Radio Times: “I would love to have been a detective like my grandfather.“Sadly, I have a condition called nystagmus that means I’ve got terrible eyesight, so it was never a possibility.”Richard and his brother Mat were brought up by their mother, Brenda Wright.Their father left when Richard was nine years old.He later met his father as an adult but they didn’t form a close relationship.Richard said: “My dad’s side of the family wasn’t something I was interested in, because that’s not the family I grew up in.“It would, in a funny way, be like learning about strangers.“My family are the Wrights from Brighton and those are the people I feel genuinely connected to.”During the show, it was discovered that Richard’s four-times great-grandfather, Gabriel Gillam, born in Brighton in 1789 was a fisherman who lived with his wife in a poor area of Brighton.He turned to smuggling to feed his family.Richard said: “Early 19th-century Brighton was an incredibly poor place if you came from the fishing community.“Then suddenly the Prince Regent, later King George IV, decided to build the Royal Pavilion and Brighton became very fashionable.
But the grinding poverty didn’t suddenly disappear.”Richard, who shares two grown-up children with his ex-wife and is currently in a relationship with actress Ingrid Oliver announced he was leaving Pointless to focus on his writing career in April..