Game-breaking blunders, killer yawns … and a puddle of vomit: it’s the top 10 Celebrity Traitors moments

This series might have lacked Alan Carr, but Jerry Hall’s incredible one-liners and Ross Kemp’s intense paranoia prove this is still one of the best shows on TV

More than 15 million of us have been gripped by famous people backstabbing and blundering their way through the second series of smash BBC hit The Celebrity Traitors. As Ardross Castle pulls up its drawbridge – at least until the civilian edition arrives in January - we rewind the 10 standout moments …

The series kicked off in trademark camp style. Our 21 celebrities gathered at The Traitors’ Chapel, where “Famous last words” was etched ominously on the door and a flower arrangement spelled out “RIP VIP”. Masked pallbearers carried a coffin up the aisle. Host Claudia Winkleman climbed out yawning: “That was quite the nap.”

It made jaws drop and a “little bit of sick” come up in the mouth of exec producer Sarah Fay. Straight after getting the fateful shoulder-tap from Winkleman, Richard “Eek” Grant strolled into the bar and blithely announced that he had been anointed as a traitor. The “lord of chaos” was duly banished at the first round table, making him the worst traitor in the show’s history.

Soap tough guy and documentarian Ross Kemp was a man possessed on missions and celebrated round table triumphs with a vein-popping bellow of “Get in there!”. He was also consumed with paranoia about being murdered in plain sight. When Bella Ramsey popped a captain’s cap on him or Leigh-Anne Pinnock brushed his arm, Kemp was convinced he’d been killed. His greatest fear later came to pass and he was dispatched with a yawn.

The first murder came down to a toss-up between comic James Acaster and the ubiquitous Amol Rajan – who’d made the tactical error of styling himself as a “rottweiler” who “sniffs out traitors for a living”. The cloaked conspirators promptly slammed his coffin lid shut, meaning Rajan suffered the ignominy of being first out of the castle.

The Texas supermodel had her head in the clouds but was highly quotable. She recalled wearing a wedding dress every day until Mick Jagger proposed. She confessed to a crush on Monty Don and being “girls’ leg-wrestling champion of my school district”. She described James Blunt as “smooth like butter dripping off hot corn” with “a face redder than a fox’s ass at gooseberry time”.

Turret queen Maya Jama’s first two recruitments didn’t quite work. Acaster was a “reluctant traitor” who refused to lie. Professor Hannah Fry was rumbled for being too brainy. But midway through the series, seducing King Kenny proved a masterstroke. Arriving in the conclave, the YouTuber fell to his knees, open-mouthed with shock. He was soon cackling gleefully that “the faithful are doomed”.

Making her TV comeback after chronic illness, Miranda Hart became a beloved faithful. She threw up in the creepy cabin, did her trademark gallop down the castle corridors, and hip-thrusted in the billiard room as Pinnock taught her a Little Mix dance routine. When “Miranda Marple” was eventually murdered, she exclaimed: “Absolutely not! Oh, bottoms.”

He was always a begrudging baddie, but nerdy, nervous Acaster shocked even his co-conspirators during the traitors’ lair mission. Tasked with sneaking around to steal the faithful’s puzzle pieces, he immediately bottled it. Acaster refused to remove his blindfold, let alone move. Maya and Kenny were outraged that he’d hung them out to dry.

They couldn’t have got it more wrong if they’d tried. On the sinister scarecrow mission, the faithful picked the three most trusted players to receive a special power. They swiftly settled on Kenny, Jama and Acaster. Yep, all three traitors. “What are the chances?” chuckled Winkleman. “This is like an outdoor turret.”

Acaster played a unique game by acting on behalf of Team Faithful, despite secretly being a traitor. He blazed his own trail right to the end. At the penultimate round table, suspicions were raised over Kemp’s murder in plain sight. Cue a plot twist. In a self-own to rival Richard E Grant’s, Acaster stunned everyone by confessing all and departing on his own terms.