The Guide #263: How Claudia Winkleman became TV’s perfect ‘bad’ gameshow host

In this week’s newsletter: As The Celebrity Traitors returns, Winkleman once again proves herself the show’s secret weapon, becoming heir to a distinctly British TV tradition • Don’t get The Guide delivered to your inbox? Sign up here The Celebrity Traitors has returned and, as ever, its pleasures are manifold: the coming together of very different types of famous people (what other show gives you the chance to see mathematician Hannah Fry chatting with Jerry Hall); the now obligatory series-upending first-episode twist; Richard E Grant careering around trying to break the game; Ross Kemp, eyes wide with terror, convinced that anyone who touches him, talks to him or blows on him is his killer. There’s so much to enjoy in fact, that you almost overlook the heavy-fringed host at the show’s centre. By this point Claudia Winkleman feels undeniably core to the series, in both its Celebrity and civilian guises – as much a part of the furniture as that mustard armchair where faithfuls learn that they have been murdered. So much so, in fact, that it feels jarring – just plain wrong – when you watch one of the international variants of the Traitors and see someone else attempting to play the part of the pantomimish master or mistress of ceremonies; Alan Cumming, Siobhan McSweeney, or any of the other non-Claudias. They all make a decent fist of it, but none of them manage it quite like her. Continue reading...