And now it’s time to wrap up. What a series this has been. Next year’s series, both civilian and famous, can’t come soon enough. And now I’m done for the night. Thank you for joining me, all.
And now the moment we’ve all been waiting for: Alan Carr has apologised to Paloma Faith. Peace in our time.
This is a masterclass of a post-match interview, and I am absolutely not doing it justice. Please go and watch it when you can, because it feels like we’re watching Alan Carr become a national treasure in real time.
His biggest regret, he says, is killing off Tom Daley, because it prevented the nation from seeing any more gratuitous shots of Tom Daley in the show.
And now he’s onstage with everyone else. He’s tanned, and he’s had a haircut, like the winner that he is. He’s more relaxed and confident now, and can even laugh off the infamous Paloma Faith murder, and how it fuelled his quest for blood.
Alan is proud of himself, he says, because now he has discovered that he can convincingly lie. I’m not sure that should really be the moral of a primetime BBC One reality show, but we get what we deserve.
And now to Alan. First we see him immediately post-win, where he still hasn’t processed the sheer level of deception he managed to deploy. But he does reveal that he expected to do so badly that his agent booked gigs for him during the second week of the show.
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For all the bonhomie on show here, Joe is still extremely narked off about losing. Apparently on rewatching the finale, he shouted ‘SCUMBAGS’ at Nick and David. God bless that man and his absolute lack of showbiz insincerity.
Nick’s takeaway is that he was the wrongest contestant on the entire series. Ed Gamble politely disagrees and suggests that David was actually the wrongest contestant. All the while, Kate Garraway gets to have a nice sit down in the audience.
And now the finalists are onstage to dissect the climax of the series. Joe is dressed like a normal person again, and I am personally very disappointed.
I’ve just noticed that Paloma Faith has one hundred percent Single White Femaled Claudia Winkleman tonight. I hope that comes up later.
Claudia Winkleman has turned up in an ‘I HEART ALAN’ shirt. She’s talking through the finale, during which her knees were apparently knocking together with fear. She also points out that the game is much harder to play than to watch, which I’ve decided to take personally.
The spin-off starts with all the contestants watching Alan win. They gasp, then they cry. Celebrities, they’re just like us.
Right, that’s the end of The Celebrity Traitors. I’m going to stick around and watch the BBC Two spin-off to see everyone’s reactions. You, meanwhile, can go to bed if you like. It’s been a big evening after all.
Hugs. Declarations of love. Even Joe (dressed as the stroppy son of a Russian oligarch) can’t stop smiling at the end. What a delight. What a show. More soon please.
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Alan truly fell apart when he had to tell the truth, bless him. It was unexpectedly very moving. And so was the speed at which the other two rushed to reassure him that they weren’t angry with him. Now, you could argue that their reactions would have been different had this been the civilian version and they were personally going to receive a life-changing sum of money. But this has been a very lovely, gracious ending to a wonderful series.
Alan Carr wins
Alan says that he’s a traitor, and Nick swears. And then Alan cries, and everyone hugs him and congratulates him. They hold his hands and tell him how well he has done. What a very lovely lot they are.
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Nick reveals that he is a faithful. David nods respectfully.
David reveals that he is a faithful. Nick nods, smugly.
Nick chooses to end the game, the big dummy. He’s messed this up colossally. I can’t wait to see everyone’s reaction! They’re going to cry!
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(dramatic pause that lasts a full calendar year)
They all pick pouches again. Alan chooses to end the game. David chooses to end the game. And now, once again, it’s all down to Nick. If he chooses to end the game, Alan will win everything.
Joe Marler is banished
Nick writes Joe. This is a turn-up! They’ve all turned on the only man on the show who actually had any idea what was going on. The only man who could have stopped Alan. The only man who came dressed like a fishmonger from Bladerunner. What’s going to happen now?
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(Dramatic pause)
So, another vote. Every finalist gets to write down the name of the contestant they think is a traitor. Alan writes Joe. Joe writes Alan. David picks Joe. And Nick…
Joe picks ‘Banish again’. David chooses ‘Banish again’. Nick chooses ‘Banish again’. Guess we’re banishing again!
Everyone picks a pouch, declaring either ‘Banish again’ or ‘Endgame’. If anyone chooses the former, there’ll be another banishment. Alan picks ‘Banish again’, so that’s that.
Time for the final showdown. Around the round table, they have one last chance to uncover Alan Carr. If they do, they get to share the money. If they don’t, he keeps it all himself. Either way, a charity gets a lot of money.
What happens now is a series of interviews between the finalists and Claudia Winkleman. They all reaffirm everything they’ve said all along, so it’s a bit pointless. But we’re not watching any more disappointing railway explosions at least, so we should try and take this as a win.
The finalists lick their wounds over drinks. However, because Joe apologised to Cat as he banished her, Nick now thinks that he’s a traitor. This is still anyone’s game, quite frankly.
The final four, then, are Nick, David, Alan and Joe. And I can’t remember what happens now. Twenty minutes left. Let’s find out.
Also, let’s all forget what I said about her winning, OK?
Cat is banished
Joe votes Cat. This was his gameplan all along, and everything went exactly his way. Cat Burns, the traitor, has been caught and banished. However, nobody knows that she’s a traitor.
God, this show bloody loves a dramatic pause.
More dramatic pause.
Dramatic pause
Cate votes David. David votes Cat. Nick votes Cat. Alan votes David. It’s all down to Joe.
Voting time. This won’t take long, because there are only five names to read out, but never underestimate capacity that The Traitors has for a needlessly dramatic pause.
This is all deceptively civil. Only Alan is going on the attack, turning fire on David again. And his attacks are drawing nods from everyone else around the table. Even Joe (dressed like a kinky Dracula after a particularly heavy meal) goes for him. Nobody has voted yet, but things don’t look good for poor old David.
Now talk turns to Cat. Everyone has expressed a suspicion that she is traitor, but they seem to be going light on her. Joe (dressed as Uncle Albert in a remake of Only Fools and Horses fuelled entirely by Human Growth Hormone) sighs wearily. He’s unable to land a single punch so far.
David says that Joe might be a traitor, on the basis that he’s quite funny sometimes. Joe, dressed like one of Dolph Lundgren’s support team from Rocky 4, does an especially bad job of defending himself. He looks beaten.
Alan (white and gold suit) goes first, but is immediately cut down by Nick (burgundy tuxedo) and Joe (dressed like a heavy from the Sega Megadrive game Streets of Rage). David (the clothes that David normally wears) looks on impassively.
It begins. Remember, this is the final, so whoever goes now won’t be allowed to reveal whether they’re a faithful or a traitor.
Joe has convinced Cat that he’s going to vote for David. Joe is actually going to vote for Cat. David, at this point, is so confused that you can’t rule out the possibility that he’ll vote for himself. Let’s just have a round table, shall we?
Back at the castle, Alan and Cat try to persuade Joe that they are both faithfuls. Meanwhile, Nick tells David that Joe might be a traitor. There is a word for this group’s ability to discover traitors, and it rhymes with ‘blusterduck’.
They got all the money, and ran from the train as what can only be described as an indoor firework went off behind them. A bit of a damp squib, but at least it’s a lot more money for their charities. Whatever their charities are. Have they even actually said what their charities are?
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Actually, I take this back. This isn’t very exciting at all. I’ve never taken a bucket of quaaludes and then watched an Indiana Jones movie, but I very much suspect that this is identical to that.
I have to saw, they’re doing an awfully good job of wringing tension from what is ultimately a slow-moving pleasure ride on a lovely historical steam train. In the most recent civilian Traitors series, didn’t they all hang out of helicopters or something?
To discover the keys, the contestants have to find letters and then spell them. This doesn’t bode well, because the round tables demonstrated perfectly well that barely anyone this year can even spell the word ‘Jonathan’.
I don’t think the train is actually going to explode, because the Strathspey Railway is a major tourist attraction in the Highlands, and it’d be weird to jeopardise that just to moderately spook Alan Carr.
And now, TRAAAAIN. The contestants pull up at a quaint little train station, where they are informed that they will be riding on The Traitors Express. They will board the train and scour each carriage for a key that will open a crate. The crates contain money, but also explode? I’m not fully fully clear on the details here.
Meanwhile, Cat has never seen a steam train before. That woman does not know how to live.
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Before the TRAAAAAIN, everyone plots to oust Cat in the round table. By ‘everyone’ I mean ‘Joe’. Nick has decided that Joe might be a traitor, because of course he has. Get a grip, Nick.
Claudia is here (fisherman up top, ballerina down below) and hints that the task might have something to do with a train. This causes Alan Carr to scream “TRAAAAAAIN” in exactly the same way the late Queen Elizabeth screamed the word “COW” that time she saw a cow in a GIF I saw once.
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David’s testimony follows the same boilerplate formula as all the others. He’s had a lovely time and made a lot of friends. I do not care for this. I want to see someone driven to the point of paranoid violence. Do better, The Traitors.
So far, all the contestants have turned up wearing their best clothes – Alan in particular is wearing a lovely blazer – and then Joe walks in wearing a pair of shorts. This is the Joeiest thing Joe has done all series.
In her retrospective, Cat promises to split the prize with Alan. This has to be because she definitely will not do this. Just watch.
The final morning begins without a murder, which means everyone gets to enjoy breakfast without having to feign surprise that nobody offed Kate Garraway in her sleep. But the lack of murders mean that there’s room for all of the finalists to give a triumphant Masterchef-style retrospective on their time in the castle.
OK, the final of The Celebrity Traitors has finally begun, as it always does, with an enormous recap.
We see everyone who’s been banished and murdered, and treated to plenty of footage of Alan Carr being genuinely devious. And shackets. So many shackets this year. Who knew?
Before the show begins, an advert for an upcoming series of Celebrity Apprentice. Just so we have this in writing: I would not like to liveblog that please.
Five minutes to go. I’ve lost count of the amount of people who’ve asked me how I think the final will go (because I can’t count past three), and here’s my final prediction:
Cat will win, after promising to split the prize with Alan and then going back on her word.
However, let me refer you to the thing I linked to just now where I was wrong about absolutely everything.
And while we wait for the show to begin, please enjoy highlights of The Guardian’s legitimately extensive coverage of Celebrity Traitors from the past few weeks.
Analysis of the series by former contestant Paul Gorton
Michael Hogan’s highlights round-up
Zoe Williams interviews Tom Daley
Alan Carr vs Celia Imrie, with mention of The Fart
Elle Hunt’s visit to Traitors Castle
And finally, a predicted ranking of the contestants that I wrote in May and quite clearly got spectacularly wrong. As ever, you are welcome.
For those of you who have somehow chosen the final episode of the series to get into The Traitors, here are the surviving few of this year’s intake.
ALAN CARR: Traitor, and increasingly the living embodiment of the Stanford Prison Experiment. At first, Carr was bumbling and embarrassed about the pressure of being a traitor. But then he had to kill Paloma Faith by touching her face, and now you’ve never seen a more gleeful murderer. Better yet, he’s so cuddly and unassuming that he has largely escaped scrutiny. OR HAS HE?
CAT BURNS: Traitor, and one to watch. Like Carr, Burns has managed to slip under the radar for the entire duration of the series. This is largely because she has managed to publicly walk the line between friendly and inscrutable, but there’s a lot going on under the surface. The speed at which Burns turned on fellow traitor Jonathan Ross demonstrates an iciness that isn’t safe for anyone.
DAVID OLUSOGA: Faithful. Possibly the most outwardly intelligent contestant this year, Olusoga has nevertheless been hounded by suspicion that he is a traitor. However, he has escaped banishment so many times that surely he no longer fears death. Do not rule out the possibility of him going full kamikaze.
NICK MOHAMMED: Faithful, and another contestant who prides himself on strategy. That said, this is the worst performing group of faithfuls in all of human history. They have been so genuinely inept at identifying traitors that they would have had better luck letting a monkey spin a wheel, so there’s really no telling how clever he actually is.
JOE MARLER: Faithful, and witchfinder general. Marler has spent the entire series desperately trying to guess and second-guess the identity of the faithfuls, a process that has largely involved him scowling at everyone as if he’s just watched them eat his lunch. Marler ended the previous episode by correctly identifying the traitors. Whether he can catch them or not tonight is anyone’s guess.
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Hello fellow hundies, and welcome to The Guardian’s liveblog of the 2025 Celebrity Traitors final. Tonight, the biggest show on television reaches its epic conclusion, as we will finally learn the answer to several pressing questions. Who will win? Who will lose? Will the faithfuls identify the traitors? Will Joe Marler stare at someone so intensely that his skull explodes? Will Claudia Winkleman turn up wearing a Vileda Supermop as a jumper like she did last week? Soon we shall discover all.
Before we start, though, some important housekeeping. We will not be the first people in the world to watch the final, since – as has been widely reported – it has already been uploaded in error in both Canada and New Zealand. Although Traitors fans are exceedingly good eggs, and have largely refrained from posting spoilers online, I would very much like it if we could experience the final together. Which is to say that, if you do know who won, please keep it to yourself.
I’ll be back here, dipping in and out until 9pm, when the full 70-minute glory of the Celebrity Traitors final begins in earnest, and then I’ll probably liveblog the BBC Two aftershow as well, because I am kindly and generous, and also because my bosses are making me. See you soon.
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