A Blackpool woman says she wishes she did “everything differently” after being booted off BBC reality show The Traitors on Thursday night’s show (January 4).

In this nail-biting psychological reality competition, Claudia Winkleman greets 22 strangers as they arrive at a beautiful castle in the Scottish Highlands to play the ultimate game of detection, backstabbing and trust, in the hope of winning up to £120,000.

Sonja, 66, left the castle after she received the most amount of votes from her fellow contestants, who suspected her to be a ‘traitor’ – despite actually being a ‘faithful’.

Before she left she told the contestants she was a faithful and said: “Well guys, facts are important to me as they obviously are to you.

“So here’s a fact I would now like to confirm to you, and that is that I am a faithful.”

Sonja, volunteer business mentor, said if she could repeat the process she would do everything differently.

She said: “What I should have done is concentrate on a strategy for how to be a faithful and then execute on it instead of thinking ‘I’ll have a house party for a couple of days and then I’ll get round to it’.”

Sonja said she initially wanted to be chosen as a traitor.

She said: “I wasn’t happy with the idea of being a faithful, I really wanted to be a traitor but it’s a good job I wasn’t because I got voted out.

“On the other hand, I think if I had been a traitor I would have tried harder. I kind of relaxed and let my guard down and became a very chilled out faithful.

“I wanted to be a traitor more than a faithful because generally I think I work better in a tense environment, and that’s where I’ve tended to work all my life, in high pressure environments.

“I think it just became party time when I was a faithful. Maybe as a traitor it would have been different. But, either way, it was an interesting experience.”

While she was the first to be ‘banished’ in the process, she still plans to knit hats for her fellow contestants.

She said: “Well, being the first to be banished is a tricky one. But at the same time people don’t really know you yet.

"I did make some great friends there and I’ve had the nicest, cuddliest, friendliest banishment in the history of The Traitors because people genuinely were, like ‘We can’t believe it's you but there’s evidence here so probably you are, and can we still come and see you and will you knit me a hat?’

“They all put lots of kisses on their boards so, there was nothing remotely offensive or upsetting, it was really quite nice.

“There’s a lot of them there, 21 of them so, I might knit a few hats [for them]!”

Sonja said people had “incredible stories” and experiences to share on the show.

She said: “Even in those two short days you look at 22 people who just look like a group of regular people but there were some incredible stories in there and some amazing bravery.

“It makes you think, when you look at a group of people you don’t really know what you’re seeing. There’s much more to it and I think that was really good.”

You can catch up on The Traitors on BBC iPlayer.