Richard E Grant has firmly denied a claim that he staged his now infamous Celebrity Traitors slip-up in order to get out of filming obligations.
The actor, 69, kicked this series of the BBC parlour game off by outing himself as a Traitor to the rest of his castle mates.
‘That may be the biggest mistake I have ever made in my life,’ the actor said to the BBC cameras in the diary room afterwards. Indeed, it curtailed his hopes of making any inroads in the turret, as he became the first ever Traitor to be banished at the first roundtable.
Yet the move has stoked conspiracy theories online that Grant may have purposefully revealed his identity to cut short his filming obligations while keeping his appearance fee.
However, Grant has now taken to his Instagram Stories to quash the claim, labelling it ‘categorically false’.
He wrote: ‘I usually wouldn’t comment on things like this, but I’ve been made aware some press outlets are suggesting I “staged” my Traitors reveal to get out of filming.
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‘This is categorically false. I’m an avid fan of the show and have been since it first aired.
‘Being picked as a Traitor when I was convinced I’d be a Faithful was an absolute dream and a sheer shock to the system.’
His statement comes after an unnamed source on the show told The Sun that crew members were convinced the blunder was ‘staged’.
The source told the publication: ‘Watching how it played out on the set, we’re all convinced he staged it. He was there for a good time, not a long time and what a way to go.
‘Obviously he kept talking about his love of the show and had a brilliant time but Richard E Grant is not a stupid man.’
However, in the same report the publication stated that the BBC had already ‘insisted it was an innocent mistake’. Metro contacted the Beeb for further comment.
It has since come out that Grant didn’t just tell the rest of the cast he was a Traitor before he was meant to – he let it slip on a BBC Radio interview before the series had even aired.
BBC Radio 6 presenters Mark Radcliffe and Stuart Maconie shared that Richard had accidentally blabbed four months ago, forcing their ‘brilliant producers’ to cut parts of the interview.
On a recent episode of their Radio 6 Music show, they revealed: ‘People were saying when Joe Lycett said to him on Traitors, “What are you?” and he says “Traitor” that was his downfall, but if they had been listening in June, you would have heard that he revealed it earlier, so we took this out because we didn’t want to spoil your enjoyment.’
So it seems that Grant really could not contain his excitement over being a Traitor, both inside and outside the Scottish castle.
The Celebrity Traitors continues on Thursday at 8pm on BBC One and iPlayer.