Professor Hannah Fry being murdered on Celebrity Traitors would be a gutting injustice

Professor Hannah Fry is one half of the murder shortlist on Celebrity Traitors (Picture: BBC)

** Celebrity Traitors episode two spoilers ahead **

Poor Professor Hannah Fry.

Little did she know when she turned to Jerry Hall at the first Celebrity Traitors breakfast and asked if she wanted to pair up, she sealed her fate as one half of the murder shortlist.

Cut to what host Claudia Winkleman described as ‘the biggest graveyard in Traitors history’, where the paired-up celebs were shown a row of coffins and told to get in.

Winkleman’s campy sinister vibe is encapsulated in her delivery of: ‘Players, please get into your graves.’

For those who found the reality of simulating their death a bit much, they were given the option to scream ‘haggis!’, even if ‘I’m a celebrity, get me out of here!’ would have been more appropriate.

As soon as Hall got in there, she wanted out, putting herself and her partner Fry on the murder shortlist. At that point, they didn’t know Ross Kemp was going to, almost single-handedly, save everyone else. 

‘He’s making the world’s shortest murder shortlist,’ fretted Fry to the BBC cameras. Indeed he did and how horribly unfair the whole thing was, spotlighting one issue with the role of the missions in the gameplay.

The missions are usually physically gruelling, so skew in favour of the young’uns (Picture: BBC) As soon as Jerry Hall got in her coffin, she wanted out of it (Picture: BBC)

Hall, with her Texan drawl and impossible glamour, is the oldest celeb in the castle, at 70. In the first challenge she ‘manned the crowbar’, because it involved a lot of toing, froing and hoofing crates. She probably wouldn’t have been much help with the grave digging, but she couldn’t stand being in the grave anyway. 

The missions are quite often biased against the older contestants, which wasn’t an issue when they were the bit of the show everyone could go for a loo break or on a tea run. But once producers introduced things like shields and murder shortlists, they became quite consequential.

Perhaps as a result, every Traitors victor – celeb or otherwise – has been under 50, most of them many years younger.

During the last season of normie Traitors, Judy, 60, was first to be banished, in part because she kept needing to pause during a physically demanding mission.

By the time the final swung around, the mission was more like an Ironman, set on something between a hill and a mountain. Someone threw up in the process; I’m still trying to forget about it.

With the missions being what they are, I can’t see how someone of Hall’s age could ever win. Worse yet than Hall having one foot out the door is the fact that her partner Prof Fry is almost a dead cert for the murder.

What a crying shame. In a short stint, she’s shown herself to be far better at sussing out the game than the last Fry to grace Celebrity Traitors. It’s why the Traitors will almost certainly choose her over Hall, who has been a Kate Garraway flavour of wrong, which is helpful to keep around.

As a professional brainbox, Fry was probably going to be up for murder at some point (Picture: BBC)

Fry was immediately suspicious of Maya Jama. Then, the Leigh-Anne Pinnock make-up theory was a cracking one, even if it was wrong and unfortunately a bit shame-y of a woman who wants to look decent on national TV.

Best of all was her performance at the first roundtable, when she coolly deflected James Blunt’s left-field wallop and presented a counter-case.

She told them the Traitors ‘are not cocksure, strategic; they are people who are picking the most obvious options.’ It’s true: Maya Jama and Richard E Grant haven’t been much good at seeing beyond the very next move.

As a professional brainbox, Fry was probably going to be up for murder at some point. But part of the joy of Celebrity Traitors is not only seeing a different side to household names like Ross Kemp, but discovering new personalities, like her. 

I don’t listen to Fry’s podcast, attend Cambridge University or like maths much, so she was one of the line-up names I was least familiar with. But she’s clearly a decent player, capable of spotting clues, rather than resorting to wild guesses or bandwagon-jumping.

Jama told Grant she doesn’t want to murder the mathematician (encircled Grant almost certainly won’t be around to make the decision) but also seemed to see it as the obvious choice. As Fry pointed out, that is this turret’s way of playing the game. 

She couldn’t have known it would pan out like this when she paired up with Hall, but she’s been far better humoured about being half of the murder shortlist than I would be – which makes me even more disappointed she is probably going.

Celebrity Traitors returns next Thursday at 8pm on BBC One.

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