Throughout the inaugural series of The Celebrity Traitors, Joe was one of the most dependable members of the “Faithful” camp, leading the charge to oust Jonathan Ross from the game and later privately sharing his plans to banish both Cat Burns and Alan Carr, too.
However, in the end that’s not quite how things played out, and as the finalists gathered for the last stage of the game, the rugby star found himself being booted out by fellow “Faithfuls” Nick Mohammed and David Olusoga, meaning that Alan took the entire £87,500 for his chosen charity.
Looking back during an appearance on Monday’s Loose Women, though, Joe made it clear he held no ill feelings towards the comedian.
BBC/Studio Lambert/Euan Cherry
“We all absolutely loved him,” he said of the former Chatty Man host. “He was just himself from day one until the end – and he had us all in fits of laughter. So, maybe that played a part – for me, even though I suspected him, I was like, ‘I love playing the game with you, so I’d quite like to just play longer with you’.”
Joe also hailed Alan as a “great winner” claiming that if he and Nick had gone ahead with their plan to get the comic out of the game, “that’s not as good, is it?”.
Asked if he was pleased to see Alan win, Joe maintained: “Definitely. Yeah.”
He also said it came as a surprise to see Alan break down in tears of apparent guilt in the show’s final moments, as well as discovering that Jonathan Ross didn’t have the easiest time being a “Traitor” either.
“Because I had such an amazing time, I didn’t realise until speaking to Jonathan after the show [that the Traitors had different experiences],” he claimed.
“I loved it, and it hadn’t dawned on me that we’d played different roles, and he’d spent the entire time lying, so that, obviously, was a burden, and clearly a burden for Alan as well, that came out at the end.”
The Celebrity Traitors is now the most-watched show of 2025, with the BBC having already made an announcement about the possibility of a second season.
