Priest from Cornwall Lisa Coupland on The Traitors series 3

The hugely popular BBC One show sees a group of strangers assemble in a castle in the Scottish Highlands in the hope of winning up to £120,000.

Hidden amongst them are the Traitors, whose job is to secretly ‘murder’ their fellow players, without getting caught.

It’s up to the others, the Faithful, to try to detect who the traitors are, and banish them from the game, before they become their next victim.

If they succeed, the remaining Faithful split the winnings. However, if a Traitor remains undetected at the end, they take it all.

Rev Lisa Coupland, from Mawgan near Helston, is hoping her passion from murder mysteries will help give her an advantage.

The 62-year-old, who was ordained to the Meneage parish in 2023, said: “My main driving force [for applying] is that I am completely obsessed with murder mysteries. If there's a murder mystery on the go, I'm there.

“I've watched every episode of Poirot, every Agatha Christie more than once, Midsomer Murders, Inspector Morse, Grantchester, Father Brown, Sister Boniface. I’m just obsessed with murders and the mental aspect of trying to work out who did it.”

A fan of the show, she hopes she can bring some lateral thinking to the game and believes she is “a pretty good judge of character” – while acknowledging it is an artificial scenario.

“In standard life I'm sure people are not that treacherous; I'd like to think. I think I'm quite calm.

“I'm quite a realist. And so, I'd like to bring some sort of calm to situations if they get a bit overwrought. And be there for people as well. Listen to them, but also be looking at people from outside the box. I'm quite an observer,” she added.

The full set of contestants on The Traitors series 3 (Image: BBC / Studio Lambert)

In terms of a game plan, she says: “I'd like to be a bit like [previous contestant] Jaz. You know, say things but not too much, which is going to be difficult for me, because I can talk quite a bit.

“So, be the person who's there but doesn't get noticed much. Because you can get noticed by being too quiet and you can get noticed by being too loud.

“I think I’ll try and be even; what I've noticed is that people tend to really hone onto subtle changes in people's energy levels or their moods. So just try and keep everything on an even keel. It's going to be really hard I have no illusions.”

And she has no plans to reveal to the other contestants her profession: “I think going in if I say I'm a priest, I think I'm going to have a target on my back straight away.”

Rev Lisa admits she is “so competitive”, adding: “This is something that I've had to reflect on quite a lot, about going on a programme like The Traitors where deception and lying is part of the game and how does that sit with being a priest? It doesn't exactly speak of the values that we uphold as a priest.

“But this is a game. And just the same as if I'm sitting around the kitchen table with my family, if you're playing the game, you play the game, whatever that entails.

“And on numerous occasions, we have been made very aware of what the rules are, what the game is that we're letting ourselves in for. So, you're not doing it to unsuspecting people.

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“What confuses it, of course, is because there's a money pot at the end of it. But genuinely, that doesn't bother me. I'm not in it for the money. And that's genuine. If I won the money, I wouldn't keep it.”

She said if she won the prize money it would depend on the amount, but she would hope to help out her three sons, as well as a friend who runs an animal charity in Ireland, and support her parish church.

“My own parish church, we have an old vestry, that we want to convert into a community place so that we can have lunches for people who have been widowed, who are bereaved and want to come together.

“I'd like to open a Lego club for kids to come and be able to be creative.

“I am very fortunate in my life that I have a job, and I have a husband who has a good job and so I'm very blessed.

“It's not about the money for me genuinely. Well, okay, that's a lie. It would be lovely to win the money because I know that I could do some really positive things with it. But if I don't win the money, I'm not going to be heartbroken.”

The Traitors series 3 starts New Years Day at 8pm on BBC One and iPlayer.