Joe Marler: The people's champion of The Celebrity Traitors

It has come to my attention recently that in recent seasons of the UK Traitors there is some kind of honourary winner, someone who didn’t win but who deserved to, the true victor in the eyes of the public. The people’s champion.

 In Season 2, this was Jaz Singh, affectionately nicknamed “Jazatha Christie” by Traitors fans for his formidable skills in sussing out the guilty in a murder mystery game - though my friend pointed out recently something that never occurred to me about the nickname, which is that Agatha Christie was the author, NOT the detective.In season 3, faithful Alexander endeared pretty much everyone by being the best contestant in the history of the game. I mean, gosh, that man is just so charming and was a level head among headless chickens, calm and analytical but also hilarious and smiley. Better than the people’s champion, he was known as the people’s princess.

And this trend continued most recently with the first Celebrity Traitors that took the UK by storm, which was honestly a need in these trying times. As a flippant but not disingenuous point, Britain is intensely socially and politically divided at the moment and I honestly believe good old-fashioned British telly is a great cure, or temporary band-aid, to this. I refer to “telly” being the classic week-to-week watches that we used to adore that are just all too rare these days, as whilst everyone can obsess over a Stranger Things show they can binge it on their own time once all the episodes come out. With a reality show like The Traitors, part of the charm is watching it week to week and heartily complaining, “what?? I have to wait a whole 6 days to find out who was banished???” I’ve never been a huge reality TV show guy apart from watching Bake Off, but with Traitors there is an inexplicably addictive quality - the production value, the camp-ness, the charming bonds between contestants, the twists and turns that come unique to every season yet feel inevitable - that just united 12 million people to watch the finale and boy were they rewarded.

I don’t mean to put a dampener on Alan Carr’s win, is the point, purely because what I thought would happen - a joint win between David Olusoga, Nick Mohammed and Joe Marler - would have been perhaps more “deserved” based on the gameplay, particularly in Marler’s case, but would have been far less memorable and iconic. Alan Carr is somehow the best and worst liar you’ve ever seen, a sweating mess turned sinister sadist. A sharp tongue and ruthless wit coupled with a nervous and endearing demeanour would’ve made Carr an incredible contestant as either a faithful or a traitor, but the first season of Celebrity Traitors was made unforgettable by his treachery. His “so bad he’s good” lying style encases moments such as him point-blank guffawing when asked to make the statement “I am a faithful”, forgetting he had a shield protecting him from murder and half-shouting incriminating statements in conversations with fellow traitors that could be easily overheard. It works because it shouldn’t work - someone could straight up ask Alan “are you a traitor”, and a nervous giggle and quip later and the room would be reassured “ohh bless, that’s just Alan being Alan, it couldn’t be him”. Thus the outcome of the worst liar you’ve ever seen somehow lying his way to victory is hysterically charming, as was his reaction to winning to break down in tears as David Olusoga and Nick Mohammed embrace him and reassure him he’s done brilliantly, which genuinely is the loveliest display of non-toxic masculinity I’ve seen on TV in a long time, in addition to Alan announcing the £87,500 would be donated to Neoblastoma, a children’s cancer charity.  

Here comes the but. If we assess the criteria of the “people’s champion” to be the deserved victor of the game being who played the game the best, it could only be poor ex-England rugby captain Joe Marler, voted off at the final four stage in a shock twist as his “hundy” percent faithful ally Nick Mohammed turned on him thinking he had hoodwinked them all.

The moment Joe Marler was banished in the Celebrity Traitors finale

As it was, Joe was as faithful as they come. But further than that, he won the hearts of the nation through his simultaneous not-taking-any-bullshit laser glare through those he (correctly) deemed suspicious, yet surprisingly wholesome and humorous contributions to the series. Marler was also an excellent “traitor-hunter”, developing the “Big Dog” theory with fellow Joe Joe Wilkinson in the Joalition prior to the latter being murdered by the traitors. Joe Marler developed surprise friendships with Wilkinson and Mohammed that were truly wonderful to watch as the most unlikely of TV bromances formed to only gut the audience upon Mohammed’s final miscalculated vote based on a suspicion that Marler had betrayed traitor Cat Burns in the previous vote.

Now I am actually not going to rag on Nick Mohammed here because firstly, he’s probably getting a lot of that, but secondly, I just think he’s wonderful. He too was an excellent player, doing stunningly well in every mission, with a couple of excellent strategic moves to ally himself with potential traitors in the hope they would not murder him and letting Joe Marler win the chess match suspecting there were more traitors on his own team thus preventing them winning shields as alibis (he was actually wrong about this but the move was super cool), thereby beginning the alliance between the two. I loved him in Ted Lasso and I wasn’t familiar with his Mr Swallow comedic character prior to Traitors though I intend to be soon. But overall Nick is charming, compassionate, deeply adorable and incredibly intelligent, but his intelligence almost got the better of him as his considering every possibility resulted in him overthinking and attempting to cover all bases of a potential betrayal. And I know Joe has forgiven Nick, he has said so on reaction show Uncloaked and on his own new podcast Joe Marler Will See You Now. Of course, Joe’s now famously biting dry humour means he’ll basically never let Nick live this down, which seems pretty fair in my view. I think Richard Osman put it best on The Rest is Entertainment when he prophesied Nick potentially making a fatal mistake in that he is a very intelligent person, and very intelligent people can doubt themselves too much.

Nick Mohammed, Alan Carr, Cat Burns, Celia Imrie, they’re all candidates for the most iconic contestants on the first ever celebrity version of Traitors, now confirmed for a second season to save me from depression for at least a month in 2026. But come on, we know who deserved to win this, and we know who the best contestant was, and we know who captured our hearts most unexpectedly. If you’re not a rugby fan, which I am not, you probably barely had heard of/had never heard of Joe Marler before the show, but this was perhaps his most phenomenal performance to watch. I mean, I assume. Some of the celebs had iconic, clip-able moments; think Celia’s fart, Tom Daley’s side-eye to Kate Garraway. Others had iconic lines; Alan’s “I’m worse than Linda”, Kate’s “mayyyyyybbbeee someone’s been recruiiiiiiiiiiiited!”. Joe had a perfect mix of both, being a sometimes brooding serious type justifiably sick of no one listening to him and locking the fuck in on the game - Alan forgetting he had a shield prompting him to quip “I give up” - and yet at other types sunny and humorous, impersonating the banshee wails in the confessional, his hilariously flattered grin to Ruth Codd’s comment that the group “might need his muscle”, and his Thriller-style zombie walk on the rocky wooden bridge challenge. I’d love to put in a compilation of his best clips, but this is in fact an article, not a video. His bromances with Joe W and Nick further cemented him as the big tough sporty guy of the group who’s secretly an absolute sweetheart. Even in the creepy mission where they had to put model heads of the contestants on top of statues, he manages to make it wholesome, gazing at Joe Wilkinson’s face and saying “miss you, mate” and stating in the confessional that he was just so happy to see him. Memes have been made about his glum reaction to his fellow Joe’s murder along the lines of “when your work bestie isn’t scheduled on your shift”. I love them. I love these memes.

He also had the one thing virtually no one else had: good gameplay. He clocked all of the traitors perfectly, making himself a threat to Jonathan Ross and clicking things in to place with Alan Carr, which somehow no one else did, and it made me positively cheer when he said in the penultimate episode that he believed Nick that Cat Burns was a traitor. Whilst there was a deference to Stephen Fry and David Olusoga as the “academic” types, both were fairly poor at actually identifying traitors - a classic example of booksmart versus street smart. And whilst Joe is not a surprise puzzlemaster like Nick, he has, as previously mentioned, an excellent bullshit radar. Whilst Nick’s intelligence caused him to overthink and consider all the possibilities, Joe’s certainty was not a lack of intelligence, but an enviable confidence. Think back to Nick revealing he threw the chess match as a strategic move and coming under suspicion at the round table; Joe immediately stated bluntly “Nick’s a faithful” with a calmness that was hilariously authoritative. Joe was easily the best faithful and probably the best player in the game, and it’s wonderful to see this hard man who was I am reliably informed a “nightmare” for opponents in his rugby career now be a mental health advocate outside of The Traitors, and whilst he did not win the money he would’ve earnt from winning the game, the mental health charity CALM has gained attention from Traitors fans due to Joe’s support of it.

I can’t say what it is exactly about Joe that made him so magnetic to me and everyone I know who watched the Celebrity Traitors. I think one of the best things I can share is that a friend who is a fierce Welsh rugby fan hated him during matches versus England whilst he was a player but has now been won over from him being on Traitors. I should also say, I do not watch rugby. I was pretty shocked by the finale upon first watching it, and only for the drama and insanely good TV of Alan Carr winning did I not write a personal letter of complaint to the BBC about Nick and David voting to banish Joe. I then appeased myself with the image of Joe Marler, Joe Wilkinson and Nick Mohammed all just hanging out, eating some nachos together outside of the show, because I develop deeply parasocial relationships very easily. But outside of my fantasy land Nick did appear on the first episode of Joe’s podcast so it seems to have all worked out. And that’s something I think we can appreciate about Celebrity Traitors perhaps more than the regular version, because whilst I do believe if you lock 20+ strangers in a castle with no phones and nothing to do but play a murder mystery game for money they will inevitably bond, the fact this was a celebrity version for charity meant the bonds forged felt more genuine; aside from the charity money, the game was genuinely just for fun. And for us as a nation to fall in love with the people’s champion, Joe Marler. And a bunch of other celebs. Truly, this was really a lot of fun. I miss it already.