Celebrity Traitors’ betrayal is one of the show’s most savage moments ever

Before Celebrity Traitors began, I feared that there was no way it could live up to the original version of the beloved BBC series.

Despite the star-studded line-up – including famous faces such as Cat Burns, Jonathan Ross and Tom Daley – I questioned how it could possibly match the treacherous calibre of the show that we’ve all come to cherish.

The first episode proved any doubters wrong, with fans hailing chatty man Alan Carr as ‘TV gold’ for his hilarious start as a Traitor.

However, the pure savagery of episode two left me astonished, with Paloma Faith becoming the first to suffer the cruelty of a knife in the back.

The fact that she was murdered by someone who in real life is one of her closest friends made it even more brutal. The Traitors is always vicious, but this upped the ante to a far greater degree. 

Murdering strangers is one thing, but targeting your friends? That’s a betrayal that one might never recover from.

At the end of episode one, Traitors Cat, Jonathan and Alan were informed that they needed to select someone to kill in plain sight. To do this, one of them needed to rub their hands on a venomous black lily, and then touch the face of their victim to poison them slowly.

Cat and Jonathan decided that Alan should do it. I felt sorry for Alan that he had no choice in the matter – but the reason behind the decision was justified.

Despite the comedian having no poker face and constantly dropping blatant clues that he’s a Traitor, he was the most likely to be able to touch someone’s face casually and get away with it.

In episode two, a major question lingered – who would Alan select to murder? 

It was a sad twist of fate that given their real-life friendship, Paloma agreed to join Alan in the kitchen for a cuppa. Little did she know that she was walking towards her own demise.

Somehow managing to hide his nervous disposition from his friend, Alan told the singer that she had a hair on her face, and brushed it away, murdering her at point blank range.

Given the ‘slow-working poison’, each celebrity made it to breakfast the next day. For a short while, they thought that meant that no murder had been committed. 

But then, presenter Claudia Winkleman dropped the truth bomb – one of them had been murdered, and they would find out who later on.

My heart broke as Paloma told the camera that it would have been awful to have been the first to die. But just as I thought her murder couldn’t get any more painful, it did.

The victim’s identity was revealed in a challenge, when three of the celebrities, Paloma, Lucy Beaumont and Niko Omilana, had to lie in coffins in a graveyard. 

All three of them looked understandably nervous as Claudia slowly walked around them, finally revealing the victim by slamming the lid shut on Paloma’s coffin, prompting winces and gasps from the rest of the cast. Tom Daley’s jaw could have literally reached the ground.

If Alan shoved the knife in Paloma’s back, Jonathan gave it that agonising twist, when he declared at the gravesite: ‘Alan you knew her the best, why don’t you say something about her?’ smirking knowingly.

Jonathan clearly thinks that he’s playing a very smart game, but I predict that his smugness will lead to his inevitable downfall. 

Following her murder, Paloma spoke on camera about how she felt, and it looked as though there may have been tears glistening in her eyes.

‘I thought I wasn’t going to get emotional, but I feel really sad,’ she said heartbreakingly.

‘It’s been really a wonderful experience. I just wish it’d been longer, but I guess that just leaves me to say that this is now goodbye.’

Typically, The Traitors becomes more savage as the show goes along, when alliances have been formed, and friendships have been made.

But Celebrity Traitors is a whole different ballgame. Either the stars already have preconceptions about each other, or know one another on a personal level. Making the betrayals all the more devastating

While I understand Alan was put on the spot, forced to make a quick decision to save his own skin, my heart goes out to Paloma.

It might just be a game, but there is up to £100,000 up for grabs for a celeb’s chosen charity. I don’t care what anyone says – if one of my best friends murdered me on primetime TV and I knew that they’d acted all innocent, I’d probably be a bawling mess. 

Before drying my tears and figuring out my best plot for revenge, of course.

Celebrity Traitors returns next Wednesday at 9pm on BBC One and is available to stream on BBC iPlayer.

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing Ross.Mccafferty@metro.co.uk. 

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