On to Friday's mission, as the dwindling group arrived in a "field of screams", as presenter Claudia Winkelman aptly put it, full of scary-looking scarecrows.

"This is like the Wickerman," said Joanne. "A solo scarecrow is sinister enough. A gaggle of scarecrows is terrifying."

The task involved them attempting to retrieve bags of gold from inside the straw men with a pitchfork, in a bid to add thousands of pounds to the charity prize pot.

Joanne's knot-tying badge she claimed to have been awarded in her youth didn't seem to help her much, though, as she struggled initially to grab any gold.

"I have a newfound respect for the farming community," she declared.

But it wasn't only gold on offer, it transpired. An as-yet unrevealed game-changing power would be bestowed upon one player, but only after they had to blow up the proxy pumpkin scarecrow heads of all but three of the most trustworthy contestants.

Things got tense when Sharon, by her own later admission, "got mad at the boys" - James B, Michael and Kenny - over which heads should roll.

In the most remarkably stupid moment of the series since Richard E Grant told everyone he was a traitor, the group chose to preserve the heads belonging to Maya, James A and Kenny.

"I had to hold in my laughter," said Maya, privately afterwards. "Of all people, you saved us. I just thought, 'oh my gosh, have we completed this game already? We are trusting. We are unsuspecting. We are killing you all'."

The special power was revealed to be a double dagger, enabling one of "the trustworthy trio", as James A newly described them, to have two votes at the night's roundtable.

King Kenny became King Arthur being crowned keeper of the special blade.

"I think it's in the right hands," declared James B back at the castle, now colder than ever in terms of catching a traitor.

"I feel like whoever it is, they are five sets ahead of us," noted a befuddled Leigh-Anne. "We don't have a clue!"

Romesh then had to remind Joanne that her policy of not voting off Michael because he's "great company" is not really how the game should work.

With the double dagger in play and time running out for the faithful, Michael declared that he had to catch a traitor tonight.

As discussions began, double trouble Kenny warned: "Be nice to me everyone!"

"You're a powerful man," noted Joanne.

Bash, who had flown under the radar until this point, drew some heat along with Leigh-Anne and Sharon at another roundtable led my Don Michael.

"If you're a faithful, why are you still here?" Bash asked the Welshman, who noted he had a shield last time out.

Romesh agreed: "I definitely would have killed you by now if I was a traitor. And I mean that as a massive compliment, because I think, for the morale of the group, you not being here would decimate us."

In an attempt to deflect attention away from himself, Michael stressed how Sharon had been acting like a "totally different person" of late.

Kenny bought it, sticking his double dagger into the Barbie actress. And James B voted the same way due to her "suspicious" looking tantrum in the task earlier on.

Scotswoman Sharon received four votes, along with Irish comic Joanne, meaning that - after desperate final pleas from the pair - it went to second round.

"Do whatever youse want, it's a game," offered a seemingly defeated Sharon.

"I wish I didn't take this dagger," said Kenny, ahead of his decisive second thrust of the double blade. "But I'm gonna vote for..."

The producers then left things, quite literally, on a knife edge.

Nine contestant remain: six faithfuls and three traitors, putting the cloaked interlopers in a great position going into the final two episodes.

With the hurly-burly done for another week, we will wait with baited breath until Hallowe'en's double header to see how the battle will be lost and won.

Celebrity Traitors continues on Thursday at 20:00 GMT on BBC One and iPlayer.