Dracula's Wedding:How Vampires Stopped Being Evil Monsters And Became Boyfriend Material.

It's all Lord Byron's fault. That's the long and short of it. Once, vampires were horrific folkloric beasts with terrible hygiene and some seriously unfortunate behaviours. These days they're matinee idols with good (though very sharp teeth), natty threads, and the incredible sexual stamina of a brown antechinus that's swallowed a job lot of Viagra.

I was at The Bell in Whitechapel for the London Fortean's Society's Vampires:from Monster to Mister with Dr Tina Rath who styles herself as a 'vampire specialist' (nice work if you can get it) and even has a PhD on 'the Vampire in Popular Fiction' (god help us if there's a war) talking about how vampires took this journey from being the ultimate outcasts to being the sort of guys (and gals) you'd happily settle down with.

Dr Rath got off to a slow start (and at one point she messed her words up so much I wondered - and I wasn't the only one - if she was having a stroke) but when she got into her stride she gave an interesting - if a little overlong, we don't all live as long as vampires, doc - account of what she has studied and what she thinks about the subject. Just don't ask her if there are any gay vampires (because there's loads of 'em, they're pretty much all gay according to Dr Tina Rath).

It's hardly common but there are several noted cases of young females being drawn to, and claiming they're in love with, cannibalistic sex killers. Usually ones that are always in prison which means they are both very very dangerous as well as, at the same time, completely safe and unable to harm their admirer. Unless, of course, some lunatic like Donald Trump starts letting them out of prison.

This, too, has become true of vampires. An 18c Benedictine monk, Antoine Augustin Calmet, seemed to devote a lot of his time to thinking about, and studying, vampires (including one that wouldn't even die after multiple stakings) but the vampires he studied were vampires of folklore rather than vampires of popular fiction and, for some reason, only seemed to reveal themselves to people in manual work and trades rather than philosophers and doctors.

The most famous of all vampires, Vlad Dracula, lived in the 15th century but was only identified as a vampire four hundred years after his death. He's a vampire who became known for his love of the women though 'the wives of Dracula', rather creepily, refers to his daughters and not his lovers. Hopefully, they weren't the same thing. That's some impaling that's surely beyond the pale even for Dracula.

According to modern experts, however, Vlad did have two wives (the first unnamed, the second Justina Szilagyi who married three other times) and these do not appear in Bram Stoker's 1897 novel but do appear in Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 film. Vlad was buried in modern day Romania, in the ground of the Snagov Monastery with an unmarked tombstone. When excavations were carried out in 1933, no human remains were found in the grave whatsoever. Instead, they found the bones and jaws of several horses. Had dead Dracula got a bit peckish over those hundreds of nights?

Ealier, in the 18th century, there had been a thirty year vampire epidemic in central Europe which was believed to have been caused by Austria's annexation of Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina with the central figure being one Arnold Paole. Paola was a Serbian hajduk who, following on from the work of his compatriot Peter Blagojevic, was believed to have become a vampire following his death and this initiated a believed epidemic of vampirism in the region which left sixteen people dead. An Austrian confirmation that vampires were real led many to take the law into their own hands.

But Vlad was an outrider at a time before vampires were seen as sexy and romantic. Although female vampires of the time were believed to steal the beauty of other women and that took us on to an amusing digression on how one may become a vampire. Traditionally, to become a vampire you must be bitten by a vampire but other reasons have also been put forward.

A bad career choice (becoming a barmaid, for instance) could result in a woman becoming a vampire. Or taking up smoking. Or having a cat jump over your grave. Or, indeed, having a bat fly over your grave. Although as there are bats in pretty much every country in the world (though not Greenland, perhaps that's why Trump's trying to 'buy' it) almost every grave would have had a bat fly over it at some point.

If you are the illegitimate offspring of two illegitimate offspring (very much a bastard's bastard) you'll probably end up becoming a vampire and be careful eating the meat of an animal killed by a wolf if you don't want to develop a thirst for human blood.

The most likely way you end up as a vampire though is if you're a fictional character and somebody writes a book about you and makes you one. That's what happened back in 1815. It was the heart of the Romantic era but the eruption of Mount Tambora on the island of Sumbawa in Indonesia that year caused over ten thousand deaths, created a typhus epidemic that spread all the way to Europe, and plunged much of the world into a year of bad weather. 

1816 was known as the year without summer so, if anything, it was a dark romantic era and with this in mind Byron, the Shelleys (Percy and Mary), Mary's stepsister Claire Clairmont, and the physician John William Polidori all travelled to Switzerland and, to keep them amused during the long dark nights, they had a little competition to see who could come up with the scariest story.

We've all been there - though rarely with such long lasting results. Byron himself never really came up with much (he was more into gambling, trying to fight duels, and swimming the Hellespont) but Mary Shelley, famously, came up with Frankenstein (which you can read more about here) and Polidori turned in The Vampyre, soon to become the first ever published account of vampirism.

Not that Polidori knew anything about vampires. He modelled his vampire on Byron because Bryon was really into both sex and death/ Polidori's work went on to become so popular it spurned an opera and as Byron was a good looking chap (though maybe not as handsome as Polidori himself), the vampire was seen as a good looking chap too. But what must surely have really hurt Polidori was that, on publication, the book was attributed to Byron.

Polidori died young (25) as did Byron (36) and Percy Shelley (29) which some have put down to the curse of either the vampire or Dr Frankenstein but is ruined by the fact that Mary Shelley lived to 53 (not that old, really, I'm older than that) and Claire Clairmont, who went on to become a governess in Russia, to 80.

All short lives compared to your average vampire. A tradition began where it was said that vampires had to marry their victims before they were able to drink their blood which of course meant that vampires had to make a bit of an effort with their appearance and manners. Although the marriages, for obvious reasons, didn't tend to last very long.

For me, that would have been a good place to wrap up the talk - maybe chuck a few references to modern day vampires in - but Dr Rath continued on. She spoke about how Alexandre Dumas pere (The Count of Monte Cristo chap) wrote about vampires, how there was a time all vampires were dismissed as 'German bloodsuckers', A.K. Tolstoy's The Family of the Vourdalak, James Malcolm Rymer and Thomas Peckett Prest's Varney the Vampire, and James Robinson Planche's Bride of the Isles.

She mentioned how in Bram Stoker's novel, Dracula uses Croydon Airport to fly into Britain and then there's a run down of other big vampire events in the last century or so. 1922 saw F.W.Murna's Nosferatu put vampires on the silver screen for the first time and 1987 saw Kathryn Bigelow's Near Dark and Joel Schumacher's The Lost Boys (which was inspired by Peter Pan's lost boys and had some wondering if Peter Pan himself is not a vampire) before we got to the modern television vampires like those in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Twilight, and What We Do In The Shadows - including energy vampire Colin Robinson (not Robertson).

Sadly there was no mention of Carry On Screaming, Blacula, Count Duckula, or the snooker player Ray Reardon though there was a little coda about modern romantic vampire books like My Vampire Plus One and Filthy Rich Vampire in which the vampires featured are good looking, excellent sexual performers, and always - and this seems most important of all - considerably richer than you.

These new vampires, Dr Rath, hardly seem like vampires at all - they eat food and drink red wine for a start - and, in fact, seem like people just made them up. Which, you would think (and I would too - but we're not vampire experts) would make them just like the earlier, also made up, vampires. 

To he credit, Dr Rath was self-aware enough to understand how silly saying you just can't invent your own vampires was but she did it with a straight enough face to have us all wondering. It'd been an interesting journey into the world of vampires and it's always nice to spend an evening with the Fortean gang. Thanks to David for hosting, thanks to Pizza Union on City Road for food beforehand, and thanks to Jade, Paula, Michael, Jackie, and Tim for joining me. I wandered off down Middlesex Street looking for a neck to bite.

Gross Chapel:In Attendance at the Fitzrovia Chapel.

I spent eighteen years working just across the road from the Grade II listed majesty that is the Fitzrovia Chapel and didn't ever go and take a look. Built in 1891/2 in the Victorian Gothic style by John Loughborough Pearson, it's something of a minor treasure. My first actual vist came about a year ago when Darren and I went to check out the pink marble head of Lawrence from Mozart Estate (and Felt, and Denim, and Go-Kart Mozart).

 

 Miriam Cahn - mit kind fluchten 2.7+14.8.08 (2008)

Probably inspired by our visit, King Charles III gave last year's Christmas Day speech from the chapel. It'd be good if Lawrence's head had still been there for that and it would have been equally amusing if some of the exhibits from the chapel's current show, In Attendance:Paying Attention In A Fragile World, had somehow sneaked into the picture.

Some of them aren't that great (some are) but the King's Speech is pretty boring so anything to liven that up. I made my way, through the drizzle, to the chapel on Sunday to be confronted with a small, but well presented, selection of artworks from artists I'd heard of (Paula Rego, Etel Adnan, Phyllida Barlow, Berlinde de Bruyckere, Cathy Wilkes, Eve Sussman, and Rachel Kneebone) and artists I hadn't - all the rest of them.

The theme of the exhibition, which you'll get from the name, is 'attention' and philosopher Simone Weil's (1909-1943) idea that we can reimagine attention as 'a state of openness'. Not attention that seeks to learn, or gain, something but as a kind of empty gesture where we open ourselves up to receive and the artists here all share a desire to make work that is open to ambiguity and multiple interpretations.

In some cases, out and out confusion. Miriam Cahn's mit kind fluchten (or Escape withb Child) was the work that jumped out of me on first entering the chapel. A robotic, or alien, looking woman that still has something of the Renaissance about her. There is, you can hardly see it, a child in this painting and there is a warmth and fragility to it while at the same time something a bit cold and eerie.

As promised, no easy interpretation. Although it's easier to make sense of Cahn's work than it is Phyllida Barlow's. Lobbed on the floor it looks almost like masonry that has become dislodged although Barlow herself has described it as a "pastiche of the monumental". It's just as well she said that because I can't see anyone else thinking it.

Phyllida Barlow - Untitled:disaster 5 (2010)

Gabrielle Boyd - Presser (2024)

There's something figurative going on in Gabrielle Boyd's Presser but it's so intentionally vague, blurred even, that it's hard to comprehend what it actually is. I'm informed her work is about "intimacy, care and vulnerability" but I can't really get that from this one painting. 

Not that it's unpleasant. Just unremarkable. Paula Rego is a great artist and I have written in depth about her before (more than once). 2011's St Mary of Egypt is far from her most impressive work but if you know Rego's work you will see that it fits very well into her canon. Touching, as it does - quite blatantly, on themes of the female experience and the human body in all its pain and ecstasy.

Paula Rego - St Mary of Egypt (2011)

Etel Adnan - Untitled (2000)

Etal Adnan's another artist who has been given the EIAPOE treatment before (and, like Rego, has since passed on - I hope my blogs aren't acting as a curse - though as Adnan lived to ninety-six and Rego to eighty-seven probably not) but looking at just this one work, inspired by Mount Tamalpais in the north of California - not far from San Francisco, it would be pretty hard to come to the conclusion that it is, apparently, about "memory, landscape and identity".

Ok, fair enough on the landscape but not sure about the memory or identity. Also it was quite hard to focus on this small work when there was a dead horse lying nearby - in the altar in fact. The Belgian artist Berlinde De Bruyckere (who hopefully didn't have the horse killed herself - she didn't, it is confirmed that the 'colt' died of natural causes) is interested in exploring the nature of suffering (or the suffering of nature) in her work and she has been inspired by photographs of fallen horses on the battlefields of Ypres in World War I.

Berlinde De Bruyckere - Lost II (2007)

Eve Sussman - Serving the Milk (2004)

Anj Smith - Portrait of a Boy in a Glass (2013)

To be fair, it is quite powerful which is more than I can say for Eve Sussman's unimpressive Serving the Milk, a fourteen minute DVD in which pretty much nothing happens. It's part of a larger video project inspired by the art of Diego Velazquez's 1656 Las Meninas so, possibly, in context it would make more sense. The work is about 'waiting' but to be honest I got impatient and moved on.

To Anj Smith's more interesting Portrait of a Boy in a Glass. The themes here are supposed to be identity (it's always identity), gender, ecology, and anxiety and it's the last one, anxiety, that I read into this androgynous looking specimen's portrait. Why's he in a glass? It's supposed to be something to do with Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie but as I've never seen that play I don't know what to make of that.

These artists. They don't half bloody make you do the homework. Although Ghana's Emmanuel Awuni head, Red - made of memory foam among other things, looks pretty straightforward. Like something you might see in the V&A or the British Museum. But, no, apparently it should evoke the 'serene calm' of Piero della Francesca's Baptism of Christ (c.1450) which you can find about a mile down the road in the National Gallery and, to be honest, doesn't seem to have any connection with this memory foam head whatsoever. Except, it seems, in the mind of the artist. Looks cool though.

Emmanuel Awuni - Red (2023)

Cathy Wilkes - My Ashes Will Embrace You (2023)

Cathy Wilkes has chosen a title that wouldn't look amiss in a Tracey Emin exhibition and her work even reminds me of one of Emin's recent drawings - though an unfinished one - or one that is fading away. Which is fully intended. Initially, it looks rubbish but I quite like it. There's a sadness to it and it makes me ponder how everything goes away in the end. We lose our family, we lose our friends, we lose control of our bodies, and we even - eventually - start to lose our memories.

It's one of the works that best fits the remit of the show for me - though I appreciate I'd have a hard time convincing most people of that. Rachel Kneebone's porcelains, too, demand attention. Intricately carved, they seem to consist of figures who are either not yet fully formed or have lost body parts somewhere along the way.

There's an element of Hieronymus Bosch about Kneebone's work but she seeks more to engage than instruct (Bosch's paintings, it seems, were warnings to us to behave ourselves or we'd go to Hell - a Hell of his imagining). Of course the art just can't stand alone and the leaflet you pick up at the door squeezes in references to Ludwig Wittgenstein and Roland Barthes but the homework I mentioned earlier really isn't necessary here. You can just enjoy Kneebone's wonderful creations as much as you can be shocked by De Bruyckere's dead horse, intrigued by Smith's boy in a glass, and forced to ponder absence and emptiness in the work of Cathy Wilkes. These works did demand attention. Some of the others did not. I headed back out in to the rain.

Rachel Kneebone - Trilogy (3) 'In Praise of Tears' (2007)

Rachel Kneebone - Trilogy (2) 'waiting is an enchantment' (2007)

Rachel Kneebone - Trilogy (1) ' Silence cannot do away with things that language cannot state' (2006)

Fleapit revisited:The Brutalist.

Brady Corbet's new film, The Brutalist, is ambitious. It tackles serious themes (antisemitism, xenophobia, the holocaust, drug addiction), it's long (three hours and thirty-five minutes - there was even an intermission, I don't think I've had an intermission at the cinema since Cry Freedom and that came out in 1987 - and wasn't even that long), it's brilliantly acted, and it's artfully filmed (even the titles look like something Alexander Rodchenko might have come up with).

It is, to all intents and purposes, both full on Oscar bait and an attempt to create the 'Great American Novel' in celluloid and if it doesn't quite pull it off, it does come very very close. Laszlo Toth (Adrien Brody) is a Jewish Hungarian architect (who studied at the Bauhaus in Dessau) and Holocaust survivor who flees to America at the end of the war leaving his wife Erzsebet (Felicity Jones) and orphaned niece Zsofia (Raffey Cassidy) behind. Laszlo having been sent to a different concentration camp to them.

Initially, Laszlo moves in with his cousin Attila (Alessandro Nivola) and his Catholic wife Audrey (Emma Laird) until he is wrongly accused of making a pass on her which sees him removed from their lives and their furniture business and joining his new friend Gordon (Isaach de Bankole) shovelling coal, working on the construction of a bowling alley, and indulging in recreational heroin abuse.

But when the arrogant and entitled Harry Lee Van Buren (Joe Alwyn) asks Laszlo to renovate the library of his rich industrialist father Harrison (Guy Pearce), Laszlo sees a second chance in life opening up in front of him. The problem is not just his heroin use or his conflicted relationship with Erzsebet but his stubbornness, his ego - he's an architect, and his quick temper.

When Harrison's attorney, Michael (Peter Polycarpou), pulls a few strings so that Erzsebet and Zsofia can come to America, it soon becomes apparent that they are both damaged, in their own specific ways, from their experience of the war and their time in Nazi concentration camps. Laszlo's damaged too but in far less obvious ways and even Harrison, who seems like a well meaning philanthropist who likes to surround himself with cultured people like Laszlo, has his own deep seated issues that will eventually come to the fore.

Harrison ultimately commissions Laszlo to build a huge community centre (theatre, gymnasium, library - or 'reading room', and chapel) on top of a hill in land Harrison owns at the edge of the state of Pennsylvania. Laszlo comes up with what at the time would have been seen as a brutal, concrete, monster and not everyone is best pleased. Harry is particularly unpleasant about the building, about Laszlo, and, most of all, about - and towards - Zsofia.

Harry's twin sister, Maggie (Stacy Martin), is more accommodating. Much to Laszlo's chargin, compromises are made, a train crash has Harrison pondering the wisdom of even carrying on with such a grand project, and a trip to Carrara in Tuscany to source marble leads to more trouble for both Laszlo and Harrison (but does provide a perfect excuse to shoehorn La Bionda's brilliant Italian disco classic One For You, One For Me in to the soundtrack).

At a time when nativist, racist, and downright fascist policies are being enacted in America by Donald Trump and Elon Musk it's interesting to look back at when that country really did shine out like a beacon of hope to those escaping persecution and death in their home countries. When America really was the land of the free and the home of the brave. The look on Laszlo's face when he first sees the Statue of Liberty is priceless.

But The Brutalist disabuses us of that notion very cleverly. The rose tinted spectacles we use to view the past are pulled off our faces and stamped into the ground by the same school bullies that are now in charge of the USA. There is antisemitism, there is cruelty against the poor, and there is rampant xenophobia in the post-war America this film is set in. Charles Lindbergh's vision of America is just as strong in many American minds as that of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Plus ca change.

The Brutalist does a great job of showing a broad sweep of time and experience at a time when America, and the world, was - like now - changing forever. Where it, perhaps, fails - at least until very near the end - is in making us care much about any of the characters. Perhaps they're not human enough - not quite rounded enough - or perhaps they're all too human. Perhaps many of them have been brutalised by the horrors of war they have lived through. There's lots of brutalist architecture in The Brutalist, that won't disappoint, but I don't think that's really what the film is about. There's brutalism and then there's brutality. In this film both go hand in hand.

100% Endurance:The Traitors S3.

Towards the end of third series of The Traitors (BBC1/iPlayer) it suddenly struck me. What is it that I find so compelling, so absorbing, about what is in essence just another reality show? It dawned on me that what I liked most about it is simply how lovely it all is. Yes, the game is made up of lying, back-stabbing, and treachery but the contestants are forever telling each other how much they love each other, they're always talking about friendship, and when they appear on Uncloaked to talk about their experience on the show it is always overwhelmingly positive.

In an era of Donald Trump releasing murderers and rapists from jail so he can lock up medical professionals and political opponents, of Elon Musk doing Nazi salutes, of race riots, of horrific murders like those perpetrated by Axel Rudakubana in Southport, of Benjamin Netanyahu ordering his troops to kill Palestinian babies, of Hamas using those same babies as human shields, and of Tommy Robinson rallies in Trafalgar Square, we need something nice in the world to even it out - if only for a few escapist hours - and as the walking season tends to be fallow in January, The Traitors is just the tonic.

Games are fun and The Traitors is a fun game. But it's also a pretty serious one and it must feel like it to the players who pretty much live it for the best part of a month. For posterity, this year's players were a bloody lovely bunch but there were a lot of them and it took a couple of episodes to work out who everyone was.

There's Lisa, a 62 year old Anglican priest (though she's keeping schtum about that to begin with) who gives off something of a Polly Toynbee vibe, there's Freddie who, at 20, is the baby of the bunch and also the babe of the bunch if the scenes of him showering are anything to go by, and there's Minah, a 29 year old Liverpudlian call centre manager who I couldn't help warming too.

Armani is a 27 year old financial manager who is so full of confidence it seems likely to be her undoing, 25 year old Maia is Armani's more low key sister and they're not hiding their relationship from the others. Which is not something you can say about Leanne or Charlotte. 28 year old Leanne is a former soldier but she's posing as a nail technician and arrives dressed like Barbie. Charlotte, 32, is a business director from Hampshire but, for reasons best known to her, she has decided to pretend she's Welsh and talk in a fake Welsh accent.

A plan that looks decidedly risky when 24 year old Elen enters the fray. Elen is Welsh and even works as a Welsh translator. 29 year old Tyler is a lanky barber from Leicester who likes birdwatching and has never had a girlfriend, Yin is a 34 year old director of communications whose penchant for reading books renders her a threat from the start, and Jack, 24, is a mulleted market trader from Yorkshire.

65 year old Keith is an affable window cleaner, Anna (28) is a swimming teacher who rocks some pretty impressive nail varnish, 50 year old Fozia is an outreach manager who doesn't suffer fools glady, Nathan (39) is a property consultant, Alex (30) a pink haired care manager, Alexander (38) a well spoken former diplomat, and Livi (26) is a beautician and model.

33 year old Dan is a bank risk manager whose autism means he doesn't beat around the bush when conversing with others, Frankie (44) is an interior designer and seems as nice as she is posh, Leon (40) is a retail manager who never misses a chance to tell everybody what a proud family man he is, Kasim (33) is a doctor who is continually accused of being too nice and too clever, Jake (28) is a property manager from Barrow-in-Furness, and Joe is a 37 year old, and somewhat camp, English teacher. Then there's Linda, a retired opera singer who, at 70 years old, is the oldest person in there but who likes to describe herself as "wild" and "crazy" which seems like a very risky strategy in this game.

As ever, they're made to compete in all manner of challenges - or missions. Exploding crates (some with chests of gold in), dragon boats, Johnny Cash's Ring Of Fire, caged people hanging from trees - described as like the 'Salem witch trials', a fire 'ceremony of truth' that sees the players getting gunged as if in Noel's House Party or something, Easter Island heads (with very phallic looking bodies attached), being suspended from helicopters, a massive chessboard, some haunted faiground carny stuff with the inevitable killer clowns, and, best of all, creepy dolls. One called Martha who sings Frere Jacques backwards and lots of others who say pretty unpleasant things. The best being "you're going to die soon".

All this high camp gothic nonsense is soundtracked to Nouvelle Vague style covers of songs like Smells Like Teen Spirit, The Fugees' Ready Or Not, Donovan's Season Of The Witch, Justin Timberlake's Cry Me A River, Fleetwood Mac's Lies (obvs), Duran Duran's Ordinary World, Maneater by Hall & Oates, and Cher's Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down). I even noticed, in the credits, that the incidental music came from Bleeding Fingers who are the in house composers at my current place of employment.

Proud I was. And excited too. But possibly not as excited as some of the players. There was lots of screaming (on seeing the castle, on meeting Claudia Winkleman - as brilliant as ever, at seeing their own portraits) and lots of crying - not all of it genuine. Some faked the crying better than others and some can spell better than others. They're lovely people but you think if you'd spent weeks inside a castle with a smallish group of people you would at least learn how to spell their names. One contestant needed to have Roman numerals explained to them. Poor Freddie is so young he'd never heard of Columbo.

There are, of course, more twists and turns than ever - including one on the train to the castle before the game had even officially started. There are coffins, people being buried alive, a reference to Harold Shipman, a 'deadly' game of cards in a cemetery at night, and there are at least two of the traitors who aren't very good at their job. Though there is at least one other who is very very good at their job indeed.

Alongside all these folk horror vibes, we get to meet Claudia's owl, to see her blow a Viking's horn, and hear a hell of a lot of talk about 'gut' from this group of quantifiers who all insist that they are 100% faithful. In fact I'm not sure I've ever heard the words 100% uttered so regularly and, in some cases, so falsely. I suspect The Traitors will jump the shark one year but for now it keeps improving. Even Stuart Heritage's curmudgeonly review in The Guardian gave the finale four stars out of five.

The Round Table is the best bit. Tense, emotional, often not what you expect. The sister scenario reaps expected rewards on the drama front and there's a lot more where that came from. There's a rare refusal of a faithful to be recruited by the traitors, and there are multiple occasions where perfectly innocent, or innocuous, comments or actions, are woefully misinterpreted by others which in some cases inevitably lead to 'murder' or banishment.

Each episode ends, of course, on a cliffhanger although superfans like me soon find themselves tuning in to Traitors Uncloaked with Ed Gamble where the night's action is analysed like a Premiership football game or a general election by Gamble and a selection of contestants from earlier series' and celebrities like Aisling Bea, Jo Brand, Nish Kumar, Rose Matafeo, Katherine Ryan, Oti Mabuse, Josh Widdicombe, Tom Allen, Chris McCausland, Sophie Willan and a few others I've never heard of. I drew the line at moving over to BBC Sounds for even more Traitors discussion though. I do need to eat, work, and sleep.

Watching The Traitors (with the advantages of knowing who is a faithful and who is a traitor) you can't help noticing that, as in real life, people mistake those on the same side as them for enemies and look to those who seek to hurt them as their saviours. Unlike real life, it's just a game and everybody stays friends afterwards. One contestant even talks about how he invited two of the others to his wedding.

Ultimately, they seem like a really genuinely lovely bunch of people who, sometimes, have to pretend to be nasty. What a nice change from some of the nasty bastards who are running the world right now and not even pretending to be nice anymore. Would I rather spend a month locked in a big Scottish castle with these traitors and faithfuls or ten minutes in The White House with Donald Trump and Elon Musk? I think you can guess the answer to that. 100%.