Journalist Amol Rajan has admitted he played “the wrong game” after he became the first player to be murdered in the new series of The Celebrity Traitors.
The 43-year-old was murdered by the traitors, actor Richard E Grant and TV presenter Maya Jama, on Friday’s episode of the BBC reality game show, while comedian James Acaster was recruited to become the series’ third traitor.
In Thursday’s episode, Acaster and Rajan met Jama and Grant to plead their case to become a traitor rather than be murdered.
Speaking on The Celebrity Traitors: Uncloaked on Friday, Rajan said: “It’s hard not to watch it and think I, obviously, with 20/20 hindsight, I played the wrong game.
“That was a crazy, crazy once-in-a-lifetime (opportunity).”
The former Today Show host said that he felt that if he had been recruited, he would have made a good traitor.
He said: “Obviously, I wish I’d been chosen, and I wish I’d been a traitor.
“I can say, hand on heart, that if I’d been chosen as a traitor in the first, when Maya and Richard were, if I got the nod or the tap at the roundtable, I think it would have thrown me a bit.
“I’d be like, ‘what am I doing? what’s going on?’, having genuinely spent a day as a faithful, if I’d then been recruited, I think I would have been quite a good traitor because I’d actually known what it was like to be a faithful.”
Speaking after leaving the show, the journalist said he thought Acaster would be “brilliant” as a traitor.
Rajan said he knew that the character he was going in as was “the journalist who asks all the awkward questions”, and added that he had told himself to “shut up” to avoid being murdered or banished.
Friday’s episode ended on a cliffhanger, after Grant attracted the most attention at the roundtable.
The actor had accidentally revealed to multiple people he was a traitor shortly after he found out his role in Thursday’s episode.
Speaking about Grant’s gaffe, Rajan added: “What was that about? I mean no one’s ever done that. I mean who knows?
“I think the one tactic that you should try to abide by is to keep a little bit, you know, fly under the radar a little bit for the first few days. Just shut up for the first few shows.”
The Celebrity Traitors will return on Thursday at 8pm on BBC One and iPlayer.
