She was cool, calm and collected in the castle and even her opponents say that she 'played a blinder'.
She's only gone and done it. Rachel has won and she brought her fellow traitor Stephen along with her. The final of the hit BBC show will go down as one of the best yet - it had viewers on the edge of their sofas wondering if the pact between the woman from Northern Ireland and the Scot would hold.
Yes, Stephen was briefly tempted by the money, as Rachel predicted, but he did not want to disappoint his steely partner who, secret traitor curveball aside, had controlled the whole game.They are the first pair of traitors to win, and she's the first female traitor to pocket the gold.It is doubtful that even her opponents would deny Rachel a place in the Traitors' hall of fame. Upon finding out her identity, most were shocked to the core, with many conceding that she deserved to win - she had "played a blinder" was the consensus.He's head of psychology at the University of Chester and one of the hosts of the podcast, The Psychology of… The Traitors. He said Rachel had to be very adaptable because she walked in not knowing there was going to be a secret traitor - a first for the show - and that set her apart. She faced more pressure than other traitors and for that, he puts her above gold-standard traitor Harry, from season two, who also won the show. "Adaptability is one of the key things that makes a good traitor because you've just got to keep on rolling with the punches," he said. And roll Rachel did. She had to fend off a very public bombshell from fellow traitor Fiona, an attempted assassination by fiery faithful Harriet and a chest of chance for survival with James. Hochard said she had been willing to take risks and had managed to talk Stephen into taking them too. He also remarked on her timing - how she dropped in bits of information at the right moment, or within earshot of the right people. For instance when she brought up the now infamous line about her FBI profiling training at the round table. This turned out to be a little bit of an exaggeration. "When you drop a bit of information like that at the last minute, there's only one thing that it's designed to do, which is to try and and say to people - no, no, trust me because I'm the expert. "If she had told them beforehand, they could have digested it and actually weighed it up. But they don't have the time. They're under pressure." Rachel, who is a director of communications in real life, claimed she had taken a course in microexpressions. However Connor Pell, a lecturer who hosts the podcast alongside Hochard, is not convinced it would have done her any good. "If you're in the castle, you're moving around, you're doing activities, you're trying to navigate lots of different relationships there," he said. "So you're not going to be staring at someone's face 24/7. But it does have a veneer of credibility."The pair agree that Rachel was brilliant at reading the room, re-direction and reflecting on what she was doing. Pell says she was also "incredibly likeable" - like Stephen - and had a good deal of social capital in the castle. Her main strength, he said, was resilience. His prediction was for Stephen to win. Katie McGaughey, from the School of Psychology at Queen's University Belfast, said one of the most impressive aspects of Rachel's game play was how she repeatedly survived and even benefited from the "major revenge plays" against her. She's talking here about the moves by Fiona and Harriet, and in both cases McGaughey said Rachel "didn't panic or scramble"."Rachel's real skill has been emotion regulation under threat - she doesn't mirror aggression, she reframes it." Former faithful and fan favourite Diane Carson, who hails from Northern Ireland, also spoke of Rachel's coolness."She's swayed everyone every time. She beat off two very fierce attacks from Harriet and Fiona and remained calm, whereas they weren't as calm."Rachel was also an expert in side-eyes and quips - and there was a definite Northern Irish-ness to them. Dr Chris Montgomery is a senior lecturer in dialectology at the University of Sheffield and his area of expertise is in how people perceive accents. He does watch the show, albeit a late adopter to the Traitors phenomenon, and he said Rachel's accent probably helped her initially. He said over the last 50 years, studies have consistently shown that Scottish, Welsh and Irish accents are rated highly for pleasantness, "read trustworthiness, friendliness and authenticity to a certain extent". "Studies that look at this tend to also look at a prestige or status ranking. And actually for that, Northern Irish does slightly less well. And that's kind of interesting in relation to the Traitors." While he joked that there's not much research on accents and treachery, he said people with an accent from Northern Ireland could be perceived as less prestigious perhaps and therefore less likely to be devious. Rachel may have had the accent, the intelligence and the temperament but in the end, it all came down to having friends in the right places.The sketch show was ahead of its time, says co-creator Paul Whitehouse as its 30-year anniversary tour comes to Scotland.Bridgerton is back, and from London palaces to Bath ballrooms, here are some of the best places to experience Regency-era England.Former teacher guilty of indecently assaulting five girls in 1970s
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