Romesh Ranganathan and Sebastian Croft won Celebrity Traitors series two, splitting a combined prize fund of £83,000 for their chosen charities, the Refugee Council and Choose Love. The duo were the last Faithfuls standing after the finale on Friday night (October 30), following weeks of deception and betrayal in the Scottish Highlands.
Twenty-one well-known personalities travelled to the Scottish Highlands earlier this month to compete for a cash prize of up to £100,000 for their chosen charity. Only seven contestants remained at the beginning of the finale: Traitors Maya Jama and King Kenny, alongside Faithfuls James Blunt, Michael Sheen, Romesh Ranganathan, Leigh-Anne Pinnock, and Sebastian Croft.
Finale twists and eliminations
Michael became the final Faithful to be murdered, while Maya was banished at the closing roundtable. Leigh-Anne and Kenny were subsequently voted out at the firepit, as Romesh voiced his suspicions about James. This left James under scrutiny, prompting a final elimination vote. Romesh and Bash reluctantly decided to vote James out, resulting in a shared Faithful victory.
James Acaster had earlier stunned the group at the penultimate roundtable by confessing to being a Traitor.
Romesh's reaction to winning
Romesh has now spoken out following his triumph, acknowledging in a statement: "It's happiness tinged with a little bit of embarrassment. I feel that I've won the game, despite, I would say, my key development area in this game being identifying Traitors correctly. I think that's probably the thing that I was worst at."
He went on: "I don't hold on to my beliefs very strongly. I'm easily swayed, and I would say that I'm a mug. I've been a mug in this game, and as I discovered that I'd won, there was both joy at winning, and a sense of embarrassment at what I'd done during the game."
Reflections on the game
Romesh added: "I'm really happy to have won, but you've got to think about my level of contribution to the game, compared to some other people that have fallen by the wayside. James Blunt at some point in the future will kill me, and I'm saying that now. It's almost certain. I don't think his family are going to like me when they watch the show. I set up a hate campaign against Michael Sheen on camera. I genuinely said tonight we kill the King, which doesn't sound Faithful."
Revealing his reaction upon discovering the identities of the Traitors, Romesh said: "Maya, I was almost certain. I felt like she had behaved exactly how I would think that I would behave as a Traitor at the roundtable, and so I felt pretty sure we had got rid of a Traitor. Kenny was a big surprise because I'd allowed myself to really believe that it might be James. And he just solidified that in our interactions after the roundtable, and now I'm just thinking about the conversations I've had on camera, and how embarrassing that is."
Reflecting on his time in the castle, Bash added: "[It was] everything I imagined, and so much I couldn't even imagine. I thought the missions would be TV hard, they were actually hard. I've made real friends - it was a lot harder than I anticipated it being, and there was a long section of the game where I really wasn't sure about anything, and I just had to trust my gut and survive."
Celebrity Traitors is available to stream on BBC iPlayer.
