Ross Kemp’s Traitors paranoia will be the Faithfuls’ downfall

This article contains spoilers for ‘The Celebrity Traitors’ There are two ways to play The Traitors as a Faithful. The first strategy, and possibly most sensible in the early days in the castle, is to keep your head down and quietly form solid theories about who the Traitors might be before presenting them to the group. The second is to say every paranoid thought that pops into your head out loud, drawing unwanted attention and suspicion your way. I think we know which approach Ross Kemp has taken. Ross has met violent cartel bosses, spent time with the inmates of one of Britain’s highest security prisons and come face-to-face with Isis jihadists in Syria. He is TV’s toughest tough man. But on The Celebrity Traitors, he’s jumpy and neurotic, paranoid that every arm touch or innocent gesture has marked him for death. In the opening episode, he first became suspicious that actor Bella Ramsey was a Traitor when they innocuously popped a captain’s hat on his head at the end of the mission, convinced they had killed him in plain sight. Next, he was worried that singer Leigh-Anne Pinnock had murdered him by rubbing him on the arm and declaring she was cold. “I’m just going to go and ask her,” he declared after immediately sharing his worries with Michael Sheen and Rob Beckett. When confronted, Leigh-Anne – who unbeknownst to Ross really is a Faithful – was as flabbergasted as us at home and shouted at him to “calm down”. Ross’s image is all about hyper-masculinity, so it stands to reason that he would hate to be humiliated and tricked by the Traitors. Perhaps that’s the reason he is so jittery – he’s trying to protect his worth as a well-known hard nut who wouldn’t allow himself to be murdered. But, in reality, his anxiety is having the opposite effect – he looks scared. Kemp was convinced that Bella had marked him for death after the first mission (Photo: Euan Cherry/Studio Lambert/BBC) A bit of paranoia in The Traitors can be a good thing. It keeps you alert and on the lookout for minor details that could give you a clue towards the Traitors’ identities. But too much – ahem, Ross – and you end up playing the game against yourself. And with his neuroses spreading – mathematician Hannah Fry suspected Leigh-Anne was a Traitor because she saw her topping up her make-up in the evening, piggybacking on Ross’s previous hunch – the Faithful risk being so caught up with accidental red herrings that they miss the obvious clues right in front of their faces. Like the fact that Richard has told them all that he is a Traitor. Ross didn’t slow down his racing mind in Friday night’s episode, either. In the mission, the Traitors – Richard E Grant, Maya Jama, and newly recruited James Acaster – chose Ross to stay above ground and dig his fellow players out of their graves, also shielding him from murder in the process. It’s a clever move, making Ross look like a Traitor who is using his apparent paranoia as a ruse to seem worried about being murdered, as any Faithful would be. Of course, it only made Ross even more anxious as he realised that the Traitors were using him as a pawn in their murderous game and framing him for banishment. “I feel like everyone is going to think I’m a naughty person now,” he told Claudia. There was only one thing for it: spend the mission getting everyone out of their graves, making the list of people eligible for murder as short as possible. Only the most faithful of Faithfuls would be so noble. Unsurprisingly, his loud paranoia is already coming back to bite him. He is one of the people under threat of banishment next week, after Richard brought his name up at the Round Table and comedian Joanne McNally declared that she thought he had been recruited. However, it looks like the writing is on the wall for the devious Richard. If Ross is spared from banishment, he ought to learn a lesson from his brush with the Traitors. Stop being so paranoid – or, at the very least, keep your worries to yourself. ‘The Celebrity Traitors’ continues on Thursday 8 October at 8pm on BBC One