From the beginning people had their suspicions on Benjamin Law. Almost automatically he was playing from the bottom after being branded ‘a snake’.

“This is a snake-positive house,” he told 10 Play, laughing. “I already knew I was on the bottom when I was on the island but then, watching the show play out, it’s hilarious to me how everyone just thought I was dodgy right from the start when I was in total team-player mode.”

The suspicion on Ben began when he sat in front of the OG Heroes tribe constructing a ‘fake idol’ but, according to Ben, the whole tribe was working together on that craft project.

“Paige supplied an animal skull, Sharni was braiding together the necklace,” he explained, “we all agreed, well I thought we all agreed, that would make a really useful weapon once we got to tribe swap.

“I was genuinely Heroes strong… I was naively, haplessly Heroes strong. But that’s the Nigel no-friends energy I like to bring to a party,” he joked.

Ben’s name was thrown out multiple times and, in the case of Monday night’s tribal, he was never shown Simon’s “idol” that was supposed to save himself, Matt or Flick.

Ben was the only player other than Simon to have found a token, which Simon assumed was an idol. But Ben had gone one step further, realising there was no paperwork to confirm it as an idol, he continued his hunt to solve the riddle.

Finding a coconut near the water well with the same markings as the token, Ben found his immunity idol — which he played in the tribal that saw Sharni blindsided.

Still not fully trusting Ben, Flick and Matt made the decision to not tell him about the “idol” until the last moment, and never showed it to him before tribal council.

“By the time Flick pulled out her idol, I was internally screaming,” Ben said, “but also, laughing because I’m the only one of the Heroes at that stage who knows what that token is, and knows that it’s a clue, not an idol itself.

“Should I have asked Flick to show me? Absolutely. Would it have changed the outcome? Absolutely not,” he added.

“There’s a part of me that feels like, if we were acting more like a team they could have collaborated with me,” Ben continued.

Flick also made the decision to use the idol to save Matt, when the votes were on Ben instead, so regardless of if it had actually been a genuine immunity idol, she still misplayed it, hoping to save her closer ally on their new tribe.

Reaching tribe swap, Ben found himself in an OG Heroes majority alongside Paige, Flick, Matt and Gerry — unaware that Gerry had flipped and wanted to work with his Villain allies in George and Shonee.

This all became clear when Gerry flipped over to the OG Villains and voted off Paige, turning the power upside down and into the hands of King George once again.

“You see the blood drain out of my system,” Ben said when he realised the Heroes had lost Gerry. “I got the very strong feeling George, especially after voting for him in the last tribal, was just like, ‘You’re dead to me.’

“I was a dead man walking… the thing is, I really wanted to play and I wanted to play hard and find those alliances but, as you can see, it was really difficult for me when I couldn’t build relationships or trust with people right from the start.”

That struggle to find a strong alliance followed Ben over to his new tribe after the swap, but attempting to make alliances from the bottom wasn't a new dynamic for the writer.

“There are very few rooms I walk into in my neighbourhood, in work, when I was growing up, where I wasn’t the only one in the room in some way, shape or form,” he explained. “I was fully prepared for that, but I think one of the things I clocked is wow, I have to do more work than other people in ensuring that I seem like a trustworthy guy."

The OG Heroes tribe was dominated by physically strong players like Sam, Shaun, Dave and Matt — dubbed the ‘Meat Tray’ by Ben, cracking jokes with the others in the tribe about the cluster of muscle forming a tough alliance.

“When they were having their convention in the water, I was joking about it but I was also drawing people’s attention to it like hey, see what’s happening here? Four muscular jocks are getting together and anyone who isn’t them is going to be vulnerable,” Ben said.

“I think there’s a strategy there which is actually serving them well up until this point because they’re a wall of protein, right? But I also think there’s something else going on there,” he continued.

“You’re in such an extreme circumstance. You do gravitate towards people who you recognise and who feel familiar to you and so I don’t begrudge those guys for necessarily banding together so tightly.”

Looking back, if he had his time over again Ben said there were small things he'd second guess doing over, but ultimately he doesn’t think any one thing would really have saved his skin in the long run.

“Shannon Guss says it well when she says you can’t play this game as anyone but yourself,” he said. “You can’t keep a mask on outside in that environment, when you’re starving and moody for very long.

“I just didn’t want to be the first boot,” Ben said. “Anything else from there would be a bonus. I thought I’d be happy coming out of this show if it contained everything for me. If I got to be a hero, if I got to be a villain, if I got to be humiliated, if I got to be triumphant… and I feel like I’ve gotten all of those moments.

“As much as I was completely demolished and had my neck stepped on and my face spat upon… I couldn’t have asked for a better run.”

Australian Survivor: Heroes V Villains airs Sunday - Tuesday at 7.30 on Network 10 and 10 Play on demand