There’s a reason comedians like Joanne McNally rarely make good Traitors

I’m enjoying season two of BBC’s Celebrity Traitors so much that I’ve committed a cardinal sin and secretly watched ahead without my family. Now I’m in the position of rewatching earlier episodes, feigning shock as faithful get murdered and voted off. Sort of like a traitor really.

Secretly, I’ve always thought I’d be excellent at the cut-throat deception necessary for traitorous business. But watching King Kenny embrace faithful James Blunt before last Friday’s round-table knocked that notion right out of me. “My friend!” Blunt quavered, grasping the other man’s forearm. I felt like I was watching Michael hug Fredo in The Godfather. Honestly, the ease with which some of the celebrity traitors lie and double-cross is chilling. Slowly, I realise that the best traitors aren’t the best liars; they’re the best celebrities.

Before watching I assumed that actors would be excellent. Their job is basically professional lying, right? And then Richard E Grant showed up and proved me spectacularly wrong. Consumed with thoughts of playing a traitor and murdering in the dark, he hasn’t given much thought to how he’s going to conceal his identity from everybody else. So he doesn’t. “What are you?” The comedian Joe Lycett asks, moments later in the bar. “A traitor,” Grant replies, with unsuppressed glee, like a toddler who hasn’t mastered the rules of hide and seek. Oh well.

This season of Celebrity Traitors is also full of comics, but comedians, it turns out, don’t make particularly good traitors either. They have too much personality. Joanne McNally is a case in point (and the whole point I started watching if I’m honest). McNally – a faithful, and faithfully wrong 100 per cent of the time – can’t hide her emotions, and the audience can instantly tell when she’s anxious, offended or insecure. James Acaster, meanwhile, the faithful comedian turned reluctant traitor, bumbles along in the wake of Maya Jama and King Kenny, wringing his outsize hands in anguish over his deceit.

The best traitors are a new breed of celebrity who specialise in connection, whether it’s building a rapport with a million YouTube viewers or a crying contestant on a reality show. “As a host I have quite a welcoming energy I think,” Maya Jama told Claudia Winkleman in her first interview, snatching at the air like an insanely attractive witch luring children into a gingerbread cottage, “so hopefully people will just trust me.” Jama is the host of the reality TV show Love Island. In the process she has spent years cultivating intimacy with contestants and audiences while staying flawless and composed like Britain’s most beautiful head girl. I watch a video now where she comforts a tearful Love Island contestant, managing to make the whole exchange feel like two girlfriends chatting in the loo and not the million pound production it is. Jama spoke in her master interview about donning the traitors’ identity as “just another job. Go to work, put on a smile, la-la-la.”

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King Kenny, a massive YouTube personality who shares videos trying food, playing video games and boxing, started out as a faithful and was later recruited to the dark side. Faithful or traitor, he continues to embody the same warm, trustworthy character who others look to for reassurance. Kenny’s medium is just this – to get strangers to feel as though they are already his friend.

Jama and Kenny both have an uncanny ability to morph into whatever is required of them moment to moment. She can be chummy with Joanne and flirty with Kenny, bossy in the turret and vulnerable with the group as the register requires. Kenny is consistently warm, curious, wanting what’s best for the group. As a viewer you see the act, and wonder if it’s all one big front-of-house charade. But I imagine if you’re James Blunt, you might see your friend Kenny, smiling while saying that yes, this whole thing is nerve-racking, but he has your back.

Celebrity has changed since Hollywood stars cultivated an air of mystique. Reality TV and social media introduced a different fame, built on managed intimacy, the kind that Kenny and Jama do so well. This kind of celebrity is endlessly visible without revealing much of anything at all. Maybe this is the advantage enjoyed by Jama and Kenny: their professional lives have trained them to build a feeling of being known while maintaining strict control over what others can ever really know about them.

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The climax came last week when the faithfuls had so much faith in the wrong people, they picked the traitors as their most trusted members, giving them additional powers. The guilty trio struggled to suppress their grins. The faithful returned to the castle to bicker and recriminate. They spoke as though there were hundreds of tells through which the self might be revealed, an outsize reaction, being too “iconic”, talking too much, talking too little, being predictable, being unexpected. The kind of celebrities whose job involves managing these signals already have a huge head start. They’re going to win. The faithful don’t see it coming, because they don’t really see the traitors. Is it any wonder they are playing a blinder?