When he was the House of Commons speaker, John Bercow developed a combative reputation – and after his tenure he was found to be a “serial bully” and a liar. But now as he makes his reality TV debut, the man with the famous cry of “order!” is seeking to use his political experience to unleash chaos.
“I’m a retired politician,” Bercow said in the season premiere of the US version of The Traitors. “Backstabbing, deception are all part and parcel of the political life.”
Bercow joins the Love Island winner Ekin-Su Cülcüloğlu, Tamra Judge of The Real Housewives of Orange County, Maksim Chmerkovskiy of Dancing with the Stars and Marcus Jordan – son of the basketball legend Michael Jordan – as one of 21 celebrities competing at a castle in the Scottish Highlands for a cash prize – the same venue as the UK version, broadcast by BBC. Three of the contestants have been chosen by the host, Alan Cumming, to sow chaos and purposely sabotage the others.
While Bercow was not selected as a traitor, several of his fellow contestants suspected he was after he experienced “breathing difficulties” during the premiere. He blamed the difficulties on asthma, but others doubted his answer.
“When you took your mask off, you said: ‘I have asthma’ but you just said: ‘I was asthmatic as a child,’” said Big Brother’s Janelle Pierzina. She questioned what exactly Bercow told another contestant about his breathing issues, to which he replied: “Look, is asthma a lifelong condition?”
“That’s not the question I’m asking you,” Pierzina said. “You’re answering this just like a politician.”
In this season, Big Brother’s Dan Gheesling, Phaedra Parks from The Real Housewives of Atlanta and Survivor’s Parvati Shallow are the traitors, but at the end of the first episode Peppermint of Ru Paul’s Drag Race was voted off. A number of the other contestants voted for Bercow, however.
Bercow served as Commons speaker for 10 years, with clips of his snarky retorts and cries for “order, order” while arbitrating Brexit debates and PMQs gaining the politician a cult following in the US and across Europe. “No one on the British island can call ‘order, order’ more beautifully than John Bercow,” the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant stated in its 2019 profile of the speaker.
He quit his Commons role in 2019. An independent inquiry in 2022 found that Bercow was a “serial bully” and a liar and that he should be banned from holding a parliamentary pass. The former speaker was accused of throwing a mobile phone and swearing at officials, with the inquiry upholding 21 out of 35 complaints filed against him by former staff. Before the final report was published, Bercow criticised the way the inquiry was conducted, saying: “To call it a kangaroo court is unfair to kangaroos.”
