The Celebrity Traitors: episode nine – LIVE

Finally – and I realise that I have literally been saying this for every single episode this year – but might this be the moment where things actually kick off? There was a report in The Sun today suggesting that something tonight will spin the rest of the series in an unexpected new direction.

Now, obviously we need to take this with a big old pinch of salt, because a cynic might suggest that producers have been deliberately leaking these stories to the press to keep people watching what has been a relatively lacklustre series. But if this is really true, and things really will be explosive as everyone says, then what do we think will make it explosive? My guess: either Maya Jama will do something genuinely treacherous, or Richard E Grant will burst in through the window like Batman.

And now a word for the fallen. Last Friday we lost Miranda Hart to the traitors. This was perhaps the saddest murder of them all.

Sad for Miranda, because she has been gloriously honest about the role that the show has played in her recovery from illness, which has been highly touching to watch. Sad for the contestants, because they all really liked having her around. And sad for us, because hasn’t it been brilliant having Miranda Hart back on the telly? More of that please.

Let’s run down everyone’s status as it currently stands.

Maya Jama – TRAITOR. The least suspected traitor in the history of the game, arguably. What a genius

James Acaster – TRAITOR. Also wildly trusted by the group at large, perhaps because he still desperately wants to be a faithful.

King Kenny – TRAITOR. Growing in stature all the time. The delight on his face when he lies to someone is a sight to behold.

Joanne McNally – FAITHFUL. Possibly about to be banished. I think she’s going to escape by the skin of her teeth, but for how long?

Sharon Rooney – FAITHFUL. Pretty sure she’s about to be murdered, for the crime of having an unvarnished human reaction in a field full of showponies. When will she learn?

Romesh Ranganathan – FAITHFUL. And everyone knows that he’s a faithful. This means he has never been in greater threat of being murdered.

Michael Sheen – FAITHFUL. But similarly precarious. He’s too smart to have survived this long, people say. And look what happened to Hannah Fry.

Sebastian Croft – FAITHFUL. Just a lovely boy doing his best.

Leigh-Anne Pinnock – FAITHFUL. Suddenly quite good at this, although that might just be because there are now fewer people for her to have to shout over.

James Blunt – FAITHFUL. At this point he is a bloodhound, albeit a bloodhound that seems to have forgotten what blood smells like.

Hello OG traits, and welcome to The Guardian’s liveblog of The Celebrity Traitors, episode nine. This is it. This is the final week. In just over 24 hours, we will know who won, who lost, who barked up which wrong tree, and who screwed someone else over so badly that it caused a permanent schism in their formerly cordial relationship.

But first, let’s remember where we left things. There was a roundtable on Friday. Either Joanne or Sharon is for the high jump, and it is such a close-run thing that the voting had to go two rounds. Now, obviously it doesn’t really matter if Sharon or Joanne goes, because they’re both faithfuls and that’s the only material issue at this stage of the game, but let’s not allow that to get in the way of a fun cliffhanger.

So strap in, get theorising in the comments and I’ll see you back here at eight o’clock sharp.