He may have made it to the final episode of this year’s Celebrity Traitors, but James Blunt says he did his best to get banished from the show.
The singer-songwriter became a fan favourite for his 1980s leisurewear, outlandish conspiracy theories and military-style approach to tasks.
A dominating presence at the round table, he characterises himself as the “yapping terrier” to actor Michael Sheen’s “mature labrador”, as they sniffed out the traitors.
Behind the scenes, however, he was playing a different game.
“We all get paid the same, whether you’re there for day one or day 23,” he tells the BBC.
“So for most of the time, I was trying to… get the hell out of dodge. But no-one was killing me and no-one was banishing me!”
Blunt’s cavalier approach informed his gameplay. He knew that outspoken players are often snuffed out first, and that his best bet was to keep a low profile.
“But that’s also really boring,” he says. “And so for me, I just thought, ‘Let’s just go around and come up with theories.’
“You don’t see it in the edit, but I was telling everyone, ‘It doesn’t matter [who goes], just kill them all!’
“It’s fine, as long as you’re apologetic when you get it wrong.”
Press AssociationHe was wrong more often than he was right. But in the penultimate episode, Blunt and Sheen stumbled on to a theory that the quiet contestants were more suspicious than their outspoken brethren.
In a pivotal round table, they turned their attention towards comedian James Acaster, and picked apart his story of a “murder in plain sight” that had occurred nights earlier.
Caught in the crosshairs, Acaster simply confessed.
“I was made a traitor without wanting to be,” he revealed, as the others gasped.
Blunt says there was more to the sequence than viewers realised, hinting that Acaster was caught in a fib about a perfume bottle used in the murderous act.
“He didn’t fall on his sword. That’s what you saw, that’s what you feel, but he didn’t.
“You didn’t see the full extent of the interrogation. It was heavy in there and it was clear-cut. He was pinned to a post. We got him. We really, really got him.
“I think how that played out hasn’t really been revealed to you, but he didn’t just say, ‘Oh guys, you got me’.”
In his exit interview, Acaster admitted the round table had been intense, but laughed off his uncloaking.
“It was sprung on me. It was a surprise,” he said. “But I was glad that they caught me.”
Blunt says the editing of the TV show is crucial to people’s understanding of events.
And, with days and days of footage to sift through, not everything that happens makes it to air.