The Traitors of Allwyn

Apologies for the longer than usual gap - the truth is I’ve been utterly preoccupied with The Traitors.

I don’t mean the exciting new five play cycle ‘The Traitors - Acts of Betrayal’, opening at the Gillian Lynne Theatre in London next year, for which tickets are now on sale, and by the way you do NOT need to see all five plays- or even more than one play- to enjoy it, each play stands entirely alone.

No, I don’t mean that. I’ve never even heard of it. And therefore the following will contain no spoilers for it.

What I mean is that a group of us in the small Dorset village of Allwyn, where I live, have got really heavily into The Traitors. It started with a watching party for the final of the Celebrity version. Then someone bought the board game, and we played that. Then we played the card game. And then Abbie Klein said, why don’t we do it for real?

And there was a bit of a tense pause, because you can never quite tell with Abbie. But then she clarified that no, she didn’t mean why don’t we actually murder each another one by one, she meant why don’t we play the game out in real time, over several days, like in the show?

Then there was another tense pause, but this one was the pause you get when a group of adults are contemplating something they really, really want to do, but cannot possibly justify spending the time on.

Then Lyndsay said ‘we could do it for charity?’ and everyone immediately said, ‘oh well, yes, of course, if it’s for charity….’

Then we tried to work out how that would actually work. Would we get people to sponsor us? And what for? A pound per murder? And eventually we all agreed just to kick in twenty pounds each to Children in Need; and everyone’s been very disciplined about not pointing out that now we’ve done that there’s technically no need to actually play the game.

So we are playing the game. Intensely. We do the Breakfast Room bit at the Lakes’ farm, because they’ve got a breakfast canteen for the strawberry pickers. This became slightly awkward- and then swiftly very awkward, and is now tipping into excruciatingly awkward- when Jen Lake was the first person to be murdered, and now has to build into her morning letting us in and firing up the canteen for a game she’s no longer playing. This has in turn lead to an absolute article of faith among the faithful that Ruth Cope cannot be one of the Traitors, because of all of us she’s the only one of us with enough sense and tact not to do that.

In the TV version, during the day players take part in demanding missions to earn a prize pot of up to £120,000. In our version, during the day players go to work, to earn various amounts of money as previously arranged with their clients or HR departments.

Then in the evening we do the Round Table at Gareth’s house, because Gareth actually has a round table. It’s in his kitchen, and it’s too small for us all to fit round, so we sit in the living room instead, but it’s nice to feel there’s a round table in the building.

Most excitingly, for the traitors’ secret meetings we use the tower of the village church. Joy From The Forge , who isn’t playing, and also isn’t the vicar, but will do until one comes along, was initially hesitant about the church being used for this, until Ruth pointed out to her that it could be considered a community-use session. Joy has to clock up a certain number of community use sessions every month to demonstrate to the benefice that the church is a centre of the village community, and thus deserves to carry on being a church, as opposed to being deconsecrated and turned into, well, a village community centre. Giving us access to the tower for the Traitors game means St Thomas’ clocks up an extra community-use session every day... and no-one has seen any need to explain to the benefice that the use the community is putting it to is as a place for two or three of the community to plot the murder of the rest.

The duties of the host are divided in two. First, the more administrative side of things: letting the victims know they’ve been murdered, passing on invitations to become traitors etc. I agreed to take on this half of the job because it suits my core skills of efficiency, organisation, and unreliable narration.

That leaves the far more important pretending-to-be-Claudia-Winkleman part of the job, which is done by Human Roo. Human Roo, you may or may not recall, is Abbie’s young daughter, and is known as Human Roo to distinguish her from the Roo we already had in the village when Abbie and Human Roo moved in, who was a dog. Dog Roo (we never called them that) sadly died last year, and so Human Roo is now the only Roo in the village. This has not stopped anyone calling her Human Roo. Including Abbie.

Anyway, Human Roo sits in the kitchen doing her homework during the Round Table discussion (as it happens, at the actual round table); and then, when we’ve decided the time for talking is over, we call her in, and she tells us that the time for talking is over.

If you’ve seen the TV show, you’ll know that Claudia Winkleman is an amazing host, and a particular talent of hers is the ability to switch from warmth and sympathy for the players when they need it, to reproving disappointment when they could do better. It’s fair to say Human Roo is more interested than one of those modes than the other. After a banishment, she glares at us from under the multi-coloured party wig which is the best we could do, and says something like:

“Faithful! What are you doing? What’s the matter with you? Why are you like this? Have you gone funny in the head? I’m more disappointed than angry. But I’m also very angry. When you act up this way, you spoil things for everybody. Do you think you’ll be allowed to behave like this in Year Seven? You will not! Now go home. Try to sleep. If you can. Which you can’t. Because of what you did. Which was stupid. Just like you. I hate you!”

She delivers a version of this speech irrespective of whether or not the Faithful just caught a Traitor.

Well, I’ve already done one ad (it was one of those subliminal ones, you probably didn’t even notice it) but here’s another, for Brightonians. My hands-down favourite member of the Souvenir Programme cast, who is of course, and always has been, Lawry Lewin will be joining me for an hour of sketches and half an hour of a Double Act play at the Komedia on the 17th August. Tickets here!

We now return Spendy Squadron to the murderous and treacherous village of Allwyn, while Thrifty Squadron, having played a fantastic, must now leave the Airport without even telling us whether they were Traitors or Faithful. In either case, they have as always the

Love,

(of) The Airport

In the mornings, of course, it’s the Host’s job to announce who’s been murdered. Where Human Roo feels Claudia misses a trick here is by not specifying how they were murdered. Human Roo does not miss this trick. Memorable murders include