.png)
1 hour ago
5
Did he play a blinder? Or did the faithfuls just play really – I mean sensationally, phenomenally, mindbogglingly badly? We will argue over this on social media feeds galore, but either way the winner of the first – but surely not the last – series of The Celebrity Traitors is the treacherous Alan Carr. When first anointed by that collection of cloaks, cuffs and curt instructions we have come to know as presenter Claudia Winkleman, we thought he wouldn’t last an hour. Nor did he. “I feel sick. I’ve got a sweating problem and can’t keep a secret.” He also cannot whisper or remember whether he’s won a shield. Surrounded, however, by some of the daftest players of the game since records began (2022 here, 2021 in its native Netherlands), he made it through, having grown into the role with terrifying ease. He finished with a flourish, bursting into semi-crocodile tears about how hard it had been for him to bear the murderous burden. The two surviving faithfuls, Nick Mohammed and David Olusoga, rushed to comfort him (“It’s been tearing me apart!”). At home, Paloma Faith raises her face to the heavens and screams.
At the start of the final, there had been five surviving competitors of the original 19. After one last group mission, involving a steam train, £20,000 in padlocked caskets, keys and clues dispersed throughout the carriages, and two chain-wrapped coffins (“I took the lead a bit there,” says Joe Marler of the unwrapping. “Because I was happy to lose a finger”), they assembled for their last round table. Cat and Alan cast their votes for David, despite the historian’s impressive record of reasoning himself to every wrong conclusion possible. I remain firm in my belief that David would have made the world’s greatest traitor, but as a faithful he was catastrophic. He did manage to vote for Cat at the table, however, and she was correctly banished at last.
Now we are four. I can hardly bear to write about what happened next. Nick … had a moment. A moment when he doubted Joe. One of the greatest love stories of our or any age, between the hugest man and the tiniest man on television, the rugby player and the puzzlemaster, staggered under the blow as Nick turned over his final slate to reveal his best buddy’s name. Joe did not reel – he is not built for it – but if he could, he would have. “But I love you,” Nick said, hopelessly.
Joe went, Nick and David thought they were safe and after some business throwing pouches into a fire, the three agreed to end the game. As the sole surviving traitor, Alan was declared the winner and took the entire £87,500 prize pot for the children’s cancer charity Neuroblastoma UK. But the most important thing is that when Claudia led the five to a reunion on the castle steps, Joe forgave Nick instantly.
I shall, along with the more than 13 million other viewers, miss them all. (Apart from Lucy Beaumont, who never got a chance to do much, and Clare Balding, who never apologised for bungling the Trojan horse challenge.) I shall miss the bitter fury of Ruth Codd, the Shakespearean sorrow of Mark Bonnar, the utter inability of Kate Garraway to take things anything other than personally. I shall miss Tom Daley’s suspicion of long words, Tameka Empson and Joe Wilkinson’s wit, Paloma’s sheer presence, Charlotte Church as the distillation of everything that remains good in this fallen world, Jonathan Ross as television’s last remaining showman, sweet Niko Omilana and the relentless avuncularity of Stephen Fry, along with all the finalists themselves. Above all I shall miss the grace and elegance of Celia Imrie, so exquisitely regal even when screaming down a well or farting in a shack. As the figure under Winkleman’s hair made clear on many occasions, you were, largely, awful at the game. But you were great, great entertainment.
The Celebrity Traitors is on iPlayer now.
