The ‘toxically competitive’ Celebrity Traitors star who’ll use Alan Turing’s maths to win BBC show

Celebrity Traitors is set to have a contestant unlike any before, with mathematician Professor Hannah Fry bringing her statistical expertise to the game in a bid to sniff out the suspicious contestants.

Self-described “toxically competitive” Fry, who teaches at the University of Cambridge, is also a presenter on several BBC TV and radio shows, including The Secret Genius of Modern Life.

Ahead of filming Celebrity Traitors earlier this year, Fry revealed that she used her knowledge of statistics to preparing for her appearance.

The professor went back through all previous seasons of the show to “try and find statistically significant patterns” in a process not dissimilar from “the same bit of math that Alan Turing used to crack the Enigma machine” – a cipher device used by the German military during World War II.

Fry told the BBC that she identified a pattern in the way that the assigned Traitors behave, including the fact that they “often do a burn vote” in the first few episodes when they’re settling in to throw suspicion on somebody random.

She called it “just one example of a little bit of maths that I’ve got in my back pocket”.

“Whether it’s going to work or not, honestly, your guess is as good as mine!” she said. “I’ve got spreadsheets coming out of my eyeballs. I close my eyes and it’s like there are numbers tattooed on the inside of my eyelids at the moment for how much I’ve been looking at them.”

Fry acknowledged that a big wrinkle in her plan is how bad the Faithfuls often are at detecting the Traitors. “They are so all over the place that it’s really hard to pick out what the signal is,” she said.

One of Fry’s fellow contestants, comedian James Acaster, said he was most fearful of Fry as she “will probably tell you that probability-wise, there’s most likely to be at least one comic chosen as a Traitor because there’s enough of us”.

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He also complained that Alan Carr winning the first celebrity version of the game show has made it all the harder for comedians to be trusted on the series.

“I think we’re going to be the first ones under the magnifying glass being looked at – particularly at the beginning when you have absolutely nothing to go on,” he told the BBC.

“There will be suspicions that it’s going to be at least one of these guys – that we might form an alliance if we’re not broken apart.”

There are several actors on the billing this year, including The Last of Us’s Bella Ramsey, The Damned United’s Michael Sheen, and Withnail and I’s Richard E Grant. Myha’la (Industry), Sharon Rooney (Two Doors Down), former Coronation Street and EastEnders stars Julie Hesmondhalgh, and Ross Kemp will also feature.

There are also well-known musicians in the running, including former Little Mix star Leigh-Anne Pinnock and “You’re Beautiful” singer James Blunt.

Others set to enter the Scottish castle include broadcaster Amol Rajan, presenter Maya Jama, model and actor Jerry Hall, musician and actor Sebastian Croft and content creator King Kenny.

Claudia Winkleman will be back to host the smash-hit show’s second season on Thursday 1 October at 8pm.

The multi-award-winning game of deception will air two nights a week on Thursday and Friday evenings.