The Celebrity Traitors has seen its first contestant murdered in a killing that took place in plain sight.
Singer Paloma Faith was revealed to be the murdered faithful in a dramatic hour-long episode that saw the competitors gather around the roundtable for the first time.
At the start of Thursday's instalment, presenter Claudia Winkleman announced at the breakfast table that one of the 19 contestants would be dead by the end of the day from a slow-release poison that had been planted on them the night before.
Dressed in their mourning attire, the celebrities followed Winkleman, 53 – who was on horseback, to the site of a cemetery.
The competitors carried three coffins into the graveyard and Winkleman told players they would be solving problems to identify who the traitors had chosen to lie in them – one of them being the murdered faithful.
Comedian Lucy Beaumont, YouTube star Niko Omilana and Faith, 44, were all made to lie in the coffins amid debate from the competitors on who the murdered faithful could be.
The celebrities decided it was Beaumont, 42, but Winkleman closed the door of Faith’s coffin – signalling her exit from the game.
The three traitors – TV presenter Jonathan Ross, comedian Alan Carr and singer Cat Burns – had been tasked with murdering someone in the castle during Wednesday night’s episode.
To kill Faith, Carr, 49, had to rub his hands on the pollen of a poisoned lily before touching her face.
On BBC Two’s The Celebrity Traitors: Uncloaked, Faith said: "I’d say the bright side of this is that there wasn’t enough time for anybody to think that I’m horrible person. So I think my reputation as being really lovely is intact, and it could have gone the other way."
She also said that Carr, who had murdered her, had been sweating quite a lot.
"I did keep asking him why he was sweating so much. I remember just being like, I didn’t think that men got the menopause", she joked.
"If the shoe was on the other foot I would not have touched Alan’s face, categorically. He had a choice, it was a choice and maybe it wasn’t the easiest option but it was the choice he made and I think it was not very nice," she said.
Among the other celebrity competitors are broadcaster Kate Garraway, Welsh singer Charlotte Church, actor Stephen Fry, retired Olympic diver Tom Daley and The Thursday Murder Club actress Celia Imrie.
In the spin-off series, the competitors – named the faithfuls – are tasked with detecting and banishing the murderous traitors in the group while completing a series of challenges to win cash towards the charity prize pot.
If at the end of the series a traitor is among the finalists, the faithfuls lose out on the money and the traitor takes the full cash prize.
Since the UK version began in 2022, millions of fans have watched The Traitors on the BBC and it has picked up a Bafta TV Award for best reality and constructed factual programme, and best entertainment performance for Winkleman.
The celebrity series attracted more than six million viewers when it launched on October 8.
The programme airs Wednesdays and Thursdays on BBC One.
Source: Press Association
