It was the night that Richard E. Grant left The Celebrity Traitors castle but episode 3 also brought with it a lot more drama. No one got murdered, Hannah Fry got recruited and, well, it took her all of 5 minutes for her to be exposed. “Poor Hannah, she’s been recruited” said comedian Joanne McNally shortly after Hannah and Jerry Hall joined the breakfast table. Oh dear.
“Honestly, my heart is in my mouth. I didn’t know what to do with my face. I’m not cut out for this, honestly!” cried Hannah to the camera. But truthfully? She is. Of course she is, she’s a mathematician, for goodness sake. And what will save her, you ask? Her memory which, as we saw in tonight’s episode, is about 100 times better than Joe Lycett’s. Here’s how she can use it to survive…
The ‘spreadsheet’
Early on in episode 3, Hannah had a frank conversation with fellow player Joe Lycett. “I have two things” she told him. "One of them is I have every possible combination of three people. Every night, I go back and eliminate all the universes where I’ve seen people consistently together. The problem is, you haven’t got my spreadsheet, but just look for combinations”. While Joe replied, “I have a problem with memory”, it marked an important opportunity for Hannah. If Hannah is clever (spoiler: she is), she’ll now use this to her advantage, flexing her ability to recall details that might subtly incriminate others, while her fellow players, such as Joe, can barely remember the event in the first place.
He said, she said
We all know that in a game of Celebrity Traitors, recalling what people said and did when and where is important. One wrong move and suddenly everyone’s against you. We saw one such example at episode 3’s Round Table when Myha’la and Hannah were confronted about what happened with ‘shieldgate’ during the latest challenge. When the pair were questioned about what happened after they discovered a shield during the challenge, their versions of events didn’t quite match up.
Hannah didn’t want to share what happened and let Myha’la do the dirty work. Unfortunately for Myha’la, however, Hannah told the players: “The way I experienced that was a different interpretation. I was obviously desperate to get a shield, so as we opened the box, there was one shield inside and we were scrambling for it. Then you were holding it and you were like, ‘Oh no wait, this doesn’t matter to me’”. Despite the fact that Myha’la immediately chipped in and said, “That’s not what I said”, the players appeared to accept Hannah’s version of events, not Myha’la's. And that was confirmed by the fact that almost all of them decided to vote for Myha’la to be banished. Another point for Hannah.
The alliances
We now know that Hannah is keeping a track of who gravitates towards whom – who defends each other, who has private chats and who barely talks at all. Now, if she knows who’s closest to whom, Hannah can gently plant seeds of doubt here and there and decide which players to subtly turn against each other and which ones to form her own alliances with. Our advice? Make friends with King Kenny who appears to be very much onto Hannah, turn Bella Ramsey against Julie Hesmondhalgh and remain as close as she can to James Acaster who’s clearly playing the ‘I’m too silly to be useful to anyone’ game.
What to read next
Keeping tabs
To play a good game of Traitors, you need to keep your friends close and your enemies closer. For Hannah, that should be simple because if there’s one thing she doesn’t forget, it’s who suspects her. First, there was Joanne at breakfast, then there’s Bella Ramsey and Sebastian Croft who became suspicious about the shield incident and, now that Myha’la has gone, they’re likely to be even more so. There’s one player, however, who we believe Hannah might not have clocked as being onto her: Miranda Hart. Miranda has been quietly keeping an eye on Hannah, and if Hannah hasn’t added her to her mental list of potential threats, it could be a very costly oversight. Go get her, Hannah.
Doing the math
If you watched tonight’s episode, you’ll know that Traitors Hannah, Maya Jama and James Acaster now have a decision to make: which player to murder. “If we want to make it chaotic, we’ve got to murder James Blunt,” said James. Maya added: "Kill Bella – that is the only person smart enough to find us all out”. Good point. But it was Hannah who made the most tactical point of all: “Bash – he was suspicious of me, maybe it looks like I’m being framed”. Hannah has done the math and if she can get her way, she’ll almost definitely be safe for another day...
