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Well, it’s the 1st of October and the season of ‘big dogs’ and ‘dark horses’ is back. In case you find that sentence bewildering, I should explain that tonight sees the return of the Celebrity version of The Traitors. It was last year’s break-out hit, the closest thing we have to ‘appointment TV’, in my opinion, since the start of the streaming era. Twelve million people tuned in to the final to see comedian Alan Carr win for Team Traitor. It would be risky, at this stage, to make predictions about this year’s winner. However, among the dazzling cast list of national treasures, actors, and rock stars, I shall be keeping my eyes on comedians like Romesh Ranganathan, Joe Lycett, and Miranda Hart. As Alan Carr demonstrated last year, a capacity to act the fool and make people laugh, especially at moments of tension, can not only lead your competitors to underestimate you, but also foster misplaced trust. I don’t think this should come as a huge surprise. The skill and indeed cleverness of the fool or clown, especially in literature, is well-established. In Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, the person who is revealed to be ridiculous is not the Fool, Feste, but the self-important functionary Malvolio. As Feste famously says of himself, ‘better a witty fool, than a foolish wit.’ Indeed, Feste is able to tell the truth through his clowning and seeming lack of seriousness or respectability. This truth-telling power is part of the old religious tradition of the ‘Holy Fool’ too. St Paul suggested that evangelists like him are fools for Christ, going to absurd lengths to share the Good News of Jesus. Later Holy Fools like the sixth century St Simeon got up to all sorts of extraordinary antics. For example, he was said to stick out his foot to trip people up or pretend to be a dog. He wanted to make fun of the sheer absurdity and pomposity of the world as well as conceal his miracle working and his acts of love and generosity. By inviting mockery Simeon sought to draw closer to Jesus, who himself had been mocked before his crucifixion. I suspect Simeon, however, only made himself more popular. Of course, I am not suggesting that the behaviour of an Alan Carr or this year’s crop of comics on Celebrity Traitors is part of the Holy Fool tradition. However, I do think that part of what makes comedy so beguiling is its capacity to disarm and help us spot our own foolishness and absurdity. I anticipate oodles of silliness and laughter during this year’s Celebrity Traitors. However, I shall also be keeping my senses alert for both the lies and the truths that the fools will be hiding in plain sight.
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