Celebrity Traitors' Amol Rajan reveals who he thinks are the big dogs this season - and who absolutely isn't

The words 'big dog' had never been more prevalent on TV until Joe Marler shared his theory in The Celebrity Traitors castle last year - and he was bang on the money.

Between Marler and Joe Wilkinson, the pair theorised that Claudia Winkleman had selected two of the biggest names in the show's line-up (Sir Stephen Fry and Jonathan Ross) to lead the Faithful and Traitors respectively.

Marler correctly guessed that Ross was hiding in plain sight as a Traitor, eventually banning the TV presenter from the castle, but does the 'big dog' theory hold the same weight in season 2?

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Following his murder and therefore elimination from the game, Radio Times caught up with Amol Rajan, who teased that this year's big dogs might not be who one might immediately think of.

"Watch out for the sneaky ones," he warned. "I think sometimes the obvious people, as Joe Marler called it, the big dog theory. It's sometimes a bit too obvious, and I think sometimes the people that you don't suspect can often be, which is one of the things that makes it such great telly, I think sometimes they're the bigger threat."

He continued: "So I think my reputation or my job kind of cast me as a threat, but obviously I would say that you know, and actually I was going to nominate Richard, but I would say that there are other people that you might not think are a threat that are very, very dangerous."

For some viewers, Julie Hesmondhalgh could be seen as a big dog after being voted the most trustworthy in the first episode, but Rajan would disagree.

He told Radio Times: "I think Julie, in those first two episodes, has come across as the nicest person in the world, rather than the big dog, and if anything, I think Richard E Grant has got a kind of big dog energy, but he's also got a mad dog energy, and that might cause him some problems.

"There is something which I to this day have not quite worked out, and I'm honestly fascinated to see what the implications of it are. There's a kind of weirdness about the shields in that church. I don't know what that was about, but there are other people who have a kind of big dog energy. I think Jerry Hall has a kind of big dog energy, and I think Julie is kind of partly because that's how she's played it."

Rajan explained that he thinks Hesmondhalgh is more playing the game "as a lovely person rather than a kind of marauding character".

But if he were to point out which big dogs fit Marler's theory more, Rajan added: "There's a few of those: Ross Kemp, Maya [Jama], Jerry [Hall], [are] people who are kind of self-aware about it. I'd say more them than Julie, who's the kind of wonderful human being from Coronation Street that, for some reason, has got a shield."

Celebrity Traitors continues on Thursday 8 October at 8pm on BBC One and iPlayer.

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Authors

Katelyn Mensah is the Senior Entertainment Writer for Radio Times, covering all major entertainment programmes, reality TV shows and the latest hard-hitting documentaries. She previously worked at The Tab, with a focus on reality TV and showbiz news and has obtained a BA (Hons) in Journalism.