Richard Osman's aunt reveals full extent of their family rift

The full extent of Pointless star Richard Osman's bitter family rift can be revealed for the first time by MailOnline.

The BBC favourite revealed this week that his childhood was shattered when his father walked out on his family for another woman when he was nine-years-old.

The TV quiz show host states in a new book that his paternal grandmother then ceased all contact and never sent him so much as a Christmas card.

However, his aunt Mabel Osman, 90, has now denied that this was the case.

She insisted that his gran Alice doted on him and his brother Mat, the bass player in rock band Suede.

Mabel instead blamed the brothers' heartbroken mother Brenda for shutting out his father's side of the family.

Speaking exclusively to MailOnline, she said: 'Richard's gran loved him and wanted contact with him, but it was his mother who stopped it.

'After his father left, Brenda didn't want anything to do with any of us. It wasn't the Osman side who cut off the contact at all.

'Before the break-up, his gran would go to the family home to see Richard and his brother, but it all stopped.

'I don't think she ever wanted her son to marry Brenda. But she loved all her little grandchildren and would not have wanted to stop seeing Richard. She wasn't that kind of woman and would've done anything for her grandchildren.

'I'm sure she also sent him Christmas cards. Perhaps he never got them, perhaps Brenda tore them up.'

Osman, 50, revealed his family's split in the book, Letter to My Younger Self which features interviews with 100 'inspiring people on the moments that shaped their lives' and is published in aid of the Big Issue.

In his interview with Jane Graham who devised and edited the book, the 6ft 4ins tall comedian said: 'I find it hard when I'm looking back at my childhood to

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