A slip-up at the roundtable

Joe Lycett was banished from BBC One's The Celebrity Traitors on Friday, 16 October, after a remark at the roundtable led the faithful to suspect he was a Traitor. In the days after Hannah Fry was banished on Thursday, 15 October, he had openly campaigned to be recruited, and he later admitted he had probably been too vocal about it. When James Blunt questioned him, Lycett implied that the Traitors would recruit again if he were banished, and that remark drew almost all of the votes against him. Miranda Hart was in tears at the result, telling James Acaster she was upset to lose the laughter and joy Lycett had brought to the castle. Standing before the table, Lycett said:

“I always wanted to start as a faithful and end as a traitor.”

He insisted he had not been recruited and that he was a faithful after all.

Kenny's recruitment and Fry's exit

On Thursday, 15 October, the Traitors murdered comedian Rob Beckett face-to-face, with Maya Jama, James Acaster and Hannah Fry carrying out the killing. At the same roundtable the faithful voted out Fry, a mathematician who revealed she was a Traitor. That left Jama and Acaster with two Traitors in their ranks, so they recruited YouTuber King Kenny, a player who had not come under suspicion. Kenny said in the diary room:

“On the outside I look calm, cool, collected, but on the inside I'm incredibly nervous.”

After leaving the castle, Fry told Ed Gamble on Celebrity Traitors: Uncloaked that she had used the codebreaking method Alan Turing applied to the Enigma machine. She said Jama and Acaster had given themselves away by switching their votes to her, and that she was devastated not to get to use her findings.

The plain-sight murder attempt

The Traitors were told they had to murder a faithful in plain sight. Using a bottle of deadly powder found in the library, they sprayed it into a room, then lured a victim there and tried to make them yawn. Kenny secured the bottle and sprayed the perfume, while Jama and Acaster pretended to yawn to draw one of the faithful in. Ross Kemp and Jerry Hall were lured into the room. The episode ended before the outcome was shown, so whether anyone was murdered is not known until the next broadcast.

Beckett's exit and the betting

Beckett, a 40-year-old comedian and father of two, said after leaving the show that he had wanted to go further. He said he felt he had done almost everything the game offered and had missed his children. He backed Jama to win and named Leigh-Anne Pinnock, Jerry Hall and Romesh Ranganathan as the trio he wanted to face Acaster in the final. Bookmakers list Michael Sheen as the favourite at 2/1, with Acaster and Jama following as the two shortest-priced Traitors.

What comes next

The murder attempt remains unresolved until the show's next broadcast on BBC One at 8pm on Thursday, 22 October. Lycett's exit leaves the faithful still wary of one another, with Joanne McNally, James Blunt and Ross Kemp all having drawn suspicion during the week. Viewers will learn then whether a faithful was murdered in plain sight.