The Traitors' Linda breaks silence after being kicked off show and reveals one regret

It's taken seven episodes but finally the Faithful bagged themselves another Traitor in tonight's episode, having lost 10 of their own along the way

The second Traitor to leave the BBC1 show tonight described the experience as the “pinnacle of my life” as she was finally banished from the series.

The Faithful finally found another foe in Linda Rands, and the only question was - what took them so long? Having singled out retired opera singer Linda in the very first episode, Jake was tonight seen celebrating by repeatedly pointing out that he’d suspected her “from day one”. But it still took him until day 15 - or episode 7 - to actually get her evicted from the castle.

And tonight the purple-haired 70-year-old from Hertfordshire said she felt “proud” of how long she’d managed to stay in the game. Speaking after leaving the TV show, Linda admitted that she actually regretted saying she’d be a Traitor in the first place. “I have to say when Claudia was going around the table I started to panic, thinking 'no I don’t want to be one, don’t choose me’.

And in terms of a game-plan, she just didn’t have one. “I didn’t really have a strategy, I think it was just to not let people know I was a Traitor,” she explained. Linda also said she felt that being a ‘random air-head’ had played in her favour because it meant some people didn’t suspect her. “I played the jokey person, and that did work, and I am a bit of an air-head so that came over as well.”

But in fact her randomness, she has since learned, might have been her undoing. “When I left, that was one of the things they mentioned. They said ‘you’re so random in what you do and that’s why we think you’re a Traitor’." To Linda though, it simply meant she’d been true to herself. “If you ask anyone in my family, they’d say that’s me, that’s who I am, I’m very random! So, it was really funny they picked up on that.”

She now feels thrilled with how the show went. “I’m really proud that I wasn’t the first Traitor who left. I’m proud that I made it that far because I seriously thought I’d go out pretty quickly. I was told I got as far as Paul did in the last series and I never thought I’d get that far.”

Her one regret is not being a bit tougher with defending herself to the rest of the group. Asked what she’d change, she said: “I think I would have stood up for myself more. I would have been more vocal, but it's difficult because everyone has things to say, and I was just listening. Because I was a Traitor and knew who the Traitors were, it was difficult to pick people to accuse because I knew they weren’t.”

Last week Linda was given a mock award on a billboard in central London following her performance in the show. Hanging in Leicester Square, she was pictured winning a ‘Golden Cloak Award’ for the ‘performance of a lifetime’ in a nod to the recent Golden Globe Awards. In Friday's episode, the retired opera singer publicly burst into tears the morning after she had participated in the “murder” of Livi. But the performance drew the attention of other players because she’d previously told Jake she was an "emotionless person".

In this series, which started on New Year's Day, there have now been 10 Faithful murdered or banished, while two Traitors have been caught. Viewers will have to watch tomorrow night to discover if “Welsh” Charlotte, from London, accepts Minah’s offer to join her as a Traitor, or turns it down.

The third series is proving more popular than ever, with the first episode watched by more than 9 million viewers, making it the biggest in the show’s history.

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