Warning! This article contains spoilers!
Banseka Kayembe
Due to nothing but sheer peer pressure I found myself watching Celebrity Traitors last week. I can confirm that the people were not lying; it’s incredibly spicy and gisty! It's impossible to deny that there is something very satisfying about seeing people lie and get away with it- Alan Carr literally giggling at the roundtables whilst the “faithfuls” keep voting out another of their own had me screaming at my TV.
Unlike the “normal Traitors series, the celebrity version has the added dimension of being filled with people both the viewers and the participants think they know. Participants easily get slotted into certain archetypes, often based on their public persona. You get the “Empath” (national treasure Celia for sure) or the “Moral Crusader” (Joe has off the charts levels of hater-ation guiding him and I respect that). The other archetype is “The Clever One”, usually someone middle/upper class, probably with an soft oxbridge-coded accent who is regarded as articulate and deftly strategic. All of these so-called “clever people” are exceptionally terrible at this game.
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Stephen Fry was routinely referred to as a “genius” in the show, but I'm struggling to think of much that he did to merit that label. He spent most of the show muttering about how impossible it all was, and never correctly voted for a single Traitor. In what was his final roundtable he did impressively clock that Traitors were more likely to be tired than everyone else as they spend more of the night having to scheme, but he failed to back himself on that and caved. The collective perception that Stephen was so clever and therefore would be the “perfect traitor” completely backfired when he was voted out by the group, meaning another faithful left the game before the obviously machiavellian Jonathan Ross who was clearly revelling in the joy of Traitor-hood in plain sight every episode.
Stephen Fry holds national treasure status, and is known in British popular culture as a total brainbox. I grew up watching him host QI, a quiz show with extremely obscure questions, and granted he does have a lot of random pieces of knowledge. He’s sort of like a “1,000 Incredible Facts!!!” chunky book in human form, but when it comes to social justice and politics, he’s got absolutely terrible form. In Channel 4’s Alternative Christmas Message of 2023, he conflated anti-zionism (an opposition to Israeli colonialism and the oppression of Palestinians) with antisemitism, a dangerous point of view and given what the world has witnessed in the years since seems jaw droppingly out of touch. He praised the right wing podcast Triggernometry, and blamed the rise of the right in America on “the left” but seemed to have no reflections on how liberal politics may have played a part in the acceleration in radical right forces capturing power. His understanding of the world often lacks depth, like someone whose brain is trapped firmly in 1997; having a more wide-ranging vocabulary than most doesn’t make up for that. Or make you good at The Traitors either apparently.
Historian David Olusoga is another one whose expertise has not translated into Sherlockian skills of deduction. He also failed at every single roundtable to correctly identify a Traitor, going completely left of field in the last roundtable and voting for Nick Hammond, making him the only person not to vote that round for a Traitor. I appreciate some of David’s work, uncovering hidden black British history is a valuable contribution to our culture, and has faced horrible levels of racism common with any black person with a large platform who speaks publicly about race, but his historical knowledge hasn’t really informed him an awful lot in the political realm. He’s another centrist dad, hopeful against all the gathering evidence last year that the Labour government would be a force for good and despite all his knowledge of the crimes of the British Empire accepted an OBE in 2019 despite finding it “troubling” (not sure you can really do both of those things buddy). He’s not a bad guy, but his great historical knowledge doesn’t seem to have helped him have a more perceptive understanding of our present.
Finally, the chef’s kiss cherry-on-top of the hugely overestimated public figures cake is Kate Garraway, a journalist and broadcaster known for engaging in bad faith debates/shouting matches on Good Morning Britain. I’ll admit she’s not necessarily cast as “smart” in the same vein as Stephen and David but she did continually press the “but i’m a journalist” button to explain why she was so mediocre at the game. She never came up with suggestions or theories on her own, her explanation being she’s “trained to be balanced” as a journalist. Good Morning Britain routinely treats some guests more robustly than others so probably isn’t “balanced” (see Kate asking muslim MP Zarah Sultana why we needed to use the word “Islamaphobia” to describe…Islamaphobia?)
It felt like a perfect snapshot of what’s wrong with Britain’s media class: people who seem unable to think critically and actually come up with their own line of questioning, or conclusions. Her best theory was that a faithful was murdered via sun-dried tomatoes. She gets voted out partly because the faithful assume she can’t surely be in her words that “ditzy”. By contrast rugby player Joe, who may not always have much finesse, has worked through, tested, eliminated and pursued various lines of reasoning, lining himself up to be one of the smartest faithfuls in the group. Even if Kate is used to being “balanced” the job of a journalist is to follow useful lines of questioning. She couldn’t even do that, and it’s difficult not to think this represents a bigger problem in British media.
“Its’ just a TV show!!!”. Yes, correct. I am to a certain extent just indulging in some self serving “I knew it!” commentary about people I've long been sceptical of. Allow it a little, but sure there’s only so much a game show is going to tell us about anything or anyone. However, I can’t help but feel slightly vindicated that some of these people’s self-branding has been somewhat exposed. Given they all have empire-esque awards (MBEs, OBEs etc.) it just furthers my theory that those trinkets are absolutely not something to be desired. At a time when people are trusting mainstream sources less, maybe their exposure on the Traitors is just what we needed.
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