‘The Celebrity Traitors’ Star James Acaster Trashes Report That He Made Complaint About Co-Stars

James Acaster has said it is “completely fabricated” that he complained about The Celebrity Traitors co-stars, Rob Beckett and Romesh Ranganathan.

On Alan Carr’s Life’s A Beach Podcast, the Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire star was incredulous about a report in The Mail on Sunday claiming he told Celebrity Traitors producers that he was uncomfortable with “macho banter” during filming.

“I’ve never had stuff made up about me before,” Acaster told Carr, who won the first season of The Celebrity Traitors on the BBC. “There was something in the papers that said I’d complained cos Rob and Romesh had been teasing me.”

“I was like: I’ve been friends with those guys for like over 10 years. They were lovely the entire show. I didn’t complain about any of my fellow players. It was so completely fabricated. They contacted my agents and Rob and Romesh’s agents [and] all of them said: ‘That is categorically untrue.’ They [the Mail] went: ‘Cool, printing it tomorrow.'”

In a story splashed on the front page of the Mail on Sunday last month, the newspaper quoted a “snitch” on the show as saying: “Rob and Romesh clearly thought they were having a bit of a laugh, but James began to feel quite a lot of it was at his expense, and away from the cameras he started to get annoyed and upset by it. In the end, he spoke to the production team about it, saying he was unhappy and felt like he was being singled out.”

The newspaper doubled down over the weekend, reporting that Beckett and Ranganathan had made jokes about Acaster’s middle-class background. “He felt that the game was difficult enough without what he perceived to be a separate battle with them over his social background,” the Mail on Sunday quoted a source as saying.

The BBC also issued a forceful denial. A spokesperson said: “Claims of teasing amongst the cast on the show and claims of complaints about teasing are categorically untrue. There were no incidents of this nature and there is no evidence to support these allegations.”

Acaster told Alan Carr’s Life’s A Beach Podcast that he admitted being a traitor to fellow contestant Jerry Hall, but the scene did not make the final edit. “I looked her in the eye and said, ‘I think it might be me too, Jerry,’ and she said, ‘You’re very sneaky.’ And I told her I was very sneaky and it might be me,” he said.