Forget the round table – true fans know this is the best part of Celebrity Traitors

The sun has set upon Ardross Castle, and the Traitors have headed to their turret to figure out which one of their fellow players is about to have their time on the show cut brutally short. So what are the Faithful getting up to, while blissfully unaware of these green-cloaked machinations?

Miranda Hart is messing around with some bubble bath while fully dressed in silk pyjamas. Sebastian “Bash” Croft is chewing ponderously on the end of a fountain pen (is the castle a Biro-free zone?). And James Blunt is wearing a shower cap, scrubbing himself with a bath brush with all the animatronic verve of a Ken doll come to life.

Of course, no discerning Celebrity Traitors viewer is labouring under the delusion that any of this is actually happening at the same time. No one is claiming that Professor Hannah Fry, of Cambridge mathematician fame, spent her evenings faffing around with a gargantuan abacus before being recruited. But after four seasons of the civilian edition and two celebrity spin-offs, these high-camp bedtime routines are now firmly established as one of the silliest – if not the best – parts of the whole Traitors pantomime.

These brief scenes are usually filmed the day after a contestant gets banished, producers have previously confirmed, and the Traitors behind-the-scenes team also has conversations with the cast early on about what they think could work for their moment of glory. “We all love to throw in suggestions, but we also collaborate with our players too,” says executive producer Katy Fox. “We speak to them about what they would like their routine to be to make sure it feels suitable for their personality.”

Charlotte from season three, fondly remembered for her chaotic but crafty decision to use a Welsh accent during her time in the castle to appear more trustworthy, even suggested to producers that she should be filmed flicking through a book called Learn Welsh before bed. “I was like, what if there’s a book out there that’s like Welsh for Dummies?” she told Cosmopolitan last year. “I had my friend order it off Amazon Prime because I needed it in time for filming.”

Does it add much to the gameplay to sprinkle a four-second clip of, say, a contestant doing a headstand in his pants (remember Matty from this year’s edition of the regular show) while the Traitors are plotting his possible downfall? Or to show another player doing a casual spot of evening ghost hunting (Adam, also from this year’s civilian series, who was into investigating the paranormal) complete with what appeared to be metal dowsing rods? Not really. But the boost to our enjoyment? Exponential.

You can file this genre of B-roll along with the superfluous shots of the Traitors in-castle owl (who Claudia Winkleman has apparently nicknamed “Barry”) swooping around, or the slowed down and breathy minor-key cover versions on the soundtrack that have become so slow and so breathy as to reach the point of self-parody – not a vital part of the proceedings, sure, but one that does crucial work in maintaining the creepy-meets-camp vibe all the same, with an additional stroke of Cluedo-esque cartoonishness.

“In a show that has so many voices and people on screen together, the ‘bedtime routines’ are a brilliant window into our players’ personalities,” says Fox. “They’re an opportunity for them to shut the door on the intensity of the game and do something that expresses who they are – whether that’s journalling, calculating with an abacus, or relaxing in a completely normal way in the shower.” And, she adds, “for the murder mystery fans they’re also a brilliant send-up of that genre, done in The Traitors’ own inimitable way”.

When things can often become extremely heated at the round table, with old alliances crumbling in the time it takes to scrawl an incorrectly spelled version of another player’s name on a tiny black slate, these cutaways act like a pressure valve, releasing some of that tension and reminding us that what we’re watching is essentially a big-budget version of a parlour game. Speaking to Reality Blurred in 2024, Sam Rees-Jones, who oversees The Traitors US, described these clips as “drama moments”, which are “add[ed] to not take ourselves too seriously”.

Indeed, there’s something enjoyably bonkers about listening to the Traitors getting het up about who to “kill” next… while some daft blink and you’ll miss it footage plays out on screen. Part of the brilliance is the sheer “am I hallucinating?” brevity. Often we barely have time to register what’s happening, and it’s only when we scroll through the memes afterwards (a crucial part of any Traitors viewing experience, you’ll surely agree) that we get to confirm that yes, we really saw Blunty in a bath cap.“We absolutely loved the meme from a viewer questioning whether they’d been using a loofah wrong for their entire life after watching James Blunt in the shower this series,” Fox says.

Speaking of bathtime, by this point in the show’s trajectory, all things sudsy are now failsafe Traitors tropes. Every season, it seems, a member of the cast’s younger male contingent – essentially, whoever among them is the happiest to get their top off on national television – now gets the call up to film a shower scene. That might sound a bit soft porn to the uninitiated, but bear in mind that we’re talking about a pre-watershed show on the BBC, so it’s all very PG.

It started with politics student Freddie in last year’s contest (who posted a joking apology to his mum before the scene aired). Then Olympian Tom Daley took on the mantle in the celebrity version and the aforementioned Matty did the same for the 2026 cohort.

In an Instagram comment, Daley described it as “literally the most awkward thing to film” – what, you’re telling us that pretending to wash yourself from the waist up in front of a full camera crew is not an entirely natural experience? 2026 winner Stephen told BBC Radio 1 that he was asked “if I was comfortable to do a shower scene”, agreed, then backtracked when he saw the rest of the male cast. “I don’t think [the producers] push it, but I think if people want to flaunt themselves in that manner they’re more than welcome to,” he explained.

This season’s shower scene, though, feels a bit more tongue-in-cheek, thanks to Blunt’s almost robotic moves and deadpan expression – it’s very in keeping with his droll persona. At their best, these quick cutaway scenes act like a little wink to the viewers – albeit about as subtle as the one that Myha’la delivered to Richard E Grant at the roundtable – who get to feel like they’re in on the joke. And so for the remaining fortnight of The Celebrity Traitors, I’m crossing my fingers for some of the most absurd, most on-the-nose bedtime routines yet.

I want Rob Beckett doing some kind of in-depth dental routine. Michael Sheen delivering a soliloquy to a skull, Hamlet style. Jerry Hall limbering up for some leg wrestling (she was a champion, remember?) And if you need ideas for next time around? Producers, you know where I am.