History Taskmaster / TropesAToF

* CringeComedy: The premise of the first prize task in "Champions of Champions" was to bring in the most genuinely cringe-worthy / embarrassing item. [[spoiler:Noel]] brought in a picture of him and his family when he was 14 years old, [[spoiler:Bob]] brought in a drawing his son did of "dog dirt", [[spoiler:Rob]] brought in elephants silk pants that he had had to buy after soiling himself, [[spoiler:Katherine]] brought in a video of her and her sister pretending to be Hitler, while [[spoiler:Josh]] brought in a clip of him being an interviewee on an episode of "This Week" (a late-night British political discussion show). [[spoiler:Noel came last, Bob came fourth, Rob came third, Katherine came second, and Josh came first.]]

** For the Mt. Rushmore task in "A Cuddle," Greg initially awards Jo 1 point, and then he offers a pity point that she vociferously refuses. Greg then awards Jo two extra points (3 points in total for the task).

** Josh Widdicombe brought in a signed blank checque for the prize task on "Little Denim Shorts". His eyes turned into saucers when he realized that his competitors could pull up to ''£20,000'' out of his account[[note]]Frank Skinner withdrew £19,000 from Josh's account and returned the money right afterwards[[/note]].

* CallingYourBathroomBreaks: Jo Brand announces that she needs "a quick wee" in the team task in "Think About The Spirit". In the studio, Greg points out that she's the only contestant ever who has gone to the toilet mid-task while against the clock.

----> '''Greg''': Jamali, that is one sweet French accent.
----> '''Jamali''': Yeah, I can't say a lot.
----> '''Greg''': ''Où est le cheval?''
----> '''Jamali''': ''Merci beaucoup.''

** In "The System of Endless Plates", the location task is to release a ball from behind a line then have it make contact with as many other balls as possible unaided before any ball hits a mannequin. [[spoiler:Munya]] takes a while to set up the equivalent of a domino rally, complete with a prone Alex to guide the final ball to hit the mannequin. [[spoiler:His]] attempt goes well, managing to involve all 15 balls, and Greg is full of praise for [[spoiler:him]]... until the replay, in which Munya is clearly shown kicking the released ball to guide it into the main chain. Greg is so stunned that he has to remove his glasses and take a moment to recover from the revelation. He summarily disqualifies [[spoiler:Munya]].

* ChekhovsGun: In "Residue round the hoof", a task was to blow up a balloon to the size of a cucumber (30 centimetres) while blindfolded, all the while a bunch of seemingly-unrelated props were at the other end of the garden. After doing the task, the contestants were given a second task, which was to remember as many of the now-very-relevant props as possible. Amazingly, ''nobody'' had noticed [[EpicFail a hanging tarpaulin had changed color]] from dark green to dark blue. Everyone but Aisling also failed to notice that Alex was replaced with a body double, but a few of them ''did'' notice his hat had changed.

* {{Catchphrase}}: Quite a few:

** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zy49x-8lS4E In the first channel 4 promo]], it shows off pretty much every painting hung up in the house, showing a golden pineapple statue (Series 5), painting a picture of a horse wile riding a horse (Series 1), collecting tears in an eggcup (Series 1), and destroying a cake beautifully (Series 4). The golden trophy and throne also gets shown off too.

** Alex's persona as the Taskmaster's Assistant frequently crosses into this line, as it asks him to set, witness and comment upon rather ludicrous events in a matter-of-fact and deadpan fashion. One significant example, however, is the "Make the best thing to occupy a toddler" task, in which he frequently asks Nell the Toddler -- who is, of course, barely aware of what's going on beyond her entering a room and given various things to play with -- to rate the toys she's been given as if he's conducting a job interview. In a similar series 12 task, he treats the dog who the contestants had to make a toy for like a contestant itself.

* CommercialBreakCliffhanger: Some episodes of Series 1 and 2, and some of series 3 leave the final contestants task until after the break. Series 4 onward changes this to have at least 2 people to go in any given adbreak.

** For the prize task in "Always Forks and Marbles," Julian brings in his friend's funeral urn: a yellow, spotted vase with the word "shit" written on it. He explained that he had bought it, by coincidence, a week before the friend had died, and that "shit" was the friend's favourite word. He brought it in as a prize because [[Heartwarming/{{Taskmaster}} ''Taskmaster'' had been the friend's favourite show.]]

'''Alex:''' It ''is'' a bit messy. The threshing shark as fallen out.\\

* ComicallyInappropriateFuneralUrn: In "Another Spoon", the prize task is 'best defunct object', and David's offering is the ashes of his pet cat -- which he apparently keeps in a plastic screw-lid jar that originally contained laundry powder.

** In the "convince this child you're asleep" task in "Never Packed a Boot," Sam is revealed to have straight-up promised the child £100 if she claims to have believed he was asleep. She goes on a hilarious (and adorable) face journey between awe at the sum involved, moral wrestling about whether to accept, and skepticism that he'll actually deliver. She finally professes to have believed both him and Susan. (Alex later tweeted that she had indeed been paid, albeit in book tokens.)

** In Series 10, Katherine Parkinson claims to weigh 22 stones (140 kilograms or 308 pounds) to do well in a task where scoring was based partly on weight. This is what ''Greg'' actually weighs and he's more than a foot taller and a lot bulkier than she is.
** Any time a contestant is singled out with additional task stipulations, Alex will claim that there has been "admin errors," such as when Joe Lycett has to smile at the camera every 30 seconds while painting a portrait of Greg, when Mark Watson is prohibited from saying any words containing letters from the word "Taskmaster," or when Richard Herring alone has to learn the lines and supply regional accents for all five characters in a short play.

** In general, if you look at a leaderboard of the contestants on the show, you will notice a recurring trend in that the ones who win the most points, episodes and championships often tend to be the ones who just knuckle down and get on with what the task is asking them to do rather than spending their time trying to outwit Alex by coming up with clever little [[LoopholeAbuse loopholes to abuse]] or trying to find exploits that let them game ExactWords or who try and do complete the task in the biggest and showiest. Because while the latter can be amazing when they work, there's a higher risk that they won't, and will just result in humiliating failure and low points; whereas just plodding away and doing it might not always win or make for the showiest moment on TV, but it usually guarantees a solid score which will eventually add up into a decent result.
* BornUnlucky: In “Boing boing”, a task requires contestants to don a blindfold, travel as far as they can, remove the blindfold, and try to find their way back to where they started. They are given a slice of bread to potentially leave breadcrumbs, a strategy employed by Mark Watson. He ends up losing the task, as ''a dog happened to come along and eat the breadcrumbs''.

** In the "airplane safety demonstration" task in "An Orderly Species," the announcement must be in a language or accent other than the contestant's own. Jamali does his in broken French and Mike in slightly more fluent but still approximate German, both with subtitles. (Charlotte and Lee affect accents, and Sarah resorts to screaming gibberish while calmly performing the demonstration.)

** Roisin asked the audience in "Down an Octave" about her sequined jumper she brought in, and whether or not it looked good. A few people cheered in agreement, but when Greg asked if the jumper looked bad far more cheered.
** In the tiebreaker for "Spoony Neeson", Greg asked an audience member who should win the task, as neither Bob nor Sally got close to their goal of flinging yogurt at a target. When the audience member said that [[spoiler:Bob]] should win, [[spoiler:Sally ended up winning according to Greg]].

* AuthorTract: In [="BMXing"=], in the second task of the show (do something manly inside of a box), Asim took the opportunity to talk about Men's Mental Health and the stigma that causes, while Alice poked fun at the gender pay gap. [[spoiler:They both got 4 points.]]

* AwkwardKiss: In the game of "Greg says, Alex says," at one point the contestants are instructed to blow the Taskmaster a French Kiss, with some interesting and unattractive results.

* BadBoss: Greg, as the Taskmaster, tends to be portrayed as somewhere between this and an abusive heterosexual life-partner for Alex.
* BaitAndSwitch: Throughout "Spoony Neeson", Alex has been wearing a bandana as an attempt to rebrand himself as "Bandana Guy" because he feels his current persona isn't exciting enough. At the end, Greg orders him to surrender the bandana, apparently for the set-up of some final bit of bullying, only to result in this:

** Iain knows ''a lot'' about puppets (comes with the territory of being a former ''Creator/{{CBBC}}'' presenter), and he flexes his knowledge on the matter for a task in "Hello". Greg was questioning a puppet Iain had [[ItMakesSenseInContext made on its seductiveness]], but he fires back as to what constituted a ventriloquist puppet and points out the other contestants hadn't actually made ventriloquist puppets, they had just made regular dummies with mouth holes, or in Pauls case, a Piggy Bank with glasses "wearing" trousers. As the task goes on, Iain gets increasingly irate about it, and he is ''visibly'' annoyed at the others, and also at the very real possibility of him coming last in a task he knows so much about. [[spoiler:He comes first place, but Greg waits until [[BaitAndSwitch the last possible moment to announce this]] to deliberately push his buttons, while else everyone except Joe got 4 points (Joe got 1 point for killing his puppet)]].
** Downplayed, but Alex seems to have a minor berserk button about people being rude to him, especially if they're ordering him about. While he's usually willing to help out where possible, to the point where he will allow himself to be subject to some rather humiliating experiences, he tends to get notably chippy whenever someone just barks orders at him ("Please?").

* BigBeautifulMan: Greg Davies is, by his own admission, a very large man. This hasn't stopped multiple contestants from being flirtatious with him, nor the audience from reacting appreciatively when he described himself as [[FatAndProud "22 stone of prime marbled beef"]] in "Quisps".
* BigDamnKiss: In "We Met at Mealtimes," Alex suddenly announces that he genuinely wants to kiss the Taskmaster at that moment. Greg and Alex then share a tender kiss to the loud cheers of the cast and the audience.

** Subverted by Rhod in the "get the ball in the hole" task, as he refers to his actual ADHD as he attacks the task with laser-like focus and completely dominates it with one of the show's cleverest ever bits of lateral thinking:

** James, Rhod, and Phil's solution to the "make yourselves look as little or big as possible" task in "Lotta Soup." James added Rhod make themselves look tiny, then Phil appears as a giant and squishes Alex underfoot.

* AttackOfTheFiftyFootWhatever: Johnny Vegas's attempt to make "the largest thing disappear" in "God's Haemorrhoid" becomes a combination of a political commentary on Jeremy Corbyn's decisive defeat in the 2019 general election and this trope as he depicts an attack on Westminster (or a paper replica thereof) by a "400ft" mutant socialist chicken unleashed on the capital by Corbyn against his political enemies.

‐‐>'''Rhod:''' People say my ADHD makes me shit at problem-solving. No, sir!

* DudeNotFunny: For a show based around getting comedians to humiliate themselves on national television and then scathingly mocking them for it, the production puts a lot of effort into making sure everyone is having a good time, and so there have been only a very small number of occasions on which someone appeared genuinely offended by the position in which they found themselves, and haven't [[PlayItForLaughs Played It For Laughs]] with a snappy clap-back. Of these:

* DudeNotFunny: For a show based around humiliating comedians on national television, the production puts a lot of effort into making sure everyone is having a good time, and so there have been only a very small number of occasions on which someone appeared genuinely offended by the position in which they found themselves. Of these:

* BarSlide: The stage task for "Bready Bready Bready" was to slide a drink to Greg from one side of the table to the other, in order for him to catch it. It starts out with half a pint of Vodka (in a pint glass), [[SerialEscalation then a pint of gin (in a pint glass), then sambuca (in a shot glass). and finally white wine (in a wineglass).]]

** Starting in Series 10, the intro's framing device of Greg using a typerwriter was altered. In the new version, he's shown sporting glasses and a goatee (something he'd started permanently making his look on the show since Series 6) and he's also shown typing more maniacally than he was in the previous version.

** The finales of Series 9 and 10 both end with a tiebreak task but by that point, any excitement or tension would have been lost because everyone would have already worked out the champion of the series by that point. [[spoiler:By coincidence, Ed Gamble and Richard Herring, the champions of their respective series, are also the winners of those tiebreak tasks.]]

** In "The System of Endless Plates", the location task is to release a ball from behind a line then have it make contact with as many other balls as possible unaided before any ball hits a mannequin. [[spoiler:Munya takes a while to set up the equivalent of a domino rally, complete with a prone Alex to guide the final ball to hit the mannequin. His attempt goes well, managing to involve all 15 balls, and Greg is full of praise for him... until the replay, in which Munya is clearly shown kicking the released ball to guide it into the main chain. Greg is so stunned that he has to remove his glasses and take a moment to recover from the revelation. He summarily disqualifies Munya.]]
--->[[spoiler:'''Munya:''' ''(after the task)'' What you don't know can't hurt you.]]\\
[[spoiler:'''Greg:''' ''(in the studio)'' I don't know what to believe any more.]]

* FunnyBackgroundEvent: In the team task in "Their Water's So Delicious", while Aisling, Bob, and Sally are performing their song, Alex can be seen picking up various items in the background that had been blown over by some wind.

** If a task involves measurements to determine the winner, Alex will sometimes give an alternative system such as the distance in Rolos or Fruit Pastilles, and in the case of lemon towers in 'The Old, Soft, Curved Padlock', children's shoes.

** Richard Osman from the second series (frequently lampshaded by Greg referring to the lineup as some variation on "four comedians and Richard Osman"); he is better known as a producer and television presenter for ''Series/{{Pointless}}'' (though he is a regular on the panel show circuit). Unlike some of the others listed under this trope, however, he actually adapted to the show and the many curveballs it throws to contestants quite well, to the point where he is arguably the codifier for the many examples of ExactWords and LoopholeAbuse that later contestants would employ.[[note]]His interpretation of the "put these exercise balls on the mat on top of the hill, which unlike the other contestants he interpreted as allowing him to bring the mat down from the hill to the balls rather than having to struggle to get the balls up the hill, is generally credited as the point where contestants realised they could creatively reinterpret the tasks rather than relying on a purely literal interpretation[[/note]] In the podcast, he credits this to his experience with producing game shows and panel shows, as he's aware there's always a trick involved and so consequently was quite willing to look a bit harder for it.

** An unintentional variation happens in Series 9. During the live task of the premiere episode (to draw the second-longest snake at least half an inch in width), Rose Matafeo (who is from New Zealand) asks Alex and Greg if they could convert that to metric (her request is denied). In the series finale, she breezes through the last recorded tasks (to complete the 7 mini-tasks, which also sparks Ed Gamble's RageBreakingPoint about following the tasks to the letter) and initially appears poised to win. However, (potentially due to Rose's unfamiliarity with imperial units) it transpires that she did not build a brick tower that was tall enough (the tower had to be 26 ''inches'' tall, costing her this task and this episode.

* FryingPanOfDoom: In one task in "The System of Endless Plates", the contestants are offered a range of items to be used as weapons, and most of them opt for the frying pan. [[spoiler:It turns out to be a poor choice for the task, which calls for something with a sharp edge or point.]]