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January can only mean one thing: The Traitors is back. For those of you who haven’t been initiated into this cloaks-and-daggers drama, the premise is simple: the traitors attempt to remove players by ‘murdering’ them, while the faithfuls try to work out who the traitors are. Each night the group votes someone off after a round-table discussion. It’s real-life Cluedo, with extra high-camp theatrics – hooded robes, crossed-out portraits, handwritten messages, crocodile tears and croissants in the breakfast room – all under the watchful fringe of Claudia Winkleman. The show lives and dies on the likeability of its cast and their relationships The first two series were an unexpected success.

Why do the cool die young? I don’t mean famous, cool people like Jimi Hendrix or Jim Morrison. They are members of the 27 Club – the pop stars who died at 27. I mean the schoolboy gods of my youth, the marvellous-looking, self-assured ones, effortlessly going out with the prettiest girls. And now seven of them – friends and contemporaries from school and university – are dead by the age of 50, either by their own hand or thanks to drink or drugs. The majority of my wild contemporaries have transformed into sober professionals None of the femmes fatales I know have died. Why is it only the cool