Claudia and the programme makers say of this fourth run: ‘We’ve never seen it played like this before. It gets very heated.”

Claudia Winkleman and the bosses of The Traitors have hinted there will be some devious twists in the “brutal” fourth series, which pushes the players harder than ever before.

In the opening BBC1 episode, on New Year’s Day, viewers will see all 22 contestants make it to the castle unscathed – unlike some previous starts where players have been picked off before even stepping one foot inside. But this time around, there will be new elements that have not been seen before, dreamed up by executive producers Mike Cotton and Sarah Fay.

“All I will say is there’s something new and what happens in this series is truly extraordinary with moments that made me gasp,” Claudia laughed. “I can’t wait for people to see it. The producers have the greatest minds on earth. When they told me, Mike and Sarah were like, ‘how about this?’ I was like, ‘woah! You’re joking?’ The people in charge always have excellent ways of changing the game. You think you know how to win – turns out you don’t. It gets pretty twisted. I love it.”

Mike, from production company Studio Lambert, explained: “I think we always say each series is like its own murder mystery. We never change the core game but we always play with the twists around it. What I would say about this season is that we test our Traitors harder than ever, we push them really hard. And you’ll see that later in the series. Also the Faithful as well, it becomes quite brutal. Some of the gameplay, as we go through the series, is brilliant.”

Claudia – who is thrilled to hear herself described as the “queen of darkness” by one player – said that this series felt quite different to the previous three. “The castle has many secrets, that’s all I can say. At one point all the hairs were standing on end. They play it in an extraordinary way. You think ‘I’ve seen this and it’s going to go down this route’ – and all I can say is, it absolutely doesn’t. We’ve never seen it played like this brilliant cast play it.

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“I love this gang because they play with their entire hearts – it gets really, really brutal. Also after the celebrity one, they were adorable but they were like, at the round table, ‘no, no, after you’. That’s not how this one goes.”

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Mike said that allowing the players to arrive at the castle at the start of the first episode was not a sign that the producers had gone soft. “This is definitely not a kinder series,” he laughed, while Claudia added: “Just you wait.”

Some of the twists will come to light quickly while others will emerge later. Mike explained: “One of the brilliant things is that the contestants can come in with a secret, we don’t know when we’re going to deploy it, we wait to see how it plays out and when we want to reveal that.” One potential is people who are related to each other, like mother and son Diane and Ross from series two. Claudia points out: “I think it would be lovely to have someone you know in there with you. But, as we know, it doesn’t always help.”

This time, it seems that the strategies in play might be darker than when the famous faces were let loose in the castle. “I didn’t mean the celebs were soft in a bad way but these players play it rather differently and it gets hard core,” Claudia laughed. “It gets very heated. We get some very juicy roundtables, that’s what I can tell you.”

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In terms of her own family and friends Claudia, 53, says she tells them absolutely nothing. “Never! There’s no fun in knowing,” she reasoned. “When Alan Carr won, my husband and youngest son couldn’t stop screaming and crying and shouting, ‘but you knew!’.”

And she is just as strict with how she keeps her facial expressions in check during filming. “This might sound ridiculous but we all take the game seriously and if I mess it up with my face then it’s not fair on the players. My youngest child watched a bit of last series and said that I pulled my ‘you have to do your homework’ face. That’s pretty much it.”

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Her very favourite moments are when the players are eating together in the mornings. “I love watching them at breakfast,” she confessed. “The second they walk in and react to each other over a plate of sliced cheese is fascinating to me.”

The selection process of The Traitors will remain as tense as ever, with Claudia relying on one key wardrobe item for impact as she circles the roundtable relentlessly to make her all-important choices. “It’s an old pair of boots that have a heavy heel and I scrape them along,” she laughed. “I get a bit flamenco and I go round about five times. They need to be incredibly loud – I’m thinking of going tap next time. Alan said I was like a carthorse.”

She said that her wardrobe had remained the same as before with a “Cruella meets Princess Anne” vibe, but she had some new ideas for the future. “Next series we’re going full Oliver Twist,” she insisted. “Lots of patches. They said no to tea stains – I’m thinking a neck scarf.”