Former The Celebrity Traitors contestant and actor Nick Mohammed has said he banished ex-rugby player Joe Marler on the show because he thought he had an “engineered spat” with TV presenter Jonathan Ross.
One of the most shocking moments of the BBC reality gameshow saw 45-year-old Mohammed vote for Marler, 35, despite building a pact and friendship with him in order to beat traitors, singer Cat Burns and comedian Alan Carr, who was the show’s eventual winner.
Asked why he banished the former England international, on the Joe Marler Will See You Now podcast, Mohammed said: “There are a few things, what you have to understand is it’s an absolute pressure cooker, and so your mind is slightly skewered anyway.
“So the big prefix to this is, I was completely wrong, as we all know, as the nation knows, because I knew obviously Jonathan was a traitor at that point, I was like, ‘oh, hang on, have you and Jonathan engineered this spat between the two of you?’.
“You two having a pop at each other, and you were quite instrumental in him going, but I sort of thought, well, yeah, but I sort of thought, well, maybe that’s because you two have almost agreed, he knew he was fighting the firing line, and he was like, why don’t you come for me stronger and it’ll take heat off you.
“And so I didn’t think that at the time when it happened, but then a few days after, a week after, (I thought) ‘oh, hang on that would be quite good’, and then everything becomes confirmation bias.”
Mohammed was later played an audio clip of Marler’s four-year-old daughter Pixie asking why he banished his father, to which he replied “aww”.
The show ended with Carr taking home all of the £87,500 prize money, which he donated to the children’s cancer charity Neuroblastoma UK.
The full interview can be viewed in the latest episode of the Joe Marler Will See You Now podcast.
