His good-natured camaraderie on The Traitors has turned him into a viral heartthrob. What these Johnny Come Latelys don’t realise is that he’s always been a man for our times

It’s hard not to wonder how James Acaster feels at the moment. On the one hand, everybody suddenly fancies him, which must be flattering. On the other, all the language around the phenomenon is stuff like “unlikely”, “unexpected” and “bizarre crush”, which is presumably … less so. But there’s no denying that he is now a viral heartthrob, which sounds like something that requires urgent medical attention, but isn’t. After each episode of The Celebrity Traitors, social media is flooded with slow-motion edits and thirst-trap clips of Acaster, including one of him in the castle set to Ginuwine’s Pony that has received more than 500,000 views and counting. Vogue declared that his “specifically east London-y wardrobe has captured the hearts and minds of millennial women countrywide”, and anointed him its “new internet boyfriend”.

For longtime Acaster admirers, loyal listeners to the Off Menu podcast who rooted for him on the seventh series of Taskmaster, this is bittersweet. The smug plus side: we were right all along. The lemony minus: now we have to share him. It’s like those people who saw Oasis in a tiny working-man’s club when they didn’t have a record deal. I fancied Acaster long before this crowd of Johnny Come Latelys at the BBC TV equivalent of Knebworth.

The faithful have banished one traitor and one of their own. Will they have any more luck tonight?

A quick word on the fallen. Richard, a monkey could have guessed. But the loss of Myha’la is a big one. Why, of everyone, was she banished last night? There are a few theories. The first is that she winked at Richard E Grant during his final round table and, as a commenter smartly pointed out last night, Traitors is literally a game of winking murder. Another option is that she isn’t white, and this is The Traitors, and this sort of thing happens so often that there’s literally an SNL UK sketch about it.

My own theory, though, is that Myha’la just felt things too deeply. She was an emotional player, and the game is so new that contestants don’t need much to latch onto a suspicion. By being a bit too generous with her feelings, she gave them just enough rope to hang her with. A shame, she deserved more.