Can it really be? After four weeks of unhinged mayhem, The Celebrity Traitors is finally drawing to a close. That means no more shots of Alan Carr giggling in a demented sort of way, or Claudia putting her hands over her mouth like she can’t believe she’s gotten some of the nation’s most famous faces to do a particularly bonkers task.
But that doesn’t mean the fun is over quite yet. Ahead of the final episode, we’ve rounded up some of the best moments from this truly glorious season: from the camp to the jaw-dropping. Enjoy.
Alan Carr’s hood moment
The first moment to really sell people on the show was surely watching Alan Carr be crowned Traitor by Claudia. Carr has been one of the best parts of the show anyway; watching him mincing down a corridor holding a lamp, with his glasses propping up his hood, trying to look menacing into the bargain, immediately spawned a flood of joyful memes, and quite right too.
Stephen Fry digging his own grave
Another truly excellent moment from the first episode involved the celebs being driven straight to a fake graveyard adorned with tombstones of their own names. The challenge? To collect a Shield by digging in their graves. Barely five minutes in and the Celeb Traitors was clearly setting out its stall: don’t think you’re special because you’re famous. Even so, the sight of National Treasure Stephen Fry digging around in the dirt for a Shield was gobsmacking stuff.
Alan Carr murdering Paloma
The first major betrayal of the season! The Traitors’ first challenge, to murder in plain sight, led to Alan Carr sweatily having to find the pollen of a fake black flower, then wipe it on the face of the person the Traitors wished to kill. With echoes of Diane drinking the wine in season two, he then ended up offing his best friend Paloma Faith, who was subsequently buried alive in a coffin next day. The rise of Alan had begun.
Tom’s side-eye
Paloma’s ‘funeral’ was the gift that kept on giving. Most notably because Olympian (and, as his caption told us, entrepreneur) Tom Daley believed Kate Garraway might have been behind it. Kate didn’t help herself: her hammy exclamation of “gosh, that is flabbergasting!” drew her an iconic side-eye glare from him.
Naturally, this went viral. As did the following exchange, where Tom explained why he thought she was guilty.
“Who uses the word flabbergasted anyway?” he said. “It’s like saying ‘whoopsie daisy.’”
“You can’t accuse someone of being a Traitor just because they have a better vocabulary than you!” the real Traitor, Alan Carr, replied.
Celia Imrie’s fart
The fart that was heard around the world. Or at least, around the nation. In episode three, the group were chained together inside a dilapidated shack and told to free themselves. As Claudia explained the rules, Celia Imrie may or may not have farted.
Alright, she did, and the team promptly fell about laughing. “I just farted, Claudia,” Imrie confessed. “I’m so sorry. It’s nerves but I always own up.” Apparently, producers offered to have it edited out, but Imrie insisted it be kept in. Queen.
The Big Dog theory
Kudos to Joe Marler for sussing things so early: the former England rugby player has been on a tear all season.
“Maybe Claudia picked a war to be had between the Traitor team, led by the big dog – Jonathan – against the Faithful team, led by the Faithful big dog, of Stephen,” he said to Joe Wilkinson in an early episode. “She’s gone, ‘I wanna see which team’s gonna win now.’”
I mean, he had it bang on, and has been railing against Jonathan Ross all season. Fair play.
Celia Imrie at the well
Another vintage moment from Imrie. In episode four, half of the team had to imitate banshee wails and shout them down a well to reach their teammates on the other side. Drawing on her decades of acting experience, Imrie let out a shriek worthy of an Olivier. All this, after she dropped another clanger, telling her companions that seeing a well evoked thoughts of “putting the pussy in it.” It’s actually a reference to the nursery rhyme Ding Dong Bell. But come on.
Bonnar vs Olusoga: grudge match
A first in the whole history of the Traitors series! A roundtable ended in stalemate not once, but twice, leaving the vote perfectly split between David Olusoga and Mark Bonnar. What happens now?
Well, turns out the answer is bringing out the ‘Chests of Chance’, one of which contains a Shield and one doesn’t (whether or not this was made up on the fly by the panicked production team is anybody’s guess). Bonnar and Olusoga picked their chest at random, and it turned out it was poor old Bonnar’s time to go. And guess what, he was a Faithful.
The Faithfuls not voting out Jonathan Ross… ever
Has there ever been a worse group of Faithfuls? Certainly not in the UK history of the show. Episode after episode, the evidence pointed towards Jonathan Ross, and episode after episode, Ross managed to sway them – or they would, completely unprompted, vote out another Faithful.
“It’s like playing chess against five year olds,” Ross told the other Traitors at one point.
Nick cheating at the game and revealing it
A vintage moment? Nick Mohammed and Joe Marler have struck up quite the bromance over the course of the game – Marler famously called Mohammed his “hundie” – as in, hundred per cent faithful. But this tight-knit friendship almost landed Mohammed in hot water during the seventh episode, when the contestants had to split into two groups and answer questions in exchange for a Shield.
Cue Mohammed deliberately losing the game for his team (via meaningful eye contact with Joe Marler) in order to deny the Shield to the people he thought were the Traitors. This later came out at the roundtable, to much outrage – tactics? In The Traitors? Whoever heard of such a thing!
Jonathan Ross’ exit speech
When Ross’s time finally came, he proved a prankster to the end. With both Alan Carr and Cat Burns voting for him, it looked like Rossy’s number was up. But when he took the podium for his goodbye speech, he still had one final trick to play, calling his fellow players “idiots” for voting for him.
“I am now, and have been all through the game, completely faithful ... to the Traitors!” he finally proclaimed. Cue raucous cheering, and Joe Marler muttering that it was the “most ridiculous bow-out ever.” Well-earned, some might say.
I am a Faithful…
Talk about putting your foot in it. Minutes before the end of the penultimate episode, Claudia revealed her five finalists: Joe Marler, Nick Mohammed, David Olusoga, Alan Carr and Cat Burns. With heat already on Carr, Claudia asked all the contestants to look into each others’ eyes and proclaim, “I am a Faithful.”
Everybody else managed it; Carr fell about laughing. If anybody can get away with it, it’s him, but it looks like he might have just signed his own banishment warrant…
The Celebrity Traitors is streaming now on BBC One and iPlayer
