REVIEW: The recruited comedian has bragged that he hasn’t told one lie during his time in the game but surely he’ll come unstuck soon?
21:06, 15 Oct 2026Updated 21:07, 15 Oct 2026
James never wanted to be a Traitor and so it’s fair enough that he is struggling to behave like one
James Acaster is playing Celebrity Traitors in a brand new way, having been recruited to the dark side very much against his will. But against all expectation, he’s acing it.
The comedian, who told host Claudia Winkleman that he had no desire to be a Traitor at the start of the show, was picked to be one anyway, by Maya Jama and short-lived eejit Richard E Grant.
And while it was almost annoying when he simply refused to join in with Maya’s murderous glee as they pulled the plug on Bella Ramsey, I’ve come around to the idea so much that I’m finding his gameplay quite admirable.
Somehow James is managing to succeed as a Traitor while playing as a Faithful. Yes, it’s quite weird, but against the odds he’s making it work. And watching him try to justify every little thing he does – presumably so he can sleep at night and also so he can point this out to everyone afterwards – is fascinating.
In tonight’s episode he told King Kenny, the latest Faithful to make it through the turret’s revolving door: “I’m basically playing the game as a Faithful – I haven’t told a single lie yet, but I’m protecting Maya.”
He seemed almost happy, presumeably on the back of the previous night’s murder having gone so well. Because while Ross Kemp would have been FURIOUS to get murdered, and Romesh Ranganathan might have been a bit miffed too, Rob Beckett just laughed at them.
Afterwards James said he wished ALL the murders could be done face to face, because it had helped to ease his conscience when he saw that Rob, at least, was very much remembering it was all just a game.
Because he’s more Faithful than Traitor James has had no qualms about voting out two fellow baddies so far – Richard E Grant and Hannah Fry. So Kenny is right to be worried about being double crossed by him or Maya Jama, but for now James is genuinely delighted to have the fellow avid Faithful on board. “I’m feeling much more relaxed now that Kenny’s on the case,” he said. “You know when you get someone who comes in at work who you know will actually do all the jobs – and you can just hold a broom and look like you’re doing something.” Yup, James is going to hide behind Kenny for all he’s worth.
Meanwhile Maya is having a tough time of it because the Traitors are dropping like flies. I mean yes, she does keep voting for them too. But still, she must be feeling a bit lonely.
Now the Faithful are all pumped up again and Bash (Sebastian Croft) keeps mentioning James Acaster as a potential Trator so it might not be long before he’s forced to defend himself.
I wish someone would just ask him: “Are you a Traitor?” because if he can’t lie, it’ll be Richard E Grant all over again. Roll on tomorrow’s episode…
The opening episode ended with two players fighting for their lives but before that – what on earth was Richard E Grant thinking?
21:15, 01 Oct 2026Updated 21:15, 01 Oct 2026
Richard is having a shocking time in The Celebrity Traitors
Richard E Grant’s outrageous act of self-sabotage on The Celebrity Traitors last night left producers and fellow players reeling.
Claudia Winkleman said she believed the huge gaffe, in which he openly revealed his role as a Traitor just minutes after she’d selected him, was not because he was nervous, but because he was giddy with excitement after achieving the role he’d always dreamed of.
Now viewers will have to wait until tomorrow’s episode to see if the actor can survive the first roundtable banishment – while also discovering whether it was comedian James Acaster or TV journalist Amol Rajan who met their grisly end in a coffin.
Claudia said that Richard, 69, was so desperate to be a Traitor, she had no choice but to tap him on the shoulder. “You just couldn’t not give it to him, because he wanted it so much,” she laughed at a screening last week. “I couldn’t believe he was literally in the castle. And yeah, he was giddy. The genius of the game is that everyone plays it completely differently, and he took that to the next level.
“I think it was excitement. I think he was genuinely so happy. He came into the church. He loved the game. He had to eat. He wanted to be a Traitor. He got picked for a Traitor. He just wanted to tell everyone.”
Producer Sarah Fay agreed: “Never in our wildest dreams did we think that we’d have a Traitor admit they were a Traitor five minutes on from the round table. We’ve never had anything like that happen before. I think it was just static delirium. I don’t know what he was thinking. I still can’t believe it now, but yeah, Richard E Grant, how iconic.” She confessed that the star’s astonishing faux pas had left her feeling conflicted in the moment: “It was a mixture of a little bit of sick coming up in my mouth and a punch at the same time.”
Ahead of being picked, Richard told Claudia: “If I was lucky enough to be a Traitor, that would be one of my dreams come true – it’s the only way to have some control. Friendships means diddly squit!” And he won over the audience by speaking about his late wife Joan Washington, who told him four days before she died, in 2021, that he was to find “a pocketful of happiness” each day. “I feel like I’ve got a wheelbarrowful, and then some,” he marvelled.
But it wasn’t long before he boldly told Joe Lycett that he was “a Traitor” – leaving the group stunned. Luckily for him, Jerry Hall – who claimed in the show that she’d make a good Faithful because her uncle was one of the Texas Rangers who’d caught Bonnie and Clyde – quickly dismissed his outburst. “Oh, that’s just Richard, he wanted to be a Traitor so bad,” she said. “I’ve known him for 30 years and he says and does eccentric things.”
Many of the group appeared to follow her lead, with actress Myha’la insisting he must have been joking because “he’s too smart for that”. But viewers saw Richard sigh on camera: “That might be the biggest mistake I have ever made in my life.”
Finding out her fellow Traitor was like “an unhinged uncle” left Love Island host Maya Jama, 32, realising they’d have to work hard to keep him in the game. Despite this, she wholeheartedly accepted the challenge of getting him off the hook. “Me and Richard are in it together,” she said in a solo chat. “It’s like heaving an unhinged uncle running wild in the castle – that is my partner in crime.”
Told they had to choose a new recruit to join them in the turret, the duo picked the pair who had expressed the loudest views about Richard being a Traitor – Amol, who called Richard the “lord of chaos” and James Acaster. Whoever joins the Traitors after pleading for their life and ending up in a coffin cliffhanger will now have to change their argument – or throw Richard under the bus. But what is certain is that either James, 41, or Amol, 43, will tonight follow in the footsteps of Paloma Faith by becoming the first celebrity to exit the series.
Sarah said the idea for this twist was sparked by the pop star’s swift death last year. “We thought wouldn’t it have been interesting if Paloma had had the chance to plead for her life?” she explained. “Going home first is a massive thing, but if you can slightly put the power back in their hands, how interesting would that be?”
The idea of having Claudia pop out of a coffin at the start came after the celebrities had to dig their own graves in last year’s opener. “We were racking our brains: how can we make this feel different” Sarah said. “We landed on starting in the church and ending in the church, bookmarking episode one. So opening with Claudia popping out of a coffin, and then our first murder being someone getting slammed into one.” Claudia’s own ideas, that she got into the suit of armour or emerged from the grandfather clock, were both dismissed.
Almost all of the 21 celebrities wanted to have the green cloak, with only a handful determined to be Faithful, including singer James Blunt, mathematician Hannah Fry and comedians Miranda Hart and James Acaster – who will have failed in that quest if he remains in the game.
Ross Kemp said in his entrance interview that he wanted to show people he had a good sense of humour – and he certainly provided plenty of laughs last night. But, sadly for him, the comedy he brought was mostly at his own expense after he went into a tailspin first during the mission, and then later over drinks in the castle.
The TV tough man had prepared so thoroughly by going through previous episodes that he interpreted any gesture towards him as an attempt to kill him in plain sight. First Bella Ramsay was under suspicion after placing the Captain’s hat on his head as an mark of respect because he’d excelled in the mission. Then it was Leigh-Anne Pinnock’s turn after she touched him in the bar because she felt chilly. “I’ve just had my arm rubbed – she rubbed me on the arm,” he spluttered to the group. Accusing her outright of murder, she could only insist: “Oh my gosh – calm down! Stop.”
Admitting he was caught in a spiral of doom, the 62-year-old sighed: “My guard is very much up. Anyone touching me, offering me a drink or talking to me in a slightly odd way – that could be me gone. I’m feeling pretty paranoid.” Uncloaked host Ed Gamble branded his reactions as “one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen”. He laughed: “He’s a big hard man running that mission and then immediately terrified of a member of Little Mix touching him on the arm.”
The Celebrity Traitors returns tomorrow on BBC1 at 8pm.
Ross Kemp wants to prove he’s more than just a tough guy while Richard E Grant hopes being ‘geriatric’ will excuse him from the money-making missions
Ross Kemp wants people to know he’s got a sense of humour under that tough exterior(Image: CREDIT LINE:BBC/Studio Lambert/Cody Burridge/BBC Creative)
There’s just three days to go until the new series of Celebrity Traitors hits the screens and some of its biggest stars have revealed what drove them to sign up for the hit BBC1 show.
Former EastEnders star turned documentary maker Ross Kemp says he is a huge fan of the series, and of host Claudia Winkleman, and wants to show people that there’s more to him than just playing, or being, a tough guy.
“I think if I’m able to stay or survive for a period of time, it would give people an opportunity to see that I’m not just Grant Mitchell or a man that goes around the world confronting people with guns,” he says. “I think obviously there will be people that will only know me as Grant, and then people may have seen the documentaries, which are often quite brutal. I think people probably think that I don’t have any kind of sense of humour whatsoever, which hopefully will come out.”
That said, the 62-year-old admits that being a real-life hard man might actually be his biggest asset when it comes to The Traitors. “My strength hopefully would be some of the physical challenges. I’m a qualified HSE diver, so anything with water I should be able to do. I don’t mind heights too much, I don’t mind cold weather, I’ve completed hostile environment training and I don’t mind being uncomfortable, so I should be able to make a good contribution to Missions.”
But ahead of filming, he admitted he did have a few nerves. “There’s an element of: A, I don’t have control over this; B, I don’t want to let the side down; and C, I don’t want to let my family down by making myself look an idiot.”
Unlike Ross, actor Richard E Grant is hoping to pretty much swerve the Missions altogether – using his age as an excuse. The 69-year-old says: “Jerry Hall and I are the geriatrics of the great group. So, I’m rather hoping there will be some leeway about whether we’re expected to bungee jump off the castle’s wall.”
Richard, whose wife Joan Washington died five years ago, openly admits he is desperate to be picked as a Traitor because he feels they hold all the power. “Absolutely! I would love to be a Traitor,” he laughs. “You have no control in real life over anything. Any chance for that would be welcome – and a little bit of mischief is always welcome.”
He feels he’d be good in the role because he is “definitely” better at telling lies than spotting them and believes that a competitive nature is a pre-requisite for actors. “You can’t survive the profession without being so. It’s too brutal.”
But he doesn’t think his award-winning acting skills will actually help him much. “I think it’ll make people more suspicious because they assume that you’re a natural-born liar. I’ve played so many villains that I assume people will think that I’m a bad egg.”
Whatever happens, he’s hoping his positive attitude will help him to thrive at the Round Tables. “My weakness will be trying to hide what I feel about somebody, and my strength is that I’m a glass three-quarters full person.”
Jerry, 70, says she’s “completely obsessed” with the TV game and was thrilled when she learned that pal Richard was also taking part. “Richard was my neighbour for 30 years and we did a movie together called Tooth, where we played Tooth Fairies, and it was ridiculous,” she says. “We had such a laugh, and I went on holiday with him earlier this year, just after Christmas, to Africa with some friends. And we danced all night and had so much fun! Little did we know back then that we’d both be here.”
Unlike Richard, she is embracing the Missions and believes she can contribute to the effort to win the £100,000 prize pot despite being the oldest in the game. “I am quite an active person,” she explains. “I don’t sit down much. I have a lot of animals – two dogs, a cat, three horses, eight chickens. I do a lot of gardening. I’m very, very busy, and then I babysit my three grandchildren a lot.”
And she has revealed certain secret skills that might come in useful. “I was a girls’ leg wrestling champion in my school district growing up which is very popular in Texas. I come from a very athletic family. My sister Cindy was a girls’ champion bull rider and my sister Rosie was a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader. We all used to train horses too and you just get bucked off all the time.”
She says the whole of her immediate family is behind her, including former husband Mick Jagger and their four grown-up kids. “I’m very competitive, as are Mick and our children. My competitive nature will always override any fear. I’m going to try to behave myself on the show. I’m going to try and be a good sport.”
She would like to be a Traitor, even though she thinks she has Faithful-style sleuthing in her genes. “All the men in my family have been law enforcement officers and in the military. My father was General Patton’s staff sergeant on all his campaigns, so I think I get my organisational skills from him. All my uncles, even my nephews, have been policemen.”
Maya Jama was advised to take part by her Masked Singer pal Jonathan Ross – the first Traitor to be outed last year – having decided she wanted to take part in something “where people get to see more of my personality”.
The Love Island host reckons: “I can be warm, but I can also be quite direct when I need to be, so maybe people won’t quite know what to expect.” Laughing that she’s “not massively” competitive, she says her gameplan is to not overthink things, reasoning: “Sometimes you actually do better when you’re relaxed.”
But she also fears her naturally jolly nature might not go down well with those playing the game in earnest. “I’m not naturally very serious, and obviously this is a very serious game. It’ll be interesting to see whether I can keep a straight face.”
Maya, 32, has prepared by watching old episodes to remember deflection techniques if she finds herself accused of being a Traitor. In reality, she’s not actually sure which role she’s aiming for. “At first, I thought I’d rather be a Faithful, but then I started thinking, if I’m doing this experience, why not go all in?”
– The Celebrity Traitors starts on Thursday 1st October at 8pm on BBC One and BBC iPlayer.
