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Comedian appeared on the first series as a Faithful who was brutally murdered by the Traitors
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The Celebrity Traitors might have turned its already famous stars into the most talked about people in Britain, but one of the show’s stars has opened about the fleeting nature of the show’s fame.
Airing last autumn, the first celebrity series of the BBC’s hit social deduction game saw a group of 19 presenters, comedians and actors heading to the Scottish highlands to trick and deceive each other into winning a huge prize for charity.
The Celebrity Traitors proved major watercooler moment television, but contestant Joe Wilkinson has now admitted that the uplift the series gave him was potent but short lived
“For about three or four weeks I couldn’t go anywhere,” the stand-up comic told The i. “I couldn’t get the train. I couldn’t get through Paddington station.”
Wilkinson, 51, then described how he returned to the same station a week after the show was over, “and nobody batted an eyelid”.
“It was a relief to be honest,” he said. “You don’t want to be Jennifer Lopez. Basically, it was very very intense for a month and then no one gave a s***.”
The 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown star was a Faithful who was murdered by the Traitors – Jonathan Ross, Cat Burns and eventual winner Alan Carr – around the show’s mid-point.
The show is returning this autumn with an even more stacked and starry line-up, including Michael Sheen, Richard E Grant, Romesh Ranganathan and Maya Jama.
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Asked if he had any advice for the cast of series two, Wilkinson said: ”That’s a bit like giving someone advice before they go into a funfair. It’s just so much fun. You don’t need advice. It’s basically a big game of Cluedo in a castle in Scotland.”
The details for series two of The Celebrity Traitors are currently tightly under wraps, but that didn’t stop comic Joe Lycett from poking fun at the show and the strict rules placed on contestants in a recent interview.
One of a number of comedians on the new series, Lycett appeared on series one star Joe Marler’s podcast last month when he explained that he’d “signed NDAs (non-disclosure agreements) all over the place” and couldn’t answer any questions about the show.