Claudia Winkleman is "territorial" with US rival Alan Cummings over The Traitors and avoids him completely, she has revealed.
Although the pair leave notes for each other, and both film in the same 19th century castle in the picturesque Scottish Highlands, that's where the togetherness ends. In a new interview for the Sunday Times, Claudia - who is best known for hosting BBC's Strictly Come Dancing - laid bare the full extent of their rivalry.
She confessed: "I can’t watch the American one, and Alan can’t watch me, because we are both so territorial. I just didn’t understand why he was in my castle and he feels the same. 'What’s that orange woman doing in my castle with my owl?'" she quipped.
Series three of The Traitors is about to kick off, with its debut taking place on New Year's Day, while there'll be a much longed for celebrity version of the show due to land in 2025. Claudia is so nervous, and so keen for the show to do well, that she admits she'll be "nervously twitching" for the entire three and a half weeks that the next series lasts.
It's clear that the 50-year-old is fully invested in the contestants, even being told off by producers for breathing too loudly with excitement on one occasion when two traitors dramatically turned on each other. It had been feared that her barely disguisable reactions could have given the game away for others, including viewers at home.
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The show, based on a Dutch game, takes place at Ardross Castle, near Inverness.
It's on a private estate, so the curious public can only catch a glimpse of the action by tuning in - and that's something no less than 34 million people did when the first series hit screens.
Besides its huge popularity on TV and iPlayer, it also swiftly scooped two BAFTAs and a National Television Award.
Claudia initially hadn't wanted to repeat the show for a second series, fearing that it wouldn't live up to the original hype the next time round.
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However, her bosses weren't about to let her wriggle out of delivering the award-winning formula.
"I said to the BBC, ‘Let’s not do it again.’ I think it’s so chic just to do something once and do it well and then to say goodbye," she mused.
"The boss at the BBC literally came over and took my temperature and was like, ‘We go again!'"
The Traitors returns to BBC One and BBC iPlayer from January 1.
