The Long Blink: What Hannah Fry's Round Table Moment Does and Doesn't Show

After Thursday's round table on The Celebrity Traitors, viewers picked out two things about Professor Hannah Fry. Her hands kept working at each other while the room talked. And when Myha'la pressed her, she closed her eyes for a beat longer than a normal blink while she defended herself.

Viewers already knew what the table didn't: Hannah had been recruited as a Traitor the night before. So both moments were taken online as proof that she was giving herself away. They are worth looking at properly, because each one is a real cue with a real meaning, and neither means what the internet decided it means.

What a long blink is

Most blinks are over in a fraction of a second. When the eyes stay shut noticeably longer, it is usually eye-blocking. The body briefly shuts out something it would rather not deal with. People do it when they hear a figure they don't like, when a difficult name comes up, or when they are asked the one question they were hoping to avoid. Covering the eyes with a hand, or rubbing them, belongs to the same family.

What it shows: discomfort, at that moment, about whatever was just said.

What it does not show: why. A Traitor who has just been cornered is uncomfortable. So is a Faithful who has just been wrongly accused in front of twenty people and a television audience. The blink looks the same on both.

What fidgeting hands are

Rubbing, squeezing or picking at your own hands is a pacifying behaviour. Touch calms the nervous system, so when pressure rises, the hands find something to do. It is one of the most common stress signals there is, which is the problem with it. At a round table, almost everyone is under pressure.

What it shows: the pressure reached her.

What it does not show: guilt. Fidgeting tells you how someone feels about the situation. It tells you nothing about which side they are on.

Why two cues are better than one, and still not enough

A single gesture is close to worthless. Two stress cues in the same conversation are more interesting, and two that appear on the same subject every time it comes up are worth a question. That is as far as body language goes. The largest study of lie detection, Bond and DePaulo's 2006 analysis of 206 studies, found people tell truth from lies 54% of the time, against 50% for guessing. Nobody at that table is reading minds, and nobody watching at home is either.

So the honest reading of Thursday is short. Something in that exchange was uncomfortable for her. We know why, because we watched her being recruited. The players at the table didn't have that, and from where they sat a newly recruited Traitor and a wrongly accused Faithful look identical. The player they banished that night, Myha'la, was a Faithful.

The mistake the castle keeps making

Paul Ekman called it the Othello error: seeing the distress of someone who fears they won't be believed, and reading it as guilt. It is how nervous Faithfuls get banished while a calm Traitor nods along two seats away. I've written about it at length in how to spot a Traitor.

The better move is the one good interviewers use. Don't vote on the blink. Go back later, calmly, with the same question. If the same discomfort comes back on that one subject and nowhere else, you have found the place to dig. If it doesn't, you saw a tired person on a long day.

The same blink at work

You will see this cue this week, away from any castle. A client closes their eyes for a moment when you state the price. A candidate does it when you ask why they left their last job. A colleague does it when the deadline is mentioned.

None of those people is lying to you. Each of them has just told you which part of the conversation is hard for them. The useful response is a question, asked kindly: "How does that figure sit with you?" That is the whole skill: notice the change, then ask. It is what the Body Language Foundations course teaches, and what we train hospitality, retail, security and HR teams to do.

Every weekly read, Strictly included, is collected on our press page. To test your own eye, try the free body language quiz.

Frequently asked questions

Is a long blink a sign of lying?
No. It is a sign of discomfort with what was just said or asked. Honest people under accusation do it too.

What does fidgeting with your hands mean?
It is self-soothing under stress. It shows pressure, not guilt.

Did Hannah Fry's body language give her away?
It showed discomfort when she was challenged. Viewers knew she had just been recruited as a Traitor; the players could not have told that from a blink, and they banished a Faithful instead.

Image: BBC/Studio Lambert/Cody Burridge