After leaving Millbrook Community Secondary School at 16, he was briefly an apprentice metal-worker before joining the Royal Navy as a marine engineer and mechanic.
In his spare time, he started working in holiday camps and clubs as a semi-professional entertainer, before turning full-time in 1984.
In 1985, he joined ITV's Copy Cats as an impressionist, working alongside Gary Wilmot and Bobby Davro.
At a boxing function at the Hilton Hotel in Park Lane, London in 1996 he was invited by Capital Radio programme controller Richard Park to do a Saturday football, music and comedy show on Capital Gold, called Home and Away with Mike and the Dugout Crew.
[2] After six years, Osman quit the show in 2002 as the early morning starts were taking their toll on his health.