Something rather unusual happened on Thursday 1st October 2026. More than half of the people watching live television across the United Kingdom were tuned into the same programme at exactly the same time. 8.9 million viewers, to be exact, which works out to be 54.9% of the viewing audience.
If you weren't one of them, I can only apologise. If you're not interested in the new series of Celebrity Traitors, then I'm certain that you're already sick of how much everyone is talking about it. But permit me to make an important point about our national psyche here.
This is the second outing of the celebrity edition of The Traitors and this series' debut surpassed all expectations achieving nearly 3 million more viewers than last year. Partly in thanks to Richard E. Grant's accidental admission that he is one of the 'traitors'. As Joe Lycett rightly pointed out, he had done something that had never been done before. Mostly because keeping your traitor identity hidden is the whole point of the game.
In the aftermath, The Daily Mash rather succinctly showed how much of the BBC's soft power rides on the success of this show.
Why is this such a huge deal? Well, on nearly every other Thursday night, the nation is consuming a diverse range of media, mostly on a phone, likely chosen by an algorithm, and ultimately having as different a time from each other as is possible.