Spoilers for The Celebrity Traitors below!
It has begun. Last night, The Celebrity Traitors finally aired on BBC One: a show seemingly built to be watched in autumn, what with its penchant for capes, Scotland and all things spooky.
This, of course, is The Traitors on steroids; instead of bog-standard Joe Public on the show, we get to see people like Stephen Fry, Tom Daley and Paloma Faith battle it out on screen instead.
And amid all the celebs jostling for attention, one stands out. One bespectacled, cloaked Crusader, who can’t keep a straight face and could perhaps be the most obvious Traitor since the hand-rubbing Paul.
I’m talking, of course, about Alan Carr: the proverbial Chatty Man, comedian, talkshow host and general media personality, who seems to have signed up for the show on a whim and finds himself more than a little at sea here.
God, isn’t he a delight though. Even among the self-confident celebs, he stands out – probably due to his constant wise-cracking and impeccable comic timing. At one point, Clare Balding states that whoever gets banished will come down to a vote at the round table.
“God, you’re looking beautiful today!” Carr immediately jokes in response.
That’s before he’s even cast as a Traitor – blithely telling Claudia that he’d have no trouble offing his fellow celebs. “You know what celebrities are like!” he crows. “They’re two faced!”
Indeed – but as it turns out, he might be the most two-faced of them all, even if he’s not very good at looking the part. The footage of him prowling the castle’s corridors after hours, dressed up in a cloak and a hood which is propped up by his owlish specs, made me hoot out loud with laughter. Menacing? Pull the other one.
It was worth making The #CelebrityTraitors for this shot alone 💀 pic.twitter.com/zNVMzps6vL
— The Traitors HQ (@the_traitors_) October 8, 2025
What it is, though, is a masterstroke. The man just cannot keep a straight face – or, seemingly, lie.
“I feel sick," he tells the camera just after he’s picked as one of the Traitors. "It's the worst secret ever and it's just burning me.” He also reveals that he is prone to nervous sweating – and indeed looks distinctly damp for the entirety of the first episode. Watching him interact with the oblivious Faithfuls is like watching an internal meltdown happen in real time.
Carr’s particular brand of chaos (he describes himself as the ‘PR face’ of the Traitors operation) is all the more joyous in how it beautifully it contrasts with the ice-cool exteriors of his fellows.
We all knew Burns would be excellent (she is, by her own admission, a Traitors superfan and strategy dissector) but Ross also plays it admirably cool, leaving Carr to almost give the game away by loudly gabbing about their strategy within earshot of the other players.
The end of episode one, which puts him in the unenviable position of having to commit the Traitors’ first murder, ‘in plain sight’, is nail biting. It has to be done by touching somebody’s face – something that immediately rules out both Burns and Ross. I can’t think of anybody less likely to get away with it than Carr, but the joy of the whole thing is in how un-chill he is about it.
"My aim was to go under the radar, and I think I've pole-vaulted over it," he says towards the end of episode one. Ain’t that the truth – and long may he continue to do so.
The Celebrity Traitors is streaming now on BBC One and iPlayer
