Alan Carr has won the BBC show The Celebrity Traitors, the most-watched TV programme of the year so far.
Viewers were eagerly anticipating whether traitors Cat Burns and Alan Carr or faithfuls Joe Marler, Nick Mohammed and David Olusoga would win the £87,500 prize for charity.
Burns was the first to be caught and banished in the vote, then Marler was wrongly identified as a traitor and banished too. The three remaining players, Carr, Olusoga and Mohammed, voted to end the game, after which the comedian revealed himself to be a traitor.
The final challenge involved a steam train journey in which the contestants had to retrieve five gold bars in 20 minutes before the train exploded. They managed to escape and add £20,000 to the prize fund.
The comedian said the prize money would go to a children’s cancer charity for neuroblastoma.
Carr was overcome with emotion after he declared “I am and have always been a traitor”, adding: “I’m so sorry, it’s been tearing me apart.”
He was then comforted by Olusoga and Mohammed, who said: “You did brilliantly.”
Carr revealed to the faithfuls the identity of the other traitors, Burns and Jonathan Ross, who was banished at a roundtable earlier in the series, leaving Mohammed to cover his mouth in shock.
The Ted Lasso star said: “Alan Carr. He played an absolute blinder.”
Carr’s victory concluded the first celebrity version of the BBC murder mystery gameshow. Only one of the three non-celebrity UK series was won by a traitor.
The series was notable for the ineptitude of the faithful. Only two traitors were banished; in the each of three non-celebrity series there were five traitors banished.
The finale was accidentally released online more than 24 hours before its UK airtime. Viewers in Canada reported being able to view the episode in its entirety before it was pulled by the television network Crave.
Before the final, Burns said she did not believe she was a good liar, despite having avoided suspicion until the end of the series.
Appearing on BBC Radio 2’s Breakfast Show, Scott Mills asked her if the show had made her realise she was an excellent liar. Burns replied: “I don’t think I am though. I don’t think I am that great of a liar. My mum watches me and she is like: ‘I can just tell that you are lying.’ But that’s the fun of the game isn’t it?”
Ed Gamble, who hosts the show’s companion programme, Uncloaked, said he considered the viral moment of Celia Imrie’s fart to be the highlight of the series, joking it had “altered the dynamic of guffs”.
The comedian told BBC Breakfast: “I know there’s so much more that goes into this show, it’s such an incredible team, it looks beautiful, these huge, sweeping shots of the beautiful Highlands, but there’s nothing funnier than a fart, especially when it comes from a national treasure.
“Maybe in the future we will see more open farting followed by a swift admission. There will be no need for ‘he who smelled it, dealt it’ from now on – Celia has altered the dynamics of guffs.”
The programme had an average of 12.6m viewers across the first four episodes.
