Claudia Winkleman has scored record-breaking television ratings for the return of Celebrity Traitors on BBC One, drawing a peak audience of over nine million viewers.
Overnight figures show the first episode peaked at just over nine million viewers and averaged 8.9 million across the broadcast. The audience figure surpasses all previous premieres of the hit reality series.
The launch beat the first celebrity edition, which attracted 6.5 million peak viewers and averaged 6.1 million across the episode. It also topped the opener for the last civilian series in January, which garnered 6.9 million peak viewers and averaged 6.4 million views.
Winkleman is a veteran British television presenter best known for hosting flagship BBC entertainment shows. She co-hosted the Saturday night ballroom competition Strictly Come Dancing alongside Tess Daly for more than a decade before taking charge of The Traitors, which launched on BBC One in 2022 to critical acclaim.
Her ratings success in the Scottish castle comes as her Strictly Come Dancing successor Emma Willis suffers a ratings slump after the show unveiled its new hosting lineup.
Resurfaced S Club 7 interview
As millions of viewers tuned in to watch Winkleman preside over the famous Faithfuls and Traitors, social media users resurfaced a clip of her most infamous television interview.
Footage from 2003 shows Winkleman interviewing British pop group S Club 7 on the BBC Three entertainment show Liquid News, an encounter that ended abruptly when the group's publicist walked onto the set.
Colin Patterson, who co-hosted Liquid News alongside Winkleman, shared the video clip on Instagram while discussing the interview for a BBC Radio 4 profile about his former colleague.
Patterson captioned the clip: "Claudia's finest moment when she went 'traitorous' on S Club 7".
S Club 7 was one of the UK's biggest pop groups of the late 1990s and early 2000s, formed by music manager Simon Fuller. The group consisted of Jo O'Meara, Bradley McIntosh, Hannah Spearritt, Jon Lee, Rachel Stevens, Tina Barrett and Paul Cattermole, scoring a string of chart-topping hits including Reach and Bring It All Back.
Studio storm-out over manager finances
During the 2003 interview, Winkleman questioned the band members about press reports regarding their manager's fortune and their own earnings.
Referring to newspaper coverage at the time, Winkleman asked the band: "Mr Simon Fuller has 90 million in the bank. There are rumours that you guys are grumpy because you guys haven't made mint..."
Jon Lee immediately answered no, while Bradley McIntosh and Hannah Spearritt pretended to misunderstand Winkleman, joking that they wished they had an edible mint.
Refusing to back down, Winkleman pressed: "Are you not grumpy about it at all?"
Jo O'Meara replied: "I think we are all really really lucky to be where we are today at our age and have the bank balances that we do have."
At that point, the group's publicist stormed into the television studio during the recording to halt the line of questioning.
The publicist told Winkleman: "Can you not ask this question please... I'm not having it. I've tried to stop this and I've had to walk in here... we are going," before leading the band off the set.
Liquid News aired the interview in full, including the walk-off. Winkleman later defended her questions, saying: "It has been in the papers and they didn't give a list [of questions that were off the table]."
She added: "You interview all sorts of people and you are sometimes told actually do you know what, don't ask this... but they seemed fine."
Liquid News was a daily entertainment news program broadcast on BBC Three, the BBC channel targeted at younger adult audiences. Entertainment manager Simon Fuller managed S Club 7 through his company 19 Entertainment and went on to create the global Idol television franchise.
Traitors selection and instant slip-up
The online resurgence of the pop interview comes as Winkleman selected this year's traitors in the premiere of Celebrity Traitors.
Millions watched as Winkleman selected Love Island host Maya Jama and actor Richard E. Grant to serve as secret Traitors in the castle.
However, minutes after being nominated by Winkleman, Grant made the biggest slip-up in the history of the show.
As he mingled with Faithful contestant Joe Lycett, the comedian asked him: "What are you?"
Grant responded with a huge grin on his face: "A Traitor," leaving Lycett stunned by the immediate confession.
Unsure whether to believe the actor, Lycett said: "I think you've just done something that has never happened in the game... bold strategy."
The Traitors is a psychological reality competition where hidden Traitors conspire to eliminate Faithful contestants, while Faithfuls attempt to unmask Traitors at daily round table meetings. Co-host Maya Jama is a television presenter known for hosting ITV2's Love Island, while Richard E. Grant is an Oscar-nominated actor who starred in Withnail and I, and Joe Lycett is a popular comedian and television presenter.
Round table drama and cliffhanger fury
Tension rose between the celebrities at the first round table of the series as they debated whether Grant is a Faithful or not.
Just as the celebrities were going back and forth on Grant's innocence, Winkleman announced: "Players the time for talk is over," and the second episode surprisingly ended mid round table.
Fans were left furious over the "ridiculous" cliffhanger ending on Friday night as the hit BBC show ended abruptly.
Viewers were left shocked by the "massive cliffhanger" as they did not get the chance to see the stars write who they believe is a Traitor on their chalkboards.
Fans must now wait six days for the next episode to discover which celebrity was banished.
Celebrity Traitors continues on Thursday night at 8pm on BBC One.
