Nearly one year ago to the day, Ed Gamble told me: ‘I would really like to see James Acaster on The Celebrity Traitors.’
Fast forward through Alan Carr’s chaotic victory on last year’s series, and Ed’s dream has come true, he says.
Now his Off Menu co-host and close friend is flying under the radar as the first-ever Faithful Traitor, a self-proclaimed tactic he’s deployed to avoid treacherous tasks alongside Maya Jama and King Kenny while playing the game with empathy.
‘I didn’t know whether he would actually do it, and he tried to keep it secret from me for a long, long time but, you know, I have my other sources,’ Celebrity Traitors: Uncloaked host Ed, 40, tells Metro.
‘There was a fun couple of months where we were dancing around each other and he was trying to avoid telling me that it was happening, but in the back of my mind, I knew. It’s the most James Acaster thing ever.’
James, 41, and Ed, 40, have been close friends and collaborators for years, first meeting on the UK comedy circuit back in 2010, and later going on to launch their massively popular food-comedy podcast in 2018.
‘He’s a hugely emotionally intelligent man and very caring. He just wants everyone to be okay,’ Ed says of James, adding: ‘I think we’re seeing that side of him on the show. It would almost be impossible for anyone to keep up a persona in there because you’re being filmed so much.’
Ed is all too aware that James has become the unofficial heartthrob of this year’s series, with plenty of so-called thirst-trap and slow-motion edits of him making their way onto the algorithms of millennial women.
Is it his new trendy Traitors wardrobe? The scruffy facial hair he’s been sporting in recent episodes? No, Ed says. He has, in fact, always been good looking.
‘It may not be on my algorithm, but obviously because I do a podcast with him people are sending these videos directly to my inbox, which I don’t mind,’ he laughs.
‘I’ve been party to this opinion from our listeners for a long time. It’s now just happened on a major scale and people think they’re being original by thinking James is handsome.
‘He is a very conventionally handsome man, he is a very clever man, a very nice man, so it does not surprise me in the slightest. The other day I texted him saying: “I’m so proud of my friend for being fit.”‘
Ed is tasked with unmasking the Traitors to both murdered and banished celebrities on the programme’s official companion show and visualised podcast, seeing their first-time reactions immediately after leaving Ardross Castle.
But he insists that, just because he’s as close as he is to James, as well as fellow comedians and contestants Romesh Ranganathan, Joe Lycett, Joanne McNally, and Rob Beckett, he remains neutral to protect show secrets.
‘As long as I don’t accidentally spill loads of secrets to people, I think I’m fine. When you’re watching it as a viewer, you get emotionally invested in people anyway. It just so it happens that there’s a few people in there that I’m pre-emotionally invested in. I think it adds something, certainly when I’m revealing the Traitors to people, that you can see a little look of pride on my face,’ he says.
‘I’m not hosting Question Time. I think I’m allowed to have people that I’m rooting for and hope do well.’
Ed goes up to Scotland while the series is being filmed, watching hours of footage from the live feed of the show from his laptop. He says he watches the contestants eating breakfast while eating his.
He was, he says, ‘blown away’ when witnessing actor Richard E Grant accidentally out himself as a Traitor to his fellow contestants in the very first episode.
‘I was watching it like, “What does this mean for the game? Why hasn’t he said it was a joke?” He had a split-second window after he said it to say “I’m taking the p**s” and he didn’t. He just absolutely doubled down, and I still don’t really know why.
‘I don’t think we’ll ever truly know why he did it because he’s quite evasive. I don’t believe it was a tactic in any way whatsoever. I think it was just a moment of madness. But I’m glad he did it. It’s never been done before and I think we can probably safely say it’ll never be done again!’
Ed, of course, knows how this year’s series unravels, and ultimately who is crowned a winner, and with more than 15,000,000 people tuning in to watch, he isn’t about to drop hints any time soon.
‘It’s an absolute blockbuster series, it’s outstanding. I think they’ve come to play the game harder than the first series,’ he says.
‘If I’m out and about, people do ask me what happens, but if I was to turn around and tell them, they’d be gutted. It’s such a unique show in that it feels like the whole UK is watching it and everyone’s finding out what happens at the same time. It’s such a communal experience.
‘The knowledge I have, I think I could ruin people’s weeks with this and I don’t want to do that.
‘And also the other answer is it’s very much my job to keep it secret and I love this job.’
Celebrity Traitors airs on Thursdays and Fridays at 8pm on BBC One and BBC iPlayer. The Celebrity Traitors: Uncloaked follows the episodes, with catch-up episodes available on BBC iPlayer.