Of course Alan Carr is the star of Celebrity Traitors – he’s always been an underappreciated icon

As legendary gay comedian Alan Carr stalked the corridors of The Celebrity Traitors castle in last night’s (8 October) first episode, looking something like a cross between E.T. in a bike basket and that one bald meme of former Big Brother contestant Kerry, the nation could be heard howling in unison.

Discounting, um, previous seasons of The Traitors, such social media unity hasn’t been seen since the feverish lockdown weeks that brought us Drag Race UK season two and that doctored video of Italian people apparently singing “Fight For This Love”.

Part of the reason for such an outpouring of joy, of course, is the UK’s infatuation with The Traitors in general – it’s inarguably the UK’s biggest reality show, and growing – but so much of the five-star charm of that first episode was down to Alan Carr.

Prior to becoming a – spoiler, for the six people who haven’t seen it yet – Traitor, Carr told the befringed Claudia Winkleman that he wanted to be one. He curled in on himself with laughter, clearly aware of what a messy Traitor he would be. The BBC, experts in the ingredients needed for award-worthy telly, obviously bestowed him with the honour.

From then on, Alan Carr, Britain’s least inconspicuous presence, blustered and flustered and sweated his way through 70 minutes of TV gold, a nerve-steadying glass of rosé never far from reach.

When Kate Garraway suggested he was a Faithful, he could only turn away, his role as the gameshow Judas written across his goofy grin. In the Traitors’ turret, he made his fellow Traitors Cat Burns and Jonathan Ross erupt with the mere unveiling of his face.

This has always been Alan Carr’s calling card: being in places that he absolutely shouldn’t be, and having a camera handy to film it. He broke through with comedy/game/talk shows including Alan Carr’s Celebrity Ding Dong and Friday/Sunday Night Project, going pre-virality viral on the latter by mocking Cadbury’s famous eyebrow ad, alongside Lily Allen. Yet the now 49-year-old properly soared to National Treasure status with his Friday night chat show, Alan Carr: Chatty Man in 2009. 

Here, he taught Nicki Minaj how to eat a scone – “Is this erotic for you?” – serenaded Elizabeth Olsen with Earth, Wind & Fire, and asked Bradley Cooper if he’d ever “had an orgasm from eating food”. His guests, often initially bewildered at the bawdy and bespectacled man sqwarking before them, were always won over soon enough.

The show ran until 2016, but he’s continued causing occasional trouble elsewhere, trying to saw wood with an upside down tool on Amanda & Alan’s Italian Job, detailing how an ouija board outed him to his mum, and infamously taking to the stage in a panicked flurry to sing “Make You Feel My Love” while his best friend Adele took a break from her 2021 ITV show An Audience With. Remember those girls on TikTok who booked a flight “To Nice” and ended up in Tunis, Tunisia? Alan Carr could do the same.

Brits love Alan Carr because his class clown energy – a huge gob, that witch’s cackle, the disarming self-deprecation and panto dame extravagance – resists the country’s poised and stuffy reputation.

Though circumstance often has him exactly where he shouldn’t be, he also knows where his naughtiest jokes will be best received: on the Drag Race UK panel, while running amok on The Great Celebrity Bake Off,  and now in the camp confines of a castle in the Scottish highlands. 

But over the past few years, he hasn’t quite been the monolith of British TV culture that he had been, nor that he should be. Since Chatty Man, he’s hosted a number of game shows and festive specials, an even larger number of travel series with Amanda Holden, written his own sitcom, ITV’s Changing Ends, and presents the very successful Interior Design Masters on the BBC.

It’s a solid output, but if The Celebrity Traitors proves anything, it’s that he’s surely due one of the biggest, sparkliest presenting jobs on British telly soon. 

Hey, he might not want it, and as the old adage says, there can be too much of a good thing. But UK terrestrial TV is famed for cherry-picking five or six presenters and milking them dry of every quip or anecdote they have, on every series going. Alan Carr – the sweating, bumbling, hooting Alan Carr – deserves to be milked.

The Celebrity Traitors continues on BBC One at 9pm and BBC iPlayer.

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