As Storm Austen raged through the Channel Islands, causing total devastation to a modest proportion of food caddy lids and destroying the very verticality of innocent road signs, I hid away in the confines of my one-storey home and did my best to avoid the wrong kind of news.
Tolerable forms of information included the fact that no, my kids don’t have any homework, yes, public transport is at a standstill, no, there are no trampolines on the roof and yes, a YouTubing fisherman is in a state of advanced meteorological arousal.
The one intolerable form of news was any information to do with the previous night’s episode of Celebrity Traitors.
I was once used to this sort of thing with football scores, where I would be out at some Saturday quiz or gig or wedding and be determined not to discover how my team had got on until I could settle down to watch Match of the Day, live or recorded.
But now, I was hunkered down in my Castel dwelling having sacrificed the latest opportunity to watch famous people politely kill each other in a Scottish castle, in favour of watching a friend sing on stage about falling in love in the aftermath of a terrorist outrage.
Yes, despite my addiction to the latest Traitors televisual feast, I had long since booked tickets to Come From Away on Thursday and was therefore a day behind in my essential viewing.
I had thought this sort of TV phenomenon dead. The idea that millions of people would all watch the same thing on telly at the same time and then talk about it afterwards, while the miscreant missers covered their ears in shame, was surely a thing of the four-channel past.
Apart from World Cup finals, category-one Royal funerals and alien invasions, I didn’t anticipate a repeat of this shared-broadcast ubiquity.
It’s all the more remarkable when you consider that back in the day, when tabloid newspapers ran the country, it was quite common for prominent TV series to be deliberately spoiled, especially if the producers hadn’t furnished the rags with the interviews they wanted with their stars.
Now, a pall of obliviating smoke hangs heavy over every aspect of a high-profile series. I don’t imagine for a minute that the BBC has an iron grip on security such that no information can possibly have escaped. It’s surely a result of a willing conspiracy to conceal, with all involved fully cognisant of the rich rewards of the self-feeding frenzy.
I mean here I am, a so-called journalist being paid actual money to write about it, and if I knew what happened next I wouldn’t tell you. And if I chose to, you’d quite rightly banish me, or worse.
Once we finally, as a family, got round to watching Thursday’s episode on iPlayer – at about the time Friday’s episode was going out – we were happily able to do so having received no spoilers, and then quickly rattled off Friday’s episode too, merely an hour late.
But the effect of those two rapid-fire editions was to all but kill off any remaining jeopardy in the game.
I would love to be proved wrong, but my earlier suspicion that we’ve seen the last of the traitor-banishments in this series appears to have become a near certainty.
The selection of ‘King’ Kenny, James Acaster and Maya Jama as the ‘most trusted’ trio among the remaining contestants – as they prepared to disembowel an army of scarecrows that channelled both the Worzel Gummidge and Dr Who nightmares of a fevered John Pertwee – enabled the three of them to chuckle with glee as Claudia Winkleman marvelled at their success. It was the most ladled-on dose of dramatic irony seen on a British country estate since that other Austen stormed through the nation’s consciousness with her 19th-century novels.
Ross Kemp, Jerry Hall and Miranda Hart were quickly dispatched via yawns, slates and a sealed letter respectively, and there seems to be no appetite on the part of the most accused faithful to do anything but attack their accusers, allowing the traitors to tread lightly at their side, nodding and conveying sympathy as they flank their inexorable march towards self-destruction.
The cliffhanger was whether Irish comedian Joanne McNally or Scottish actor Sharon Rooney – who each believe in the other’s innocence – would be the next faithful to succumb.
The traitors have been brilliant and they deserve to win, but I can’t help feeling the series needs a jolt – a hidden sleeping policeman on the highway to the now-traditional denouement of coloured flames and gold coins. Even the prospect of some internecine traitor-on-traitor treachery seems somewhat remote. They don’t seem bruised or challenged enough to lash out at each other, instead gliding serenely to a nice friendly conclusion – not so much a gang of thieves and murderers as a small detective-fiction book-club where they see every twist coming as mechanically as they fold an origami bookmark.
Oh, what price a sudden surge of suspicion from a reinvigorated faithful, aimed directly at these untargeted puppeteers?
What we need is a bit of sleuthing worthy of Hercule Poirot or Jane Marple, followed by a self-condemning denial that throws everything open.
Bring on Storm Christie!
But do NOT talk to me on Friday – I’m at the Fermain Tavern on Thursday night, watching a long-since booked Halloween pantomime.
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