Stephen Fry says Prince of Wales was ‘locked into’ The Celebrity Traitors

Sir Stephen Fry has said the Prince of Wales and his family were “locked into” The Celebrity Traitors.

The broadcaster and actor, 68, appeared in the first celebrity spin-off series of the hit BBC reality game show where a batch of stars attempt to catch the traitors amongst them as they win money for a charity prize pot.

The celebrity series became a ratings winner for the BBC with comedian Alan Carr snatching the victory from faithfuls, historian David Olusoga and actor Nick Mohammed in the nailbiting finale.

Speaking on Good Morning Britain, Sir Stephen said: “We had no idea what impact it would have across the demographic. Extraordinary.

“The Prince of Wales at the Royal Variety Performance said to me, we were locked into it.”

The presenter added that he actively told presenter Claudia Winkleman, who selects the traitors after speaking to each of the contestants, that he did not want to be one as he is not “cunning” enough.

Sir Stephen said: “The tension – I just don’t think I would have been very good.”

To many viewers’ surprise, one of the finalists was historian Olusoga, who throughout the series was relatively quiet at the roundtable and largely followed the wrong theories.

Sir Stephen added: “One of the interesting things is people accuse you of being intelligent and David (Olusoga) is obviously hugely intelligent, but there are different kinds of intelligence, one of them is cunning. And I don’t have that.”

Someone who did have that cunning edge, however, was presenter Jonathan Ross who was praised for his game of deceit until he was eventually the first traitor to be banished from the series.

Despite appearing to enjoy the role as the murderous traitor, Ross opened up that he found the programme “quite unpleasant”.

He said: “I’ll be honest with you, I didn’t enjoy it. I don’t think I enjoyed it as much as the faithfuls did.

“I wound up kind of hating it because they’re all such lovely people and you’re lying through your teeth and then you would see someone banished and stand there and be quite emotional, and know that they were leaving something they wanted to continue.

“They wanted more of the experience and realise that you played a substantial part in either engineering them out, but certainly not stepping in the way when you knew they were innocent..

“So it was in some ways, quite unpleasant.

“I’m thrilled I did it. I had a great time. It was a great experience, once in a lifetime experience for all of us.”

The Traitors will return to screens in the new year with its fourth series airing on January 1 at 8pm on BBC One and iPlayer.