The Rest Is Entertainment - CELEBRITY TRAITORS: Week Four Reaction

Episode Date: October 30, 2025

***INCLUDES SPOILERS OF WEEK FOUR OF THE CELEBRITY TRAITORS*** Is Joe Marler the ULTIMATE Traitor hunter? Can the producers create a gripping final? What’s the maths behind winning the game? Richard Osman and Marina Hyde review the penultimate episode of The Celebrity Traitors. Join The Rest Is Entertainment Club: Unlock the full experience of the show – with exclusive bonus content, ad-free listening, early access to Q&A episodes, access to our newsletter archive, discounted book prices with our partners at Coles Books, early ticket access to live events, and access to our chat community. Sign up directly at therestisentertainment.com https://therestisentertainment.supportingcast.fm/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=episode_description&utm_content=link_cta The Rest Is Entertainment is proudly presented by Sky. Sky is home to award-winning shows such as The White Lotus, Gangs of London and The Last of Us. Requires relevant Sky TV and third party subscription(s). Broadband recommended min speed: 30 mbps. 18+. UK, CI, IoM only. To find out more and for full terms and conditions please visit Sky.com For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com Video Editor: Adam Thornton Senior Producer: Joey McCarthy Social Producer: Bex Tyrrell Exec Producer: Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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That's my reaction Wow, and for the benefit of the people not watching on YouTube I'm throwing my hands up I mean it's a wow This is first of all This is a huge triumph for the BBC and for what I'm sure you will tell me as the world of formatted. Formatted entertainment, yes, lovely to have a show

like this that everybody is talking about, every demographic is talking about, the numbers are up around 13, 14 million, you know, which is great. It's like old school television, and this is not some, by the way, resurgence of terrestrial TV, but, you know, the decline will continue, but how lovely it can still punch above its weight

every now and again. So we're down to five players, three faithful, two traitors. Yes. They've finally gone a tracer. Yes, it took him a while. Good one to get, though. Yeah, I'm amazed that Jonathan was able to stay in that long. Yeah.

He played it really brilliantly. Yeah. I think he has said since he didn't think he did play it that. Well, he was hugely helped by the utter uselessness of the opposition. You know, again, we've said, and this series has been the proof of the thing, that it doesn't matter when you get the traitors out. And it really doesn't. It really didn't, because actually, when they got Jonathan out,

In some ways, it was the perfect time to do it. It's sort of post-recruitment. I mean, you couldn't really recruit. If they'd got Cat or Alan out straight away afterwards, then this would be an absolute slam dunk for the traitors. They could have gone through the whole first bit of this, down to seven people without a single traitor going, and absolutely won.

Because that's what you can do. Just when you're down to seven, half of them are traitors. And, you know, traitors give better clues to other traitors than Faithfalls. and it just goes to show that actually, I mean, listen, we love the show, we love the format, but it was meaningless that they went through all of that terrible stuff at the beginning. If they had just been able to follow through, if they'd just perhaps gone with Joe's idea that Alan should go next, that's the big issue is that terrible, terrible roundtable getting rid of Kate. I mean, that was after everything they've done wrong, that's the biggest mess yet.

Can I just say something? When I was growing up, this was one. When I was growing up, I had, you know, the original version of Guess Who, the board game, right? Yes. And the original version of Guess Who, the board game had five women in it, okay, and like maybe 24 tiles of people, right? So that was ridiculous. So if you asked the question, you know, is it a woman? And the answer was yes, you put down 80% of the board, right?

So when they were sitting there in that round table last night, okay, if they really did want to get a traitor, and obviously some of the people at the table do. Then what they should have said to themselves is the only people we can vote for here are Kat or Kate Garroway, okay? You are on a prime time public service broadcast doing show. Do you think that they've made the traitors three men? So, okay, one of these women has to be a traitor. Vote for one of them.

It just, you know, it almost doesn't matter which, but vote for one of them. Obviously not of your cattle. But everyone else at that table should have thought, I've got to vote for a woman here because realistically one of these two, I'm at least some of the 50-50, which given our track record has been so appalling. Vote the man.

Now, representation has changed in that way. So you would know that if you thought about it, you would know. Yeah. And as you say, there's almost no women left. Well, now there's one woman left and she is a traitor and that is cat. So we have to talk about the position that everyone is in now. And it seems to me that the person in the worst position is David. I don't see any gameplay whereby David is what I do, but we will get to it.

We have Joe and Nick, who at the moment seems solid. They're going to vote as a block. We have Kat and Alan who are solid. Yeah. And they are going to vote as a block for sure. David, let's imagine, teams up with Joe and Nick, in which case probably the faithfuls will win. If David decides to team up with Alan and Kat, then for sure the trace.

the traitors will win. But either way, when you get down to that Boston three, so let's say they vote off Alan and Kat, let's say they work it through. Nick, Joe and David in that last three, there's nothing to be gained by keeping David in there. And obviously if Kat and Alan get through to the last three, they have nothing to be gained by keeping David in.

So David, I think, is almost impossible for David to win this unless this is the only situation I can think. of unless Nick's beginning of suspicion against Joe Marla goes further and that little coterie is broken up. I agree with you. I would like to say something about Joe Marla. Okay, at the beginning he said to me, oh, I reckon he's going to go to pieces later on. I love Joe Marla.

I think that there's been a complete lack of respect and I've got a, I find it very interesting within this game. As I said last week, there is a sort of class-based thing or intellect as class. There's a sort of difference in this version of the game where, you know, he kept saying to David, you know, as an intelligent man, you know, being very intelligent man. By the way, David, God bless my goalhanger, stable mate. He's absolutely brilliant.

He is incredibly intelligent. But he has not played this game incredibly intelligently. I don't believe. He's still there. He's still there. Yes, but as I've said many times before, there is a benefit to not playing the game well because he has never been perceived as the threat.

And there is always a benefit to that. And, you know, if you get, if you look at who he's voted for, if he gets to the end, he can maybe plausibly deny that this was a plan all along. But he's voted for Nico, Stephen, Claire, Stephen and Nick. Okay, you want to tell me that, okay, maybe he's playing 90 chess. Okay, Joe Marla has had the best idea, which was that there's never going, in actually really intelligent form of selection, they'll never put Stephen and Jonathan both as traitors because he...

But they will put one of them. But they will put one of them. He's had the best idea. He's pursued Jonathan throughout and he's understood how to do it. I really think that in the normal civilian version of this game, Joe Marla would be a much more significant

sort of rallying person. And I tell you why, because he's, you know, the rugby player, he puts his back physically into the task, but he would be seen as a natural authority figure because of sport and because of things like, these are not sport people, Richard. okay, they got rid of the two sports people, really, hang on.

You and I both know, who do you think the biggest sports fans around recent roundtables are, okay? There aren't any. And there isn't that natural, which wider society, you would have much more deference to someone like Joe Mahler, and his clarity and his simplicity of purpose and his actual leadership would be acknowledged more. And he has no fear of upsetting important people.

Among his art crowd, Richard, Among this, with their shiny floors and their envelope openings. What do you think Joe Marla would make of you if you were on that show? Do you think you think you were a Hyundai? Well, it depends on what I was. I think it's quite good at seeing three people, I think. I wouldn't like to have that gaze turned upon me. I have a little message from Joe that he sent this morning.

What? Have you actually? Yeah, lesson. Hi, Marina. It's Joe Marla here. I just wanted to say that you and Richard are both big dolls. but you are my absolute hundy. All the best, big love, goodbye. Absolute hundy.

I'm gonna listen to it like no more than 450 times. I love you, Joe Marla. That means a lot. But no, he has played an incredible game. He dropped the ball a tiny bit. He was the one of saying, oh well, don't forget traitors often. drop a little parting shot and you know so he said David so he's looking at David and

David had not thrown Jonathan under the bus so he would have no reason but Jonathan had sat in the back of the car with Joe yeah and said to him if it was me I'd be looking at Alan and I'd be looking at yes he did he did it so he did throw the other traitors under the bus but he did it actually in a bus Joe was there when it was done on Wednesday's episode Joe finally said I'll tell you what, if I'm wrong, vote me out tomorrow. It's like, wow, have we got this far in this version of the game before I hear that line? You hear that in like episode two in the normal version, okay? Stick it all on the line and say it.

And I think it was quite helpful. But I am a big fan of his, and I think he's had incredible clarity all the way through. I think he reads things brilliantly. I think if Nick can continue, because he's also built that, you know, he's trusted Nick and understood that Nick has something that he doesn't have. Because I think he hates everyone else in the game, which I quite like, you can believe it, though. You want to believe that secretly he hates all these people. He loved Joe Wilkinson and he likes Nick.

And that's it, right? And I love that. If there feels like there's genuine niggle, it's probably fake, but I just, there's something about it that's just like I've got no time for any of this. But if Nick holds the line, I think Joe will hold the line. I think Joe will hold the line with Nick. I think. I do too. If Nick holds a line with Joe, there's your two winners right there.

If Nick gets inside his own head, because this is the thing about being clever, is sometimes you can be too clever. Nick will be thinking, yes, but if that were true, then this is true. But if that were true, then this is true. And if that were true, then the double bluff and the triple bluff would be this. And that means X, it must be Joe. That's what I would be doing at this stage of the game. I'd be thinking, what's the cleverest thing I can think of?

Why don't I do that? Whereas actually, the cleverest thing I could think of is not to think of the cleverest thing I could think of. You know, that's the smart play here. If he does go against Joe one way or another, then how does that play out? If he decides that Joe... It will leave a sad taste in the mouth. Let me tell you that emotionally how it plays out. Can we talk about Adam there?

Okay. Okay, he's now a fully minted national treasure. It's just, it's beyond. He's also, but he remains an unbelievably high delivering entertainment booking. At all points, he is giving you something. and he's providing gloss and asides that are, you know, I mean, honestly, when he said to Celia, yeah, you can't just compliment everyone and then keep up, you can't just keep complimenting everyone and then just voting for them. I mean, there's a number of drive-bys and there are ones where you're just not quite sure. I wondered whether there even was some genuine needle with Kate. I wasn't quite sure about it. There were moments where it was. And you can see him with Joe as well. You can see around the round table, the two of them are absolutely butting horns. If I'm a producer, right, you go, okay, we're down, we're down to our final fine. no evictions

and of course no murder and of course there's no murder because that does make the maths impossible so that's the

slight dead hand of the producer but in a way that's absolutely acceptable because once you're down to five or four there are different permutations and you have to let

the game play out which is what they've done there but if I'm sitting there in the gallery and I'm saying Claudia why don't we get them all just to look

everyone else in the eye and say I am a faithful Why don't we do that? And if I'm, if you're called here, even me, if I'm at the back of the gallery, I'm like, I mean, it feels like that's not really going to show anything, is it? I mean, you just feel like, I get it, but it's just one of those, you know, moments. And then you get to Alan and he literally falls to pieces and literally starts laughing halfway through, I am a faithful. I mean, he's already forgotten he had a shield. Now he's laughing halfway through saying, I am a faithful.

And the highly person that Keishers, Joe Marla has categorized it, just as you did, right at the very start, we knew who the bookings were, saying, oh, it's good for comedians because they can deflect, you know, they can deflect with humour. And Joe Mara actually explicitly said, I think you deflect with humour. And I think, I mean, that wasn't even a deflection. I mean, my goodness, it really wasn't. It feels like they've sort of got Kat's number as well, I think.

Yeah. I think it's certainly Nicky feel has. She's been able to say all along, oh, I'm not great in social situations. And she's done it in a very nice way and I'm not brilliant. And that's been... Which is true, but also has been quite useful. And so she's been able to do that,

but I think at this stage you can't do that anymore. Yes, I think there's no hiding place anymore. I think she should have been the leader of the people. I think she shouldn't have even let Joe Marla say anything before she said, I've got to say, Jonathan, I've been thinking about this a long time, I think it's you. Going in the slip stream of others,

which as we know is the kind of, you know... Cal's way up. Yeah, the herb. Well, that form of behaviour, which is very useful for traitors. But ultimately, I think, I don't know. If I were her, I'd have thought, I can't see how this is going to work out for Jonathan tonight.

And I'm going to be the one leading it all, because then people would have said, and actually, they didn't do this with Joe Marla even afterwards, which they didn't say, which they would have done a normal version of the game, you know, you're fated all the way back to the bar and you've become the traitor hunter because you've got the traitor hunt. And when actually Celia was back.

I'm sorry, when Celia was murdered, I mean, she's so funny. We all tell her, she, I love her so much, and we all tell herself silly Phillips about ourselves, but she said, I was murder because I was brave enough to get me. Yes. Sorry. Okay. Can I just talk about your votes, please, Celia, in this entire show. Charlotte, Kat, David, Jonathan, David, Joe Mahler, and then Jonathan.

That's not bad, though. That's three. So, yeah. Cat and Alan have only one chance of winning, and that is to persuade Dave. David. It's just one episode next week and we're going to see who wins at the end of that. Alan and Kat have to, have to, have to, have to persuade David of their point of view or they've got to somehow try and knock Nick off course. So what they have to do is persuade David that either Nick or Joe is a possible traitor. And once they do that, then they have a path to which.

Why didn't they murder Nick? To what caused chaos? I mean, there's enough chaos already with this long. I mean, chaos was great early on. Yeah. And it does, you know, it does work chaos early on. Why didn't they murder him? But that was crazy.

And simply not explained. The way it was edited, we didn't get to see their brilliant reasoning. Because I wouldn't have to have heard it. Yeah. But the fact that Joe and Nick are still there is a absolute fault. Yeah. Of the traitors. You know, it really, it really is.

It's a huge issue for them now. And if those two guys can play this properly, then they are definitely going to win. And the traitors are in huge trouble. You know, time and time again, we say the job of the faithful is not to weed out traitors. So this is one of the few series in the history of traitors where there's not been a recruitment. It's not been a recruitment because they picked off their first traitor, sort of at the perfect time. We've talked before about the best thing to be as a creature traitor.

So I've done a deep dive into the statistics of every single series of traitors everywhere around the world to see if that's actually true. Because it feels like it's true, but is it? Can I read it? And we know it's true in our hearts, but is it true in our head? Can I read some of my findings? By the way, traitors win more often than faithfuls. Okay, so traitors have won 32 out of those 60 series. Faithwood have won 26 and there's been two sort of no result type things because of people mucking about with the format.

If you are an original traitor, so we start, imagine we're right at the beginning, 19 people, we got Jonathan, we got Adam, we got Kat. The chance of an original traitor winning traitors is 17%. Okay, you have a 17% chance of being the winner of traitors if you're at the beginning there. If you're a faithful at the beginning, it is 6%. You have a 6% chance of winning this game because you've got to last a really, really long. time and people will try and banish you and you you were definitely going to you know someone is definitely trying to murder you so you know you've got there's a lot of trouble there so it's 17% if you're original 6% if you're faithful if you are recruited as a traitor across these 60 series

25% listen there will be math geeks out there who will say to me quite rightly that if you're recruited you're later on in the process anyway so it's so the numbers wouldn't be as far apart as they sound but it is definitively it's the strongest position in the game. The strongest position in the game. And not this one. So this one, and now, you know, we're down to 3V2. You would say that all other things being equal, everyone's got an exactly equal chance. I think the faithful have a mathematical advantage now. I think they have that kind of moral alliance advantage. I have a strong psychiatric advantage, although as you say, Nick could be too clever. Traitors do win more often than faithfuls, for sure. But that has started to

change recently. So in the first few years, so 2023, five faithful wins around the world. So just five faithful wins. 2024, sixth faithful wins. 2025, 11 faithful wins. The faithfuls are getting smarter and working out, especially how to play their end game. And does the game favor men or women? What would your gut say? My gut says it favors, oh, my gut says it favors women. Just 66 female winners, 63 male winners. When I'm thinking of all the international Yes. Yeah, that's almost statistically insignificant, especially if we have two men winning this,

will be almost identical. But what is interesting about that number, 66 and 63, is adds up to 129. We've had 60 series. So when you're down to two, which is what you get to, which is the minimum you can get to, it would be 120.

It shows that actually, in the end, there's very, very, very rarely three winners. Even if there are three of you, and you're pretty sure you're all faithful, there is nothing to lose in the two of you who are the strongest friends getting out of someone, which is where David is going to lose out. Because Joe and Nick, if it's Joe, Nick and David at the end, David can sort of say whatever he wants.

There is nothing to lose really for Nick to vote him out. Because, I mean, if they're wrong and, you know, he is faithful, then they'll feel guilty for a while. But if he were a traitor, that would be a very bad mistake to make. So there is nothing to be gained in three people winning this. It would be, if they did, wouldn't that be lovely? It would be a lovely reflection of trust in human nature. But it feels to me like we're going to have, this is going to be a two-winner,

and it's either going to be Annen and Cat, or it's going to be Nick and Joe. I don't, yeah, Joe Marta doesn't, I don't feel like it gets into his own head, but he's like Chuck Norris. I didn't imagine him sleeping at all during the entire time he was there. Like, you know that, he's just Chuck Norris doesn't sleep.

He waits. I'm going to, a couple of notices of, again, the dead hand of the, producer, because there were so few of them going to the task on, I think, Wednesday's show, who are the two people they put in a car together, Cat and Alan? Yes. As a producer, you're thinking, that is not two people. They are not natural bedfellows, those two, and they're not natural plotters.

So if we leave them to their own devices, then they might not, at any point, work out that now is the time to ditch Jonathan. And it was, now it was the time to ditch Jonathan, for sure. and Jonathan was trying to work out how to ditch Cat or Alex is the one thing that would have saved him He sort of half-heartedly tried to laugh at them But it was quite half-hearted As I say, I love the way Jonathan played it

I haven't loved the noises off Because I keep seeing him doing podcasts Or doing and talking about it He has also said I've had celebrities My celebrity friends are asking me Whether I should do it next time And I'm giving the benefit of my wisdom

And saying I didn't enjoy it So telling them not to Oh he said something absolutely brilliant at one point which was totally true, which was, you know, about the quality of the opposition, which was essentially, you know, if you play it properly and the shields are something to go for for yourself, as opposed to just treating it like some sort of nice, polite thing. I mean, he was in despair of it. Having said that, that would have been the TV moment of the year if Celia, when she was putting cat on the thing,

if she thought, actually, you know what, I think I'll put myself up there. If she put herself there, I think it would have been so funny. And furthermore, she wouldn't have got murdered. You want to say, well, surely Joe and Nick are going to win this. But we've seen this show so many times, and we've seen what can happen in that final episode. And again, watch in that last episode, just watch if producers put any groupings together,

watch if they have any particular games that sort of push people in a certain direction, not in a cheating way, but just to let people have conversations so you might not normally have conversations. Watch if they innovate in any way like they did with the SEA or anything like any sort of novel device that is inserted into that final bit.

Because if I was the producer, what I would be thinking is this end game plays out in a very simple way, which is, I know that that's the likely thing. And I'm also thinking, maybe that's not the greatest end to my series. I mean, it sort of is, because it's lovely for Joe and Nick to win

because they've shown such kind of skill throughout. And because they're so different. It reminded me a little bit of that bonus episode we did about Mike Darnel, where he finally found a way of, in Joe Millionaire, of getting like four reveals in the final episode

which was insane just stacking them all the time you think oh it can't get there can't be another piece of drama there can be so if they can find a way

of just putting one more layer of drama into that because again lots of when you see formats lots of it is oh my God we got a problem here how do we put a sticking plaster on it and so this idea of

actually after when there's five left no one reveals what they are We don't reveal if they're a traitor or a faithful. That is definitively a sticking plaster, right? That's, okay, we've got a problem here in our endgame. Sometimes sticking plasters make your show better. In that environment, over a week, being locked up almost constantly. I've talked to a couple of contestants this week, by the way, about the living conditions.

Oh, my God, it's extreme. Yeah, it's extreme. And not in a, you know, there's no privations, but it is definitively in a bubble. You are allowed to think about nothing but the game. And so in that situation, in that. final episode, if you can really turn the screw and you, you are denuded of information even further than you have been already, that's the time when somebody could crack. And again, none, no, you just, it's an hour long. Yeah. And a lot of people have a lot of theories about a lot

of people. And Joe Marla, you can see, is being given the hero edit. But he's been given the hero edit it, because firstly, you can edit it that way because he is getting a lot right. And secondly, because he's given so much value to the producers. And he's named his theory. He's in that way that when they get someone on a history documentary to do talking head, and what you're doing there really is providing the connective tissue between this bit of footage of Hitler and this bit of footage of something else. And if you say it really, really clearly, then they're just going to keep asking you back because you're the guy who can say, if you say, I think you deflect using humour and you just

say it so clearly, then you're the dream for the producer because you've said it exactly and you're very, very clear. And you say, I think my game plan tomorrow is going to be to do this because this, then you're that person. And weirdly, he comes the least from that world because his primary career was doing something completely different. So next Thursday, the final, very exciting. I'm going to be in Germany, but Germany's an hour ahead,

so I think it finishes. So I think I'll be able to watch it live and then we can do our episode live and talk all about it. I'm very, very excited about that. We'll see you for like a regular episode on Tuesday, and we'll see you for another celebrity trader's reaction one. Next Thursday, it's so exciting. See you next week, guys.

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