Looking back, there was only ever really going to be one winner of The Celebrity Traitors. True, Jonathan Ross might have had all the showbiz pizazz, and Joe Marler the aggression of an unfed labrador – but when you look at the series as a whole, you have to admit that Alan Carr was the only deserving victor.
This much was evident at the heart-stopping climax of Thursday’s finale, when Carr managed to pull off a feat so brazen that it almost came off as performance art. This was a man who had spent the previous eight episodes slashing away at the contestants – gleefully murdering them behind their backs or, in two cases, as he looked them straight in the eye – and not only did he evade defeat, but he also convinced his fallen enemies to comfort him. That’s a level of skill only a true champion can achieve.
Not only did he evade defeat, but he convinced his enemies to comfort him! … Alan with Nick, David and Claudia on The Celebrity Traitors final. Photograph: BBC
Carr’s victory was total. Within the confines of the castle, he managed to avoid detection almost completely. This in itself is something of a miracle, given the gibbering flopsweat of his early moments as a traitor. Of the three picked in episode one, he came off like the undisputed weak link.
Jonathan Ross was the garrulous veteran, who had honed his easy patter through a five-decade TV career. He was funny, unshakeable and apparently such a fan of the show that he could see several moves ahead of anyone who hunted him. Cat Burns, on the other hand, was an inscrutable unknown. She had no real persona to exploit, and by her own admission had trouble working within large groups, so she was always destined to fly under the radar.
A gleeful traitor … Carr bumps off Celia – to her face. Photograph: BBC
Meanwhile, the moment he was picked as a traitor, Alan Carr started twitching and hyperventilating, his eyes darting around the room like nobody’s business. At first he seemed destined to flame out like Linda from the third civilian Traitors series; a lovely woman who was so genetically incapable of keeping any form of secret that she effectively self-immolated at the earliest opportunity.
But then The Celebrity Traitors did something really smart. Very early on it asked the traitors to murder a faithful in clear sight, by touching them on the face. While the other two demurred, Carr stepped up, sealing the fate of Paloma Faith for good by wiping an invisible hair off her cheek. The fact that he killed so early – and that his victim was one of his closest friends, no less – emboldened him beyond words. Before long, he took on the mantle of traitor ringleader, impatient to off as many people as he could.
The veteran, the unknown and (centre) the ringleader. Photograph: BBC
Viewed in the clear light of day, this is monstrous behaviour. From one angle, the story of Alan Carr is the story of a man who was given a tiny amount of power then went wild with bloodlust. It’s a pantomime retelling of the Stanford Prison Experiment. But the thing that made Carr such an incredible traitor is that he managed to temper all this with an entire bucket of charm.
The prevailing theory among the faithfuls this year was that of the Big Dog; in essence, that if a show has the pulling power to book people as famous as Jonathan Ross and Stephen Fry, then it would be logical to assume that they would be traitors. The Big Dog Theory did for both Ross (correctly) and Fry (incorrectly) in time, while Carr avoided scrutiny altogether. This is because very little about him is outwardly aggressive. While everyone was hunting the Big Dogs, Carr was utilising the Little Puppy Theory, and winning in spades.
But let’s have a little perspective here. Carr didn’t win just because he was a good traitor. He also won because the faithfuls were collectively the most inept group of people ever to grace a television screen. This was a game with three traitors, and it took the faithfuls seven episodes to even find one. Statistically, they would have done a better job by writing everyone’s name on some sticky notes, then playing Pin the Tail on the Donkey.
Stories will be told about exactly how useless the faithfuls were this year, about how Kate Garraway and David Olusoga evaporated all the authority they’d built up over decades in the business by pursuing the stupidest line of inquiry at every turn. These are people who failed to catch Carr, even when he failed to say the words “I am a faithful” without dissolving into nervous giggles. They are fools, one and all.
So Alan Carr was always going to win The Celebrity Traitors. But he did so with such joy, such total effervescence, that he deserves to go down in history. Good luck topping that next year.
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