waitrose café in his 2020 novel The Thursday Murder Club.
Mr Osman said neither he nor his publishers fact-checked the assertion because they assumed the affluent town would have a branch of the supermarket.
Speaking to BBC South East Today, he said: “It’s so obvious to everyone that there must be a Waitrose in Tunbridge Wells.”
The former Pointless presenter, who grew up in Haywards Heath, told The Graham Norton Show in 2021 that people were “furious” with him over the mistake.
He joked that even his usually fastidious copy editor didn’t think to double check if there was a Waitrose in the town.
He said: “Even a copy editor who was able to say to me: ‘Oh, by the way, Tuesday 15 July, 1973 is not a Tuesday, it’s a Wednesday’, even that person is like: ‘Oh I don’t need to check if there’s a Waitrose in Tunbridge Wells’.”
The first four books in The Thursday Murder Club series have been set in a fictional retirement home in Kent, which Osman says is based on his mother’s retirement village in Sussex.
His second book in the series, The Bullet That Missed, follows four retirees solving the murder of a local TV journalist on the show South East Tonight.
And Mr Osman confirmed the fictional news programme was indeed inspired by BBC South East’s flagship show.
‘Gossip and intrigue’
Speaking to South East Today’s Piers Hopkirk, he said: “You can’t say the actual name because then suddenly I’m talking about people in the newsroom and people get murdered and you would sue me.
“It was irresistible to me to have a character like that and a little bit of murder because you know the gossip and intrigue that goes on behind the scenes in a local newsroom.”
Osman’s fifth book is set in the New Forest, Hants, and follows a different set of characters.
We Solve Murders was published by Viking on 12 September.