Euan McColm: It's not just the Celebrity Traitors who try and fail to deceive

The boy and I have been talking for weeks about the new series of Celebrity Traitors, the BBC show that currently dominates our popular culture.

All of my middle-age cynicism and his teenage insouciance are erased when the subject arises. We take this silly TV show very seriously indeed.

And so the launch of the new series on Thursday night has long been in our diaries. He’ll visit and – with the addition of takeaway burgers – we’ll make it an event.

In the end, he gets sick (typical teenage boy sick, so nothing to worry about) and calls from his mother’s place to ask whether we might postpone.

“If we save tonight’s, we can watch a double bill tomorrow,” he says.

I agree, like a faithful, to this plan.

Then, like the traitor I am, I watch the first episode alone.

When he comes over on Friday night, I promise I’m every bit as much in the dark as he.

“I said I’d wait, didn’t I?”

He’s not at all convinced and demands I look him in the eye and tell him I definitely didn’t break my word.

I cannot believe, I say, you think your old Dad would do that to you. I lather it on and he seems satisfied.

Hosted, with a perfectly arched eyebrow, by Claudia Winkleman, The Traitors and its celebrity spin-off have, over the past couple of years, become the BBC’s flagship shows. I was one of a record-breaking nine million viewers of that first episode and I can’t imagine any of us was disappointed.

The Traitors – based on a successful Dutch TV show – is an elaborate parlour game, heavily adorned with the gothic. The premise is simple: Among a group assembled in a Scottish castle are three traitors who must be identified before they can murder the others – the faithfuls. Last one(s) standing win a huge cash prize (which, in the celebrity version, goes to charity).

With little to go on but guesswork, participants dream up increasingly preposterous theories for why this or that person must be a traitor: They mutter in huddles about glances exchanged; they flinch at the touch of another, fearing they’ve been murdered “in plain sight”; they demand to know what meaning is contained within the coincidental.

“Who do you want them to kill?” the boy asks.

We’ve just watched the first episode and I’ve successfully feigned surprise at the cliffhanger, which sees two faithfuls – the journalist Amol Rajan and the comedian James Acaster – facing potential execution.

One will be recruited by the traitors – actor Richard E. Grant and TV presenter Maya Jama – and the other will be killed.

This is a serious business. Shortly after being secretly secretly selected as a traitor, Grant tells his fellow contestants as much and a number choose to believe him. Now the heat’s on him and whoever he and Jama choose to join their ranks will have to work with them to make him safe.

I tell the boy I want Rajan gone. So does he. Our reasoning is the same: Rajan desperately wanted to be a traitor from the off, while Acaster was quite clear that his preference was to be a faithful. Forcing him to join the baddies would make for perfect panto.

And Rajan would be just fine. His appearance on Celebrity Traitors coincides with the launch of his new YouTube channel and the show has sent his profile to another level.

This show not only attracts A-list participants, it can transform the careers of lesser-known figures.

On the back of his hugely entertaining appearance on last year’s Celebrity Traitors, former rugby player Joe Marler is now host of a hugely successful podcast and a regular on prime-time television. Comedian Joe Wilkinson and singer Cat Burns – already well known in their fields – were similarly transformed into household names.

It takes the boy and I more than two hours to watch that first, 75-minute-long episode and we finish just in time for the second to go out live.

We’re delighted when Rajan is offed.

We’ve already selected our favourites – I’m backing comedians Romesh Ranganathan and Joanne McNally, the boy’s rooting for King Kenny, a former boxer turned social media personality

It takes so long to get through the show because the boy keeps insisting I pause the action so he can share a theory or show me a video of one of the contestants making a fool of themselves at some event or simply let me hear him farting like a bull.

And, of course, it is all this nonsense, all these interruptions that make watching Traitors with the boy so special.

Sentimentality continues to creep through my body, steadily replacing each cell. My awareness of time and the speed with which it passes grows more acute and the knowledge that, soon enough, the boy – like his older sister – will move into his own place fills me with a degree of self-indulgent melancholy.

He’s already taller than me (no great achievement but a relief to him) and his interests grow more sophisticated and esoteric. I will take as much of watching this daft TV show with him as I can get.

By the time we’ve finished watching episode two, it’s dark and pouring with rain. I order a cab to take the boy to his mum’s place.

We agree he’ll come for dinner before episode three.

We hug at the front door and the guilt is too much.

“I did watch the first episode, last night,” I say.

“Me, too,” he replies.