Romesh Ranganathan, 48, has revealed that watching The Celebrity Traitors has been a strange experience, as he is now seeing conversations between fellow contestants that he knew nothing about while filming. Speaking on his BBC Radio 2 show on Saturday morning, the comedian admitted he had no idea about a 'falling out' between the Traitors until the episodes aired.
He explained: "When you do the show they say to you, 'there are two parts to doing this show, and the first part is actually filming the show, and then the second part is the show going out,' because, obviously, you're seeing stuff that you didn't know was going on, and also I'm seeing conversations that I never had any awareness of."
"I'm seeing what the Traitors are up to, I had no awareness of that. I had no idea until it was shown on television what really happened in that shield challenge."
Traitors falling out revealed
The challenge in question left Maya Jama, 32, and King Kenny, 29, disappointed with fellow Traitor James Acaster, 41, who did not help them when they needed to covertly steal puzzle pieces from blindfolded Faithfuls in the same room. Romesh said: "It's only when I watched it that I realised what had actually gone on, and that there was basically a falling out!"
In his defence, the radio presenter said he had been "distracted" on the day, having managed to "exonerate myself by having some quite bad hay fever". His sniffling during the mission showed actress Sharon Rooney that he had not moved from her side while the Traitors were sabotaging the shields, confirming he was a Faithful.
He joked: "You sort of think to yourself, 'am I going to embarrass myself on this show? Oh no, that's right, my name's Romesh, of course I am'. And that's what happened. I've had, this is genuinely true, some hay fever herbal remedy companies get in touch and say, 'we can help you out!' So if you see me in a partnership with one of those companies, you'll know it's a direct result of that challenge."
Faithfuls' humiliating blunder
Romesh also celebrated reaching the final week of the programme as a Faithful, but confessed to experiencing "utter humiliation" and avoiding social media after Friday evening's episode. BBC audiences were astonished when the Faithfuls chose the three Traitors—James, Maya, and Kenny—as the most trustworthy players, leading presenter Claudia Winkleman to grant Kenny a "power" giving him a second vote to eliminate another contestant at the round table.
Romesh outlined his mortification: "I'll tell you a couple of things. The first thing that I imagine, if you've been watching, that's paramount in your mind is the complete and utter humiliation of being asked in the scarecrow task to pick our most Faithful people to potentially get the special power, and we chose the Traitors."
"I'm going to tell you now, not ideal. I had to stay off socials, just loads of people doing TikToks going, 'oh my God how thick are they? This has got to be the worst set of Faithfuls I've ever seen in my life!' More difficult than it looks! Anyway, that was humiliating, it was really humiliating."
Romesh on challenges and sacrifice
Romesh and his Radio 2 colleague Sally Boazman then took questions from listeners, with one asking how he felt doing the challenges. After the drama of last week's missions, in which participants try to secure money for the prize fund and shields to protect themselves from murder, Romesh confessed: "I didn't like them."
Sally then asked: "You don't do a lot, do you? You hang back.." Accepting this, Romesh responded: "I do. There's a lot of shouting, and there's some voices there that take charge. I'm happy to chill."
Nevertheless, he expressed frustration that his fellow participants never seemed grateful for his choice to "sacrifice" himself to help them. He declared: "What I would say, if you watch back the episodes, there are two consecutive missions in which I am eliminated early because I sacrifice myself. The lack of concern from the other contestants is what I would describe as insulting!" Sally suggested: "But, I mean, I think that's every man for himself isn't it?" Romesh retorted: "No, but if it had been someone else it would have been, 'oh my God we can't lose you!' But it was me, they barely noticed, 'where's the shield?!'"
Next weekend, Romesh will be joined by the Celebrity Traitors finalists, who are yet to be confirmed, on his Radio 2 show for more gossip from the series. The Celebrity Traitors continues on Thursday 29th October from 8pm on BBC One and iPlayer.
