James Blunt on Traitors: I tried - and failed - to get banished

By

Music correspondent

He may have made it to the final episode of this year's Celebrity Traitors, but James Blunt says he did his best to get banished from the show.

The singer-songwriter became a fan favourite for his 1980s leisurewear, outlandish conspiracy theories and military-style approach to tasks.

A dominating presence at the round table, he characterises himself as the "yapping terrier" to actor Michael Sheen's "mature labrador", as they sniffed out the traitors.

Behind the scenes, however, he was playing a different game.

"We all get paid the same, whether you're there for day one or day 23," he tells the BBC.

"So for most of the time, I was trying to... get the hell out of dodge. But no-one was killing me and no-one was banishing me!"

Blunt's cavalier approach informed his gameplay. He knew that outspoken players are often snuffed out first, and that his best bet was to keep a low profile.

"But that's also really boring," he says. "And so for me, I just thought, 'Let's just go around and come up with theories.'

"You don't see it in the edit, but I was telling everyone, 'It doesn't matter [who goes], just kill them all!'

"It's fine, as long as you're apologetic when you get it wrong."

He was wrong more often than he was right. But in the penultimate episode, Blunt and Sheen stumbled on to a theory that the quiet contestants were more suspicious than their outspoken brethren.

In a pivotal round table, they turned their attention towards comedian James Acaster, and picked apart his story of a "murder in plain sight" that had occurred nights earlier.

Caught in the crosshairs, Acaster simply confessed.

"I was made a traitor without wanting to be," he revealed, as the others gasped.

Blunt says there was more to the sequence than viewers realised, hinting that Acaster was caught in a fib about a perfume bottle used in the murderous act.

"He didn't fall on his sword. That's what you saw, that's what you feel, but he didn't.

"You didn't see the full extent of the interrogation. It was heavy in there and it was clear-cut. He was pinned to a post. We got him. We really, really got him.

"I think how that played out hasn't really been revealed to you, but he didn't just say, 'Oh guys, you got me'."

In his exit interview, external, Acaster admitted the round table had been intense, but laughed off his uncloaking.

"It was sprung on me. It was a surprise," he said. "But I was glad that they caught me."

Blunt says the editing of the TV show is crucial to people's understanding of events.

And, with days and days of footage to sift through, not everything that happens makes it to air.

"There are elements [of the show] where I was screaming at the screen for a different reason than you," he laughs. "No matter what really went on in that castle, you're a victim to the edit."

Still, some of his favourite moments made it into the show, including actress and model Jerry Hall calling him "smooth like butter dripping off of hot corn".

"That was a very special one," he laughs. "And she also said, to my face, 'I'll take you home in your wetsuit'".

And what about Blunt's confession that he greased his nipples with butter before every physical task?

"I'm amazed you don't do that yourself, Mark," he shoots back.

In the end, however, he was voted off the show in its dying moments, when comedian Romesh Ranganathan couldn't shake the idea that Blunt was in cahoots with the traitorous Maya Jama.

Blunt maintains he was blindsided by the accusation, but bears no grudges.

"The ending was perfect. It had all the twists and turns. I wouldn't have wanted it any other way."

Still the question remains. If he wasn't that keen to go the distance in the castle, why did he enter in the first place? Was it simply for the experience, or did he simply want to promote his new music?

"I think you may have hit the nail on the head with the latter," he grins.

"I don't think otherwise I would have signed up to be imprisoned in a castle in Scotland."

There's a method in his madness, though.

In Blunt's own estimation, his eighth album, Airplane Mode, is his best work in years.

Now, musicians make that claim all the time. Blunt himself basically told me the same thing about his last album, 2023's Who We Used To Be.

But this time, he might have a point. After years of chasing radio hits and commercial success, he's gone back to writing from the heart.

The results are much more downbeat than you might expect from a man who's renowned for hilarious social media slapdowns and crowd surfing in inflatable dinghies.

Across the album's 12 tracks, he frequently sounds adrift, fretting about the state of the world and wrestling with "monsters in your head that you can't turn off".

"Darkness came like a tidal wave," he sings on the concerningly titled Reason To Die. "I'm paralysed by my body keeping score," he adds, over the portentous drums of Weight of it All.

The lyrics are informed by those negative, late-night thoughts that prey on your mind when you should be sleeping. Blunt says finally acknowledging them was a relief, after years of "trying to write happy upbeat radio singles".

"I don't have a therapist. I write songs as an exercise in voicing nostalgia and melancholy and the things I struggle with in the world.

"And, you know, the person you talk to the most in the world is the voice in your head. That's the truest conversation you're ever going to have, and that's who I was arguing with in the writing of this.

"I was going over the things that all of us struggle with: the burdens of growing up, growing older, having more responsibilities, having bills to pay, not knowing what the state of the world will be next year."

For all of his flippant humour, Blunt's demons are real.

In his 20s, he was an army captain stationed in Pristina during the brutal Kosovo war, and lost several close friends during the conflict.

Even after he left active service and became a successful musician, he was ostracised and ridiculed by his peers. He was later targeted in a tabloid newspaper sex sting, and was one of the many victims of the News of the World phone-hacking scandal.

The honesty of his new music reflects those experiences. And you can hear the rawness in his voice, too.

The musician who once quipped, "I sing like a girl, external", has a new depth to his vocals. On the new song Oh Daisy, there's even a Rod Stewart-esque rasp.

That, he says, is the result of a punishing 21-month tour celebrating the 20th anniversary of his debut album, Back To Bedlam (17.5 million copies sold and counting).

"I really damaged my vocal cords," he says. "I was pushing it too much, and my voice changed as a result.

"I actually now take singing lessons with different people – with an opera singer, even – and the [whole experience] has given my voice a bit of grit.

"Either that or my balls have dropped."

It's a typically self-deprecating jab. If anyone can laugh at themselves, it's James Blunt. And, however dark his new album gets, there's always a silver lining.

"This is not forever," he counsels himself on the closing track. "It's just for now."

"That song's a fist in the air saying, 'Yeah, we will endure'," says Blunt.

"I think I've been around long enough to know that I don't have to prove anything.

"The record label released my greatest hits album a couple of years ago, so if my greatest hits are already out, what am I doing now?

"I'm a guy on his own, writing songs with nothing to prove. That's a pretty good place to be."