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Sir Stephen Fry has revealed that the Prince of Wales and his family are “locked into” the popular BBC reality game show,
The Celebrity Traitors. The esteemed broadcaster and actor, 68, was a participant in the inaugural celebrity spin-off series, which sees famous faces attempt to unmask ‘traitors’ among them to secure a charity prize pot.
The celebrity edition proved a significant ratings success for the BBC, culminating in comedian Alan Carr’s victory over faithfuls, historian David Olusoga and actor Nick Mohammed, in a tense finale.
Speaking on Good Morning Britain, Sir Stephen said: “We had no idea what impact it would have across the demographic. Extraordinary.
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Sir Stephen Fry revealed he told Claudia Winkleman he did not want to be a traitor (Yui Mok/PA)
“The Prince of Wales at the Royal Variety Performance said to me, we were locked into it.”
The presenter added that he actively told presenter Claudia Winkleman, who selects the traitors after speaking to each of the contestants, that he did not want to be one as he is not “cunning” enough.
Sir Stephen said: “The tension – I just don’t think I would have been very good.”
To many viewers’ surprise, one of the finalists was historian Olusoga, who throughout the series was relatively quiet at the roundtable and largely followed the wrong theories.
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Jonathan Ross says he found his role on The Celebrity Traitors to be quite unpleasant (Ben Whitley/PA)
Sir Stephen added: “One of the interesting things is people accuse you of being intelligent and David (Olusoga) is obviously hugely intelligent, but there are different kinds of intelligence, one of them is cunning. And I don’t have that.”
Someone who did have that cunning edge, however, was presenter Jonathan Ross who was praised for his game of deceit until he was eventually the first traitor to be banished from the series.
Despite appearing to enjoy the role as the murderous traitor, Ross opened up that he found the programme “quite unpleasant”.
He said: “I’ll be honest with you, I didn’t enjoy it. I don’t think I enjoyed it as much as the faithfuls did.
“I wound up kind of hating it because they’re all such lovely people and you’re lying through your teeth and then you would see someone banished and stand there and be quite emotional, and know that they were leaving something they wanted to continue.
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Claudia Winkleman will return on January 1 with a new series of The Traitors (Ian West/PA)
“They wanted more of the experience and realise that you played a substantial part in either engineering them out, but certainly not stepping in the way when you knew they were innocent..
“So it was in some ways, quite unpleasant.
“I’m thrilled I did it. I had a great time. It was a great experience, once in a lifetime experience for all of us.”
The Traitors will return to screens in the new year with its fourth series airing on January 1 at 8pm on BBC One and iPlayer.