** Celebrity Traitors episode seven spoilers follow **
The Celebrity Traitors turret has been the scene of one shambles after another this series.
It’s seen more recruitments than ever before, two of which would have been near the bottom of anyone’s would-be-Traitor shortlists, in James Acaster and Hannah Fry.
During the latest mission, the comedian proved how little he wants to play this game as a turncoat. He simply opted out of Claudia Winkleman’s task for the turret, leaving Maya Jama and King Kenny quite rightly hacked off.
But worst of all has been their handling of last episode’s yawn-off murder. Despite my prognostications, Maya’s gratuitous yawning went unnoticed. It was Ross Kemp who succumbed to tiredness first, while Jerry Hall appeared to forget she was there at all.
With the ex-EastEnder dispatched, after a vague threat of vindication, it looked like nobody would be able to mention the badly acted tiredness to the rest of the players. But then came Poundland Poirot.
Sharon Rooney has so far kept to the castle’s margins, which is the best Faithful strategy in the early days.
The Scottish actress didn’t quite say, it was the comedian, in the perfumed library, with a yawn.
But she did manage to piece a staggering amount of the murder together.
The peacock spray bottle was full, now it isn’t and has moved to the library. It’s the clearest clue you could hope to find in a game that has been lacking them.
Why the Traitors left the perfume there is beyond me, but the discovery clearly implicates every single one of them. Maya inexplicably volunteered the information that they were all in the library where Ross spent his final moments.
Their only saving grace was chaos machine Jerry, but with her banished, the library suspects are now the full complement of Traitors.
Letting the Texan go, rather than lending heft to theories about, say, Joanne McNally or Leigh-Anne Pinnock, is another self-immolating move from the turret.
It’s further proof that this cohort is not up to snuff. Maya and Kenny are game for spilling blood, but you still need to be half decent at tactics.
All series, the turret has not been able to see beyond the move immediately in front of them.
They’re paltry successors to the last Traitor supremo to occupy those robes in the civilian version, Rachel Duffy.
James claims to have found a taste for the kill after seeing off Ross, but the mission was an embarrassment.
I do not doubt that operating in front of the Faithful was a frightening prospect. ‘Those Traitors must have been cacking themselves,’ Michael Sheen trilled in the diary room.
The result of their misgivings was that they accomplished nothing, other than showing themselves up in front of the Faithful.
‘They’ve been absolutely rubbish,’ said James Blunt, which was a bold statement from someone who could have the same accusation thrown in their direction. But he’s right.
Rachel and co-Traitor Stephen Libby had to similarly sneak around the Faithful during a mission last series. Stephen was also cacking himself throughout, but they still managed to accomplish something, sowing seeds of doubt about other players.
Kenny and Maya could have at least destroyed a completed shield in the final part of the mission. Even if it had been James’s, as retribution for his refusal to get involved.
The Faithful are by no means perfect either. Miranda Hart kowtowing to peer pressure from Joanne shows how unwilling they are to ruffle each other’s feathers. By some cosmic chance, the lacklustre crop of Traitors found themselves playing with the only people who have a worse strategy than theirs: Joanne and Jerry.
All the more reason why letting Jerry go at the roundtable, which could easily have been swayed another way, was a mistake for the turret. They needed Jerry around, not only for some reasonable doubt about their involvement in the library murder, but because a flawed Faithful is a friend to the Traitors.
Instead, the turret is now left incredibly vulnerable to questioning from Sharon over her Cluedo-style revelation.
I suspect the outcome will be Traitor-on-Traitor violence. If James wants to play like a Faithful, Maya and Kenny would be well within their rights to treat him like one.
Celebrity Traitors returns on Friday at 8pm on BBC One and iPlayer.