Richard Osman ‘tapped on the shoulder’ at Cambridge by MI6 – but failed the test

Richard Osman: ‘too tall, not bright enough, and if I have a secret, I tell everybody’. Photograph: Ken McKay/ITV/Shutterstock

Richard Osman received the “tap on the shoulder” from MI6 while he was a student at Cambridge University and interviewed for a role as a spy, he has revealed.

In an interview with the Guardian, the television presenter and crime fiction author said he was not able to develop a career in the secret services, however, because he failed the “fun” tests he was set and – in any case – would have been an awful spy.