From opera singers to granola breakfasts, the reality TV smash hit sometimes feels like a Middle Englander’s fever dream. It’s only a matter of time before a task involves a dressage round

Out of the mouth of babes. Aged 20, Freddie Fraser might be the youngest player in The Traitors but he spoke an awkward truth about the hit BBC gameshow on the latest mission. Rowing a Viking longboat across a loch, Freddie sacrificed himself because he couldn’t get the knack. “I was struggling with the oar movement,” he admitted. “Like, I’m not that posh. I ain’t done rowing.”

Freddie made a fair point. Looking around at his shipmates, the politics student from Peterborough will have seen an interior designer, a business director, a doctor, a priest, a bank manager, two teachers and a retired opera singer. The interior designer, who took charge due to having the most rowing experience, happened to be named Francesca Rowan-Plowden. Not so much a cross-section of UK society as one of Nigella Lawson’s dinner parties.