The Traitors is one of the few things getting us through a miserable January. For three nights a week, it feels as if the whole country is living and breathing the cloaks-and-daggers drama.

For the other four painstaking days when the show isn’t on air, we’re sharing our opinions and theories with everyone from colleagues to strangers online.

But it’s not just tactics and contestants viewers are talking about – my group chats are incessantly pinging with questions about what happens behind the scenes, where the cast go once they leave the castle, and whether Charlotte will ever reveal her real accent.

Luckily, we no longer need to ponder most of these questions, as former contestants have been speaking to BBC News about the secret workings of the Traitors castle.

The order in which the contestants arrive at breakfast is a source of tension and speculation on the show.

Series one faithful Maddy Smedley explains that contestants are kept in separate holding rooms when they come to the castle in the morning and are called to go into breakfast individually or as a group.

Similarly, in the evenings, contestants wait in a holding room until a runner comes to individually escort them out of the building and into a car.

Traitor and series two champion Harry Clark says there are no clocks in the castle and contestants have no sense of time.

“You get picked up in the morning and when filming is over, you get dropped back to the lodgings,” he explains.

“I don’t know what time the mission starts or when lunch is – we rely on the production team to direct us and in between, we all just sit around and chat.”

Unlike the hour-long episodes we see, Harry says the days aren’t filled with wall-to-wall traitor speculation.

“I spent most the day talking to Paul about Liverpool and Chelsea or finding out if everyone believes in aliens and obviously that stuff doesn’t make the final edit because it’s not relevant to the game.”

Series one faithful Dr Amos Ogunkoya describes his days in the castle as “a really nice holiday camp, until the roundtable”.

“Most of the day we’re just learning about each others lives and so you become really close to everyone there.”

Matt Harris, another faithful in series one, says that, while the castle is huge, “you’re not allowed out of sight from the cameras so you can’t walk around the grounds”.

“They set up the rooms like the library and bar especially for the show and you’re told by producers which rooms you can go into.”

The lack of clocks make it hard to know exactly how long anything lasts but the roundtable surely far surpasses its 10 minutes of screen time.

“At the beginning, there are 22 people,” says Harry. “Even if everyone only speaks for 10 minutes, that’s more than three hours.”

As viewers, it can be hard to understand why contestants are so emotional during and after the roundtable, but Harry says it’s “really intense”.

“Everyone has their own story and you’re taking someone’s chance of winning money away if they are banished.”

Maddy says she cried so much on the show that “the security guards would give me ice every morning to help the puffiness of my face go down”.

The exact location of contestants’ lodgings remains a mystery to us, and apparently to the cast as well.

“It’s about a 30-minute drive from the castle but you’re blindfolded as you approach, so you can’t see the car in front or figure out exactly where you are,” Maddy says.

She explains that the whole production team and cast stay in private lodgings but you’re kept apart from everyone “with military precision”.

“You’re allowed to go for a walk but you have to be accompanied by a runner and each floor is manned by two security guards who ensure you don’t leave your room unaccompanied.

“At first, I was really scared of them because I had watched the Dutch version of the show and in that, the faithful are murdered in their hotel room so every time the guard knocked on my door I thought I was going to leave the game,” she says.

Harry explains he felt lonely at times in the accommodation, especially as contestants have their phones taken away. “But I can’t complain because I slept easy every night knowing I’d be turning up for breakfast!”

Every now and then viewers get a quick glimpse of a bowl of fruit at breakfast or someone piling carrots onto their plate at dinner time.

The contestants we spoke to gave the food provided on the show mixed reviews.

Dr Amos says “the breakfast was horrible, you definitely would not want to eat much of it” but Matt was more generous and described it as “decent”.

Harry says “there was a lot of Scottish food like haggis” adding that as a fussy eater, he “wouldn’t touch it”.

But luckily for Harry, there was the option to request food.

During the day, he says he ate “a lot of chicken nuggets and chips” and, in the evening, he would ask for the “perfect traitor fuel” to be delivered to his lodgings – a crisp sandwich.

If a contestant is banished at the roundtable, they “really do leave immediately”, according to Maddy.

“You’re taken to do an exit interview straight away and then driven to your hotel to pack your stuff. The next day, I was escorted by security in the morning to the airport and was given my phone back.”

Maddy says the more stressful way of leaving the show is through murder.

“You turn up in the morning like you’re going to breakfast and you are all waiting in these holding rooms. Eventually, you get called as if you’re going to breakfast but instead, they take you to another room where the murder letter is sitting on a chair.

“It was so stressful.”

“The biggest shock was how unscripted everything is,” Dr Amos says.

Maddy says the only time producers intervened was to tell her to announce that she was an actor over breakfast.

She explains she’d already shared this with her fellow contestants when they were waiting to be taken back to the hotel and had taken their mics off.

Matt says there were some moments that were guided by producers.

“Occasionally, people were pulled out and told to go and speak to some other people – it’s natural that they guide you into a position to make good TV.”

“It’s weird at first because there are cameras in your face but after a while, you forget they’re there and producers don’t ever step in,” Harry adds.

“Most rooms also just have cameras in the corner and you have a mic attached to you so sometimes, you don’t see any of the producers until the end of the day when they check in on you.”

Mike Cotton, creative director of the studio that makes The Traitors, explains that there are cameras “dotted around every single room”.

“I’d say there’s probably about 50 or 60 of those throughout the the living space within the castle.”

He says a team of camera operators works in pairs to follow the cast around into different rooms – but at a distance.

At the roundtable, he says the cameras are hidden and some are built into the table itself.

“The contestants can’t see any cameras and that’s to keep them immersed as they can only see each other,” he explains.

“When I met Claudia, I was so nervous because she’s so powerful,” says Harry.

“I wanted to be a traitor so badly and I thought she’d take no notice of us but actually, she knew everything about everyone.

“She gets really involved and makes you feel really comfortable.”

How much does Claudia Winkleman know about the challenges?

“Very little,” according to Harry.

“There’s a team that create the missions and everyone else is in the dark about them. I would try off-camera to get them to tell me about it or I’d give them ideas but they wouldn’t listen.”

Claudia recently said her biggest fear is accidentally giving away the traitors’ identities while filming the roundtables.

“I am absolutely paranoid about ever looking at the traitors, so I sort of look just above everybody’s head,” she explained.

Speaking to BBC News and other press last month, Claudia explained there’s a team of people who make the decision.

“We talk to all of them, and then six of us go up to a room, the brilliant casting people, and we get through seven packets of biscuits.

“I’m the smallest voice in the room, but you decide while having had those chats who it’s going to be.”

The team take the players’ wishes into consideration and if someone asks not to be a traitor, they wouldn’t be picked.

Dr Amos says he made it very clear that he wouldn’t appear on the show if he wasn’t a faithful.

“I wanted to take part in the show but as a doctor I think being a traitor and lying to people has real-life consequences as my patients might not trust me.”

One thing that’s clear from speaking to the contestants is applying for the show is hard work.

After firing off your initial written and video applications, you have a number of audiences with producers.

“They ask you to mainly tell them stories about yourself and your life,” Dr Amos says.

“Eventually, if they like you, then you get a phone call a few weeks before [filming starts] to say you’re off to Scotland,” adds Harry.

The Traitors is filmed in Ardross Castle, a 19th Century building about 30 miles north of Inverness.

It is set in about 100 acres of gardens and parkland and has been owned by the McTaggart family since 1983.

Fun fact: its previous owner was Charles William Dyson Perrins whose grandfather, William Perrins (in partnership with John Wheeley Lea) created the recipe for Worcestershire Sauce.

Mike Cotton says the crew on location is made up of more than 200 people.

“It sounds absolutely huge but we film one episode a day,” he says.

He explains that this team includes everyone from producers and camera operators to the art department who work their magic on interior designing the rooms.

He likens the production to one you might find on set for a Hollywood film.

Dr Amos says that every member of the crew knew who the traitors were.

“It looks like the faithful are in the majority on the show but in reality, you massively feel in the minority – everyone down to the psychologist who is there to support you knows who the traitors are.”