James Acaster calls on-set complaint report 'completely fabricated'

James Acaster has called a newspaper report that he complained about fellow Celebrity Traitors contestants "completely fabricated." The Daily Mail had said he complained to producers that Rob Beckett and Romesh Ranganathan teased him and made him "uncomfortable" with "macho banter."

Acaster rejected the claim on Alan Carr's podcast. Carr won the first series of the BBC show. Acaster said he has been friends with Beckett and Ranganathan for more than 10 years, and that they were "lovely" for the whole show.

He also said his agents, and the agents of Beckett and Ranganathan, told the Daily Mail the claim was "categorically untrue." The paper printed it anyway, he said. Variety has the full account.

The BBC gave a similar answer. It told Variety that claims of teasing among the cast, and claims of complaints about teasing, are "categorically untrue." It said there had been no incidents and no evidence of either.

In the show, a group of celebrities are secretly picked as Traitors, who try to deceive the rest, while the Faithfuls try to work out who they are. Acaster was one of the Traitors in the second series. He left in the penultimate episode, after admitting at a roundtable that he was a Traitor and being voted out. Ranganathan went on to win that series with Sebastian Croft, playing for the Faithfuls.

Earlier this autumn, the Daily Mail reported that filming had been paused after Acaster became "very anxious and panicked" during an "intense" scene. The Independent reported on 30 October that the BBC had addressed those reports. The Daily Mail's original piece