James Blunt may have fallen at the final hurdle on Celebrity Traitors, but he says he played one game perfectly: keeping his mouth shut at home.
The 52-year-old singer, who chose to "banish again" in the dramatic finale and was sent home by fellow Faithfuls Romesh Ranganathan and Sebastian "Bash" Croft, says the show was filmed back in the spring. He never told his wife Sofia how it ended. "My wife genuinely thought I'd WON," he said. "I signed my NDA, and I stuck to my NDA!"
He said the finale had "all the right twists and turns" and that he was happy with his part in it. Remembering Alan Carr's win last year, his plan was simple: "you probably need to keep going as far as you can." He also believes his role in unmasking Traitor James Acaster was bigger than the edit showed, joking that his line of questioning "wasn't shown nearly as much as my ego would have wanted."
Blunt called his time at Ardross Castle "fairly traumatic" rather than a cosy TV gig. He described contestants as "mice in Claudia's wonderful trap" and revealed that viewers never saw the producers playing The Hanging Tree from The Hunger Games before Round Table sessions. Hearing it again later, he admitted, left him sweating and shaking.
Away from the cameras, the finalists stayed at a hotel at Inverness Airport with guards outside, no TV and no room keys. Blunt joked his window looked over either the runway or a crematorium.
He named Michael Sheen as his closest ally by the end - "We were an absolute unit" - and praised Miranda Hart, Kenny Dalglish and guest Richard E. Grant.
Asked if his initials make him the obvious next 007, Blunt laughed it off: he'd need to be "a bit taller", and someone had already said he was "more Johnny English than Bond".
On social media, where he is famous for his cheeky one-liners, Blunt was surprisingly serious. "I don't think social media is very healthy," he said, explaining that he uses it as a work tool to announce albums and tours rather than to share his private life.
The real reason he's talking is his eighth studio album, Airplane Mode, out today, 6 November. Its 12 songs deal with insomnia, modern life and digital overload, plus a love song for Sofia called Dancing In My Head. Blunt says it feels closest in spirit to his 2004 debut Back To Bedlam, made with no grand expectations. "I want people to know I'm not just the guy off Traitors," he said. His Airplane Mode Tour of Europe and the UK starts in early 2027.
Source: The Sun
