Celebrity Traitors finalist James Blunt reveals he'd never watched the show and says his wife signed him up without telling him

He made it all the way to the Celebrity Traitors final, before falling at the last hurdle when he voted to banish once more. 

And despite his longevity in the game, James Blunt has revealed he had never seen the show before and didn't know anything about it. 

Appearing on Good Morning Britain on Monday, the singer, 52, revealed his wife, Sofia Wellesley, secretly signed him up to star in the series after his manager initially turned down the offer from the BBC. 

James told hosts Susanna Reid and Ed Balls when he was asked if he was 'cashing in' on his stint with the release of his new album, Airplane Mode: 'You're so cynical to think I would cash in on the Traitors. 

'No, I'd written and recorded the album and then the offer for the Traitors came and then my manager said no to the Traitors team. He didn't bring it to me.

'My wife signed me up without telling me. She just said: "Hey James, Claudia Winkleman has been in touch and I've signed you up for the Traitors".

'I hadn't watched it and didn't know anything about it. I think you can tell that when I'm playing the game.'

James, who was a Faithful, joked: 'In years to come they'll be studying my strategy. I still got to the very end by blundering through and apologising profusely.

'It's a survival game and a guessing game. It was great fun.'

After filming in the Scottish highlands, James returned home but kept what happened on the show strictly under wraps. 

He said: 'I didn't tell a single person. As we watched the final episode, my wife turned to me and said: "I thought you'd won".

'She was so disappointed in not only what had happened but also in me.'

James and his wife Sofia, who is the granddaughter of the eighth Duke of Wellington, married in 2014 and they have two children. 

During the final roundtable, James was within touching distance of taking home a share of the prize money, but was blindsided when Romesh Ranganathan questioned his Faithful status.

James insisted Romesh was 'entirely wrong' but it was only when Sebastian Croft took him aside to defend James, did the comedian concede and voted King Kenny out. 

Following Kenny's banishment, viewers knew that this meant there were only three Faithfuls left in the game, and Sebastian and Romesh both voted to end things there. 

 James sealed his fate though when he voted for another banishment, meaning it was inevitable that the other two would vote for him to be eliminated. 

The singer addressed rumours of a feud with Romesh during the interview. 

He said: 'I did get Romesh's number and I did text him and say: "I know where you live". We are actually really good friends and I'm going on his podcast soon. It is just a game but it is so intense in that moment.' 

James also said James Acaster didn't out himself a Traitor at the roundtable and instead insisted the comedian was cornered by himself and Michael Sheen over their murder in plain sight theory. 

He said: 'We got him, we pinned him down. Michael and I had discussed what had gone on with the murder in plain sight and we were nailing him to a post. We caught him. It felt like being in a TV film where we'd got our guy and cornered him.' 

It comes after James spoke about his time on the series. 

He said: 'It wasn't like being mollycoddled on some cosy TV show, it was actually a fairly traumatic experience.

'You are like mice in Claudia's wonderful trap, in this bizarre social experiment, watched by the nation and you're not sure whether it's night or day and most of the time it's night!'

He added to The Sun: 'It's a marathon and at times, a terrible experience – but wonderful to finish.'

James added that when the celebrities sat down at the round table producers played a song – The Hanging Tree from The Hunger Games – 'just to psych them out'.

He also described how after the show someone sent the song to him and his wife noticed that he was 'quite traumatised by hearing it' and that he had started 'sweating and shaking'.

James also detailed what it was like at the hotel they stayed in overnight while filming the show.

The celebrities stay at the Marriott hotel at Inverness Airport and James has described how there were guards outside each room and that the peephole was blacked out.

He also said that there were no room keys and the television was disabled so they couldn't contact anyone.

Celebrity Traitors concluded with an epic finale last week in which Faithfuls Romesh and Sebastian triumphed over Traitors Maya Jama and King Kenny.

The road to their win was paved by an extraordinary twist in which James A buckled under the pressure and admitted he was a Traitor in the penultimate round table.