We've said it before and we'll say it again, The Traitors might just be the most compelling reality telly series in the history of reality telly series. We're now halfway through series three of the BBC phenomenon and we genuinely can't get enough.
Seriously, a fringe is growing, there's a floor-length cloak in our Amazon basket and we even travelled to Leicester Square on Saturday just to take a picture in front of that giant Linda billboard. That's not even a joke and it wasn't even for work.
Anyway, as much as we love The Traitors, we genuinely think we would downright crumble to pieces if we ever made it on to the show. Seriously, we were turning to the Pinot just to get through Werewolves on Zoom during lockdown.
Maybe, we'd do it okay in the challenges (apart from that one with the scary clown – f*ck that), but we just know we wouldn't make it through even one Round Table. They're a weird and wild fusion of vicious courtroom battles, parents' evenings and family fights at Christmas. No, thanks. We obv love to watch them, though.
So naturally, when we got the chance to catch up with Traitors series 2 legend Jaz Singh – the one and only 'Jazatha Christie' and Faithful of Faithfuls – about what filming those Round Table scenes are really like, he painted a serious picture for us à la Linda signing those names into the Library painting last week.
In fact, as it turns out, Round Tables are actually far worse than we're imagining, with production doing everything they can to ensure players have the 'worst experience' for the sake of the telly drama.
Jaz exclusively told heatworld, 'It's about three hours of the worst experience that you can possibly think of.'
We knew it. We're out. We're not ever going on, but we're out.
He continued, 'Because even though someone's got your back, as soon as you walk in there, it's cold, so you already shivering. Then they play The Hanging Tree song – I think it's from Game of Thrones or something – like they play cursing music, so it's all about death, and you feel really scared. Then they turn off the music, so your heart's already going like this...'
No, we are obsessed with the ambience setting, though. It's giving Secret Cinema.
Jazz added, 'And then Claudia, all you hear are her footsteps coming in, and she literally says her piece and then afterwards, she's like, "Right? It's a fight, a free for all, go for it." And that is it. Everyone just starts. It starts off slow, and then, BOOM, something just happens in the room, and it just switches up.
'There were scenes in there that I remember, that wouldn't have been allowed to be aired, because it was that bad. Obviously, if someone needs to intervene, you know, they will do that, you know, if production needs to intervene at some point. But yeah, the cameras are rolling.'
The way our jaws dropped hearing that *sips Pinot out of chalice*.
Jaz Singh was speaking to heatworld on behalf of SlotsCalendar. The Traitors continues Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays on BBC1 and BBC iPlayer.