Clare Balding on The Celebrity Traitors

The Celebrity Traitors launches on Wednesday 8th October 9pm on BBC One and iPlayer. There will be two episodes per week on Wednesdays and Thursdays.

The award-winning reality series returns, but this time, host Claudia Winkleman is inviting a group of celebrities to the beautiful castle in the Scottish Highlands to play this ultimate game of detection, backstabbing and trust, in the hope of winning up to £100,000 for their chosen charities.

Hidden amongst the group are The Traitors whose job is to secretly murder their fellow players, without getting caught.

It’s up to the others, the Faithful, to try to detect the Traitors and banish them from the game before they become their next victim.

Clare Balding Interview

Why have you decided to take part in The Celebrity Traitors?

I love the show. Yes, I really find it fascinating; the way group thinking can be influenced. I don't know whether I can resist that or whether I can influence that and I'm kind of interested in it from a psychological perspective. Also, I really want to see the castle, I want to see the grounds and I want to meet the peacocks. Genuinely, I think it's a fascinating programme and it’s like nothing else.

We'll have a complete digital detox. We've got to connect with each other, talk to each other and how do you work out who to trust? That's different from who you like. Who you like is easier, but who you trust is really hard.

Are you quite good at reading people?

I think I am, but I can be much too trusting so that it would be very easy for somebody to convince me that they were not a Traitor. I have a few things that I'll try and look out for responses to and if I spot anyone being a bit casual about trying to get a shield, that will be very telling!

Have you got a strategy?

I mean, you can't. The trouble is, how do you strategise when, firstly, you don't know if you're a Traitor or a Faithful yet, and secondly, if you're a Faithful, how do you stop yourself getting killed? So, I think if I have a strategy, I’d be looking at the people like Harry and like Leanne, who'd been very successful and Charlotte, who could have won the whole thing. My strategy would be to try and keep myself under the radar. Do not be the loudest person in any situation. Be good at the Missions, because if you're good at those you have a value. So even if they thought you were a Traitor, would it be worth having you around? That's what I think. If you’ve got a real athlete on the team, I'd want to keep them even if I thought they were a Traitor, because they've got value.

So given the choice, Traitor or Faithful?

I just don't think I'd be a very good Traitor!

Do you have a good poker face?

You can't pretend to be something you're not and the interesting factor in this series in particular is that we’ll have some level of knowledge of each other. It's going to be very hard to put aside the knowledge you have of people, and the trust you have. Tom Daley I've known since he was very young so equally I'd want to be around him. I'd want to look out for him but then he could be a Traitor, of course.

Having interviewed so many sports professionals who are at the top of their game, has anybody ever given you a really good piece of advice? Imparted any winner’s mentality wisdom as you embark on this game?

Roger Federer, having retired, came in to do an interview at Wimbledon last year and I asked him a question about the speech he'd given to the students at Dartmouth College. He talked there about his stats - of all the matches he'd won, actually how many points did he win? And it's much lower than you think it should be proportionally. Because, he said, what you have to learn is which are the key points? I think that's a good strategy to take into this. I don't have to win every point. You look at someone like Roger Federer; he was fiercely competitive. He really cared about winning, but he never quite made it look like he did. There was an elegance to him that I think is very hard to master.

Another piece of advice Sir Alex Ferguson gave me really early on in my career was ‘don't let people rush you into a decision and don't undervalue yourself.’ I think the way that top level sports people respond to things going wrong is very educational. They don't let it stay with them. Things are going to go wrong in this. I'm going to mess up, I'm going to say something stupid, bound to, how do I not get myself dragged down in that? And part of what I do, certainly when I work, is I don't internalise much. I look out and I think that it helps me in a group.

Are you looking forward to the Missions?

Oh God, yeah! That's your chance to get a team together, working with the same aim. That side of the programme I'm all over. It's deception and the expelling of people that I'm not so comfortable with.

Do you think we might see a different side to you?

Well, it's interesting, not a different side from how I am in everyday life but how I am in everyday life is not how I am on telly, because I've got to be super charged on telly in my usual job. I have to be well researched, know the facts and be sort of seemingly in control the whole time. I'm not in control of this so I guess to the outside world, it will be a bit different.