How to spot a traitor
As the devious game of deception once again grips the nation, series two star Jaz Singh reveals how to detect dishonesty in The Traitors
BBC / Studio Lambert / Cody Burridg
- Huw Fullerton
This article was first published in Radio Times magazine in January 2025.
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In a TV series called The Traitors, you’d expect the Traitors to be the stars of the show – and 90 per cent of the time, you’d be right. In the BBC’s cutthroat reality series, it’s the titular double-crossers who propel the unscripted drama, becoming the de facto protagonists of the show as they lie, double-deal and “murder” their fellow contestants each night in the Scottish Highlands.
But last year, series two of The Traitors brought a different sort of hero. Initially just one of the pack, 31-year-old Jaz Singh emerged as a “Faithful” who could accurately pinpoint turncoats. It’s no wonder that viewers dubbed him “Jazatha Christie” – or, as his spot-on predictions were ignored by other players, “Jazzandra”, after the disbelieved prophet of Greek mythology, Cassandra.
Jaz Singh was a star of series two of The Traitors. BBC
“I never thought I’d be good at the game,” Singh tells RT ahead of the third series. “It’s a game where unpredictable variables are constantly fired at you. But now, people come up to me in the street and say, ‘You’re the real winner.’ It gets me emotional!”
So what made Jaz, an ordinary young man from Manchester who’d never even heard of Agatha Christie, such a super-sleuth? “My father,” Singh suggests. “I grew up with lies. When you’ve been in that environment, you’re always second-guessing everything.”
As was shockingly revealed towards the end of the second series, Singh’s father – a pillar of the Sikh community in Manchester, and young Jaz’s hero – had a secret second family, the discovery of which was devastating to his son. It’s a topic Singh has gone on to investigate further for Radio 4 in a documentary called The Psychology of a Second Life. And while he’s reluctant to share more specific details on what happened, he feels that the experience enabled him to see through casually charismatic liars.
“With my father continuously lying to all of us, from an early age I was questioning everything,” he says. “He was my idol, but I never knew if what he said was legitimate. That really does change your whole perspective. You realise betrayal is a real thing, and dishonesty is out there.”
Of course, Singh didn’t actually win The Traitors, despite coming close. In the shocking final scenes, he failed to convince fellow faithful Molly that her best friend was working against them, and so it was 23-year-old ex-soldier Harry Clark who walked off with the prize pot. Singh says good-naturedly it’s “still a sore topic”.
I grew up with lies. When you've been in that environment, you second-guess everything
Jaz Singh
“It was out of my control to convince Molly in the final. But maybe I wasn’t meant to actually win in that way. I’m so glad that I can come away from the show and go, ‘I played it exactly how I wanted to play it.’ I tried every single trick in the book to be the best I possibly could.”
And he’s not done too badly out of losing. In the past year he’s quit his job as a national account manager for a distribution firm, embarking on a full-time media career with a weekly show on the BBC’s Asian Network, and more documentaries in the pipeline.
He’s also excited to see what’s next for The Traitors, which began on New Year’s Day with host Claudia Winkleman welcoming a new crop of Faithfuls into the castle. “I can’t wait!” he says. “The beauty is that this game is so adaptable. It’s never going to be the same, which spices things up every single time. They need to brace themselves. It is the most difficult game out there. It’s horrendous – but absolutely amazing at the same time.”
Of course, the new contestants have already filmed their adventure. But if you’re looking to try for the next series – or even spot the traitors in your own life – ace detective Jazatha Christie has shared his top five tips…
How to spot a Traitor
1. Prepare
“I’ve worked for Samsung, Sony, all these glamorous, tech-y brands, where they give you this very expensive sales training to identify things like whether a client is going to take a deal or not. There’s been so much theory written about reading people that I thought, ‘Surely we can put this into practice.’ So, I did my own research on things like body language, and tried my absolute best to figure out, ‘OK, how do people feel when they do this? How do they act when they do that?’ I’ve also read books like How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie from an early age.”
2. Observe
“When it comes to identifying traitors, remember – there’s a reason you’ve got two ears and one mouth. If you can, sit back and coast a little bit and just observe. That being said, there are so many other people in the room, so many conversations happening, it’s almost impossible. You need to be listening at every single given opportunity – and watching everything. I was on the toilet in the castle, listening in on conversations!”
3. Decode
“I’ve had a lot of practice in terms of understanding people’s emotions, and how they react – their physical response. It’s actually quite interesting because you can almost, not ‘read’ people’s minds, but you can get a rough idea of what people are thinking, without them saying it. I identified [Traitors] Paul and Harry because they were so confident. Their chests were out. They were swinging their arms. They seemed to have everything all under control. And in that game, you can only have something under control if you’re a Traitor.”
4. Think
“In my hotel room at night, I didn’t switch off – I was trying to piece it all together, throwing theories around in my head. I’d always work on percentages. ‘Right, this person was 40 per cent yesterday, but today they’re on 75 per cent because, I don’t know, they coughed.’ Literally, it can get as daft as that. You can go into this over-paranoid situation. The key thing is to try and remain as calm as possible.”
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5. Substantiate
“When it’s your time to talk, say things with conviction that are going to make an impact. Make sure everything you say is substantiated – that you’ve got evidence. Because if you just pull something out of thin air, you’ll be shooting yourself in the foot.”
Authors
Huw FullertonCommissioning editor
Huw Fullerton is a commissioning editor for Radio Times magazine handling comedy, entertainment and specialist drama. In a previous regeneration, he covered all things sci-fi and fantasy for RadioTimes.com.
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