<\/p>\n
\u2018W<\/span>hy is it always me? I\u2019ve always got to do the dirty work for these traitors. I\u2019m surprised they haven\u2019t got me up in that turret with a hoover!\u201d Yes, it is always you, Alan Carr. And most people watching The Celebrity Traitors wouldn\u2019t have it any other way. But even aside from observing Carr\u2019s ascent to national treasure status, The Celebrity Traitors has felt like a timely national bonding experience from start to finish. Elon Musk is adamant that civil war in the UK is inevitable. Sorry, Elon, but not during The Celebrity Traitors it isn\u2019t. We\u2019re all too busy watching Celia Imrie screech into a well.<\/p>\n So what have we learned? The Celebrity Traitors has, of course, been a very different experience from its civilian iteration. On the most basic level, it has felt easier to pick a favourite and root for them. And, while \u00a3100,000 is a lot of money to someone on the national median wage, it\u2019s pocket change to the likes of Stephen Fry and Jonathan Ross. Of course, the celebrity winner(s) aren\u2019t getting the dosh anyway, with the winnings going to charity \u2013 but in any case, there has been a strong sense that this has been entirely about the fun parlour game rather than the winning.<\/p>\n Initially, this lack of jeopardy \u2013 plus the fact that most of these people already knew, or at least knew of, each other \u2013 made the roundtables somewhat frustrating. No one, more\u2019s the pity, pretended to be Welsh. No one hid their real occupation, because how could they? Admitting to being an actor in the normie Traitors would be a death wish. Here, you couldn\u2019t move for luvvies. There was no ganging up, no confrontation, barely any real intent at all. \u201cWe like each other too much,\u201d said David Olusoga, at one point. \u201cThis has been our weakness.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>Talk of the devil \u2026 Jonathan Ross.<\/span> Photograph: Euan Cherry\/BBC\/Studio Lambert<\/p>\n Accordingly, while stars have been born (hello, Cat Burns), pre-existing celebrity hierarchies have, without doubt, spilled over into the game. There was much talk about unconscious racial bias when Niko Omilana and Tameka Empson were the first two celebrities to be banished. But arguably a likelier explanation was that they simply weren\u2019t famous enough. After all, it\u2019s easier to launch a witch-hunt against some prankster bloke from YouTube than against National Treasure and Designated Genius Stephen Fry.<\/p>\n This, however, has become less of a problem as the game has gone on. There\u2019s been a realisation that no one is ever really that honest with most of these people \u2013 and particularly not in public. Therefore, while the air of unforced and genuine conviviality has been a vicarious pleasure, the mildly catty moments \u2013 such as Carr\u2019s muttered \u201cYabba dabba don\u2019t!\u201d when Jonathan Ross rocked up at breakfast seemingly dressed as Fred Flintstone \u2013 have been genuinely cherishable; the sound of bubbles gently popped.<\/p>\n The sheer ineptitude on display has been staggering \u2013 and oddly endearing. In this celebrity version of the show, it\u2019s become clear that overt analytical intelligence won\u2019t get anyone very far. David Olusoga\u2019s torturous circular monologues have been so consistently misguided that you actually began to retrospectively doubt the veracity of his highly regarded documentaries (imagine overthinking things to the point that you\u2019re left suspecting the most obviously faithful faithful in Traitors history, Nick Mohammed). Stephen Fry generally hemmed and hawed like Bagpuss\u2019s Professor Yaffle before eventually nominating David Olusoga again. And Kate Garraway \u2013 a literal news journalist, lest we forget \u2013 frequently blundered around like someone trying to burst a birthday pi\u00f1ata during a bomb disposal operation. \u201cKate Garraway repeating things\u201d has become something of a meme since the show began.<\/p>\n In the absence of anything of use from the show\u2019s much-vaunted brains trust, it\u2019s been left to a rugby player to get things done. This too, has been revealing. For all of his charm, there is, you suspect, very little air-kissing and insincere flattery in Joe Marler\u2019s world, and that\u2019s been his greatest asset. He\u2019s come from a different professional arena to anyone else on the show: an unsentimental place of teamwork, mutual accountability, hard knocks and intense competitiveness. He\u2019s probably the only faithful who has truly treated The Celebrity Traitors like a game and winning as the objective.<\/p>\n The era of the reality show as a celebrity-hazing ritual was dying. Celebrity Traitors is another nail in its coffin<\/p>\n But really, the fun has been in the taking part \u2013 which isn\u2019t something any professional sportsperson worth their salt would say. At times, the series has felt like a series of subliminal extended interviews \u2013 the sneakiest, cleverest chatshow imaginable. We\u2019ve learned more about the underlying characters of these people from sitting and watching them eating lasagne and gossiping together than from a career\u2019s-worth of magazine profiles. The era of the reality show as a celebrity-hazing ritual was dying anyway. But The Celebrity Traitors feels like another nail in its coffin.<\/p>\n Given the certainty that similarly impressive names will be clamouring to appear on the next edition, the biggest problem for the producers will be selection. The balance here \u2013 between young and old, between familiar and up-and-coming, between sensible and silly \u2013 has been perfect. The civilian series have suggested it, but the celebrity version has confirmed it: this is one of the most immaculate small-screen entertainment formats ever devised. Parting, as kindred spirits Alan Carr and William Shakespeare would say, will be such sweet sorrow.<\/p>\n The Celebrity Traitors final is on Thursday on BBC One at 9pm.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.theguardian.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u2018Why is it always me? I\u2019ve always got to do the dirty work for these traitors. I\u2019m surprised they haven\u2019t got me up in that turret with a hoover!\u201d Yes, it is always you, Alan Carr. And most people watching The Celebrity Traitors wouldn\u2019t have it any other way. But even aside from observing Carr\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2138070,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2138069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/\u2018The-sheer-ineptitude-has-been-staggering-what-we-learned-from.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2138069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2138069"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2138069\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2138071,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2138069\/revisions\/2138071"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2138070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2138069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2138069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2138069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}