British series:
Series: One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six | Seven | Eight | Nine | Ten | Eleven | Twelve | Thirteen | Fourteen | Fifteen | Sixteen
Specials: New Year Treat | New Year Treat II | New Year Treat III | New Year Treat IV
New Zealand series:
Seasons: One | Two | Three | Four
Australian Series:
Seasons: One
Aisling Bea
♫ "Dignity intact! Dignity intact!" ♫
An Irish comedian and actress who starred in Dead Boss, and was a team captain on 8 Out of 10 Cats.
- Always Second Best: Aisling was a competitive player throughout the series and never lagged far behind the top scorers in the series' standings. Indeed, by the end, even though she finished fourth, she was only 4 points behind Mark and Sally (who tied for second place). Despite this, she never was able to win an episode. Her closest opportunity came in "Residue Around the Hoof" when she tied with Mark but lost the tiebreaker. Three other episodes ("A Wind-Dried Puffin", "Spoony Neeson", and "Boing Boing") saw her finish one point behind the winner. It wasn't commented on during the series itself, however, as Nish fell behind everyone so quickly and thoroughly in the final totals that he stood out far more on his own.
- Did Not Think This Through:
- After reading a task telling her to eat one of the items before her, she stuffs a Weetabix biscuit into her mouth. As she struggles to chew and swallow, she notices that a Twiglet was also provided and mutters that the smaller snack would have been much easier to eat.Aisling: [Struggling to speak with her mouth full] Ah shou- ha- ea-en the Twiglet.
- She also rushes the task where they must use the flame from a cupcake candle in the lab to light a different candle located inside the caravan. Aisling powerwalks to the lab door with an unprotected flame and extinguishes her cupcake by opening the door... in 9 seconds.
- After reading a task telling her to eat one of the items before her, she stuffs a Weetabix biscuit into her mouth. As she struggles to chew and swallow, she notices that a Twiglet was also provided and mutters that the smaller snack would have been much easier to eat.
- Everyone Has Standards: She can make sex jokes (including ones involving her mother) at the drop of a hat, but is visibly disturbed when Bob starts talking about his unusual bathroom habits.
- Fingore: When she used a bean can tin cover to slice a loaf of bread in the caravan, she accidentally cut her finger on the cover and it started to soak into the bread. Made more tragic in that she was supposed to be slicing a different loaf of bread in the lab.Greg: Can there be any sadder sight than a blood-covered loaf of bread in the wrong room?
- Happy Dance: She does victory dances after several tasks, including elegantly returning Alex to the shore (in her underpants), getting a basketball into the basket without touching it (standing on a bucket), and back-throwing a picture of Swedish Fred into a waste-paper basket (with the basket on her head).
- Impossibly Tacky Clothes: She wore a baggy, lime-green tracksuit with a tuxedo printed on the front for her tasks.
- Rage Breaking Point: She gets genuinely angry when they roll the tape of her can-stacking attempt and it turns out she was disqualified in hindsightnote . She ends up (kind of jokingly) throttling Alex and kicking over her chair.
Bob Mortimer
"Maybe put a cow in a room until it withers? And then I can mop up the residue?"
A comedian known for his work on The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer and Shooting Stars with double act partner Vic Reeves. He has also made many rather out-there appearances on several panel shows, most notably Would I Lie to You?.
- Catchphrase: Lampshaded in "Phoenix" when Bob notes that his, at least on Taskmaster, is "Do you know what I mean?" When he asks Alex if he has one, Alex said Greg won't let him have one.
- Call-Back: He demonstrates the ability to rip an apple in half with his bare hands. Greg is not as impressed as every one else, pointing out that Bob had shown this ability in Would I Lie to You? on an episode they'd both appeared in.
- Cloud Cuckoolander: He's known for his absurdist humor and this is apparent in multiple tasks, such as when he had to give Alex a "special cuddle" and he decided that it was the perfect excuse to climb into his car's boot with Alex and close the lid.
- Cool Old Guy: The oldest member of the series' line-up, Bob also had a fairly effortless demeanour throughout the pre-recorded tasks, cracking jokes as he goes along. Alex has referred to Bob as one of his favourite contestants, and says that he always enjoyed the twinkle in Bob's eye as a task was read.
- Cutting the Knot: In episode 5, Bob is the only one to realise that the task didn't say that he needed to wear the rope leash while stacking cans, which gave him a much easier time.
- Genre Savvy: In Champion of Champions, Bob looks for the combination number to the briefcase's lock hidden in the room (a classic move of Alex's), rather than bothering to go for the more obvious clues.
- Too Much Information: We are treated to Bob's graphic description of his toilet habits and his anus that's just a little too high up in one of his appearances.
Mark Watson
"I think it’s a pattern really in this Taskmaster. I’m more about commitment than actual attainment."
"It wasnt there because, and this is incredible Mark and absolutely indicative of your luck on this show, your bread was eaten by a dog."
—The Taskmaster
A comedian and author who is noted for his long, 24(+) hour shows which he hosts once every few years.
- Bribing Your Way to Victory: Mark tries this in the prize tasks, where he will spend a significant amount of cash on his effort, including £400 on a custom hat that spells "TASK MASTER" in neon letters. This almost always ends with a low score because Greg knows it will frustrate him. The one time it doesn't is for a housing association gate that cost him £18,000, where Greg made him the winner out of pity.Aisling: (impersonating Mark) "And sometimes, I'll even pay £400 just to be in last place..."Mark: We don't yet know how that works out.Greg: I'll tell you how that works out - fourth place.
- In the first ever iteration of Taskmaster in 2009, where the first task was to deposit money into Alex's bank account, Mark sent £200. None of the other nineteen contestants paid more than £1.
- Butt-Monkey: One of the poorest sufferers in the show.
- In one task, he was prohibited saying words that included the letters in "Taskmaster" and ended up mumbling "Fiddly" to himself.
- In another instance, he was tasked with sending 150 cheeky text messages (one per day) to Greg. However, he was devastated to find out that he sent 148 and wouldn't be getting any points for something that took up a surprising amount of his time.
- Mark prepared a 5000 piece jigsaw of Greg's face for a prize task, and had completed about a quarter of it after 12 hours. He only got one point for it.
- Mark got a near-perfect bullseye when kicking a pot of yoghurt at a target
. However, it was for a tie-breaker task, so it wasn't even broadcast in the show, despite being "the greatest thing [Mark had] ever done". - Another task involved travelling as far as possible while blindfolded, then taking off the blindfold and retracing their steps. Mark left a trail of bread to guide him back towards the start, but ended up wandering off in the wrong direction after a nearby dog ate the bread.
- Comedic Underwear Exposure: More often than not, Mark's trousers fall down during his VTs to partially reveal his underwear like those 90s street rappers.
- Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Zigzagged. Mark is clearly a smart guy, but his off-kilter approach to certain tasks, lack of confidence, and frequent pairings with Nish often highlighted an apparent ineptitude in him. Despite all that, he proved to be a surprisingly successful player as the series went on, winning two episodes and tying with Sally for second place in the competition. He was only 8 points behind Bob in the final totals.
- Failed a Spot Check:
- In one of the tasks, he failed to notice that Alex had been replaced by a lookalike. While he wasn't the only one, it's notable in his case as he was the only person doing that task who had been close friends with Alex for about twenty years.
- He also has an example from outside of the show. On the podcast, he reveals that while outside of filming he and Alex didn't discuss the tasks while he was a participant on the show, out of respect for the strict rules of secrecy the show asks its participants to abide by, one night when he was staying over at Alex's house Alex casually asked him whether he was keeping up with the task where he was asked to send the Taskmaster a cheeky text message every day for 150 days. Mark didn't think much of it at the time, but only realised in hindsight that that was a clue that he actually was the only person doing the task, not only because Alex didn't normally ask him about tasks outside of filming but because if the others were completing it as well there'd be no need to check up on him.
- Fish out of Water: Mark is a Cambridge graduate, an intelligent comedian who prepares long and complex shows, and the author of several novels. None of those admirable qualities help him in Taskmaster, which favours quick-thinking and improv skills. As a result, Mark's efforts in tasks were highly variable in quality.
- Hidden Depths: His musical skills are on display during ''Their Water's So Delicious".
- I Want You to Meet an Old Friend of Mine: Mark and Alex have been friends ever since university, and they used to co-host We Need Answers alongside Tim Key. Despite this, in one task in "Residue around the hoof", Mark failed to notice that Alex had been replaced by a body double.
- Know When to Fold 'Em: For the water cooler task, Mark had planned for volunteers to transport the water cooler around the country. However, the water cooler didn't even make it outside of London. On the podcast, Mark reveals that he had been deluged with so many Taskmaster-related pieces of admin around that time that he realised it would be funnier if he let that task slide and allowed the water cooler to stay within London.
- Madness Mantra: When prohibited from saying any words that include the letters used in "Taskmaster", he takes to repeating "Fiddly".
- Non-Action Guy: Zigzagged. Mark is afraid of popping balloons and is visibly distressed in a task where he asks a crew member to blow up a balloon for him. He also asks the crew member to transport him to the riverbank via piggyback in a task where touching the ground is not allowed. Contrast that with the live task in which he is the first to get a fruit into a glass fishbowl from a distance without throwing (by flicking it) and the aforementioned tiebreaker recording, in which he was the only person to get any yoghurt onto the target at all.
- Running Gag: Greg developed a habit of comparing Mark to a heron.
- Serious Business: He's clearly taking the tasks very seriously, which contributes to a lot of his stress in the show. In the podcast, he admits to going into a huge amount of administrative effort in order to complete the tasks as successfully as possible, which gave him a crushing taste of his priorities when he saw that his competitors hadn't gone to nearly the amount of trouble as he had. And even now, years after it happened, he still every so often seems to be kicking himself about the texts task, as in this otherwise unrelated Tweet about Wordle.
- The Smart Guy: In a task to stack cans while naming countries of the world, Mark managed to name 92 of them. However, he stacked the same number of tins as Bob, who had only named three countries (which is telling of Mark's luck).
- Those Two Guys: Nish's attempts tend to get paired with Mark's, as they are both prone to sub-par efforts, and they are also on the same team. Nish lampshades it in the loaf-cutting task "The Leprechaun or the Lesbian".Nish: I have to say, I'm increasingly starting to understand why we're being grouped together in the way presented.
Mark: Me too, me too.
Nish: Because when you got that grill out, I was like "this guy's a f**king genius." - Throw the Dog a Bone: While Mark suffered greatly during his run on the show, with particular emphasis placed on the tragedy of him getting disqualified from his solo task of sending Greg 150 texts, he did ultimately win two episodes, including the aforementioned episode where the disqualification occurred.
Nish Kumar
"Last in PE, first in being a legend!"
"If you’ve got a pet dog at home and you blow in it’s face, it absolutely baffles the dog, absolutely confuses it, and that was Nish’s face throughout this entire task."
—The Taskmaster
A comedian who hosts The Mash Report. He makes up for his lack of skills at completing the tasks with lots of enthusiasm.
- Annoying Laugh: He has a very loud laugh (which has been described as a scream-laugh or screech-laugh). When he submits a recording of it as "the most-excellent noise", Greg slaps him down for how irritating the sound is.
- Disqualification-Induced Victory: In "The Leprechaun or the Lesbian", the competitors have to slice a loaf of bread using only one tool which they find in the caravan and bring up to the lab (neatest slices wins). Nish uses a book and takes first - because Sally and Bob each use more than one tool, and Aisling cuts up the loaf of bread in the caravan, which leads to all of them being completely disqualified. Mark takes second when he tries to use an oven rack and fails so miserably he resorts to using his hands.
- Facepalm: Probably easier to count the number of times Nish doesn’t cover his face in the studio, whether out of laughter, disbelief or embarrassment.
- Hidden Depths: His impressive guitar skills are on display during "Their Water's So Delicious".
- Hoist by Their Own Petard: In "Spoony Neeson", a task involved getting a lit birthday candle in a muffin from the lab to the caravan, without blowing out the candle along the way. Nish shouting the phrase "You Bubbly Fuck!" towards Alex was perhaps not the best course of action...as that blew out the candle!
- Rage Quit:
- In "Phoenix", he has to eat, throw, and balance food items in front of him. He decides to throw a Weetabix biscuit into the provided bucket, but he keeps missing and it breaks into smaller pieces until it becomes unmanageable. He stomps off angrynote , but not before throwing a jelly and nailing the shot on his first try.
- In "Their Water's So Delicious", Nish tries to throw a coconut over a hedge, only for it to hit the hedge and come rolling back to him. Alex only realises that he did a Rage Quit after watching the footage back, as Nish could have just picked up the coconut and thrown it again.
- Subverted with the task where the contestants have to get a basketball through a hoop without using their hands; Nish gets so fixated on trying to kick the ball through the hoop that he has over fifty attempts at doing so. While there was no quitting, however, the 'rage' aspect was still very much there:
Nish: I am gonna do this if it kills me and everyone here! - She Cleans Up Nicely: Greg is taken aback by how stylish Nish looks on a beach task, in his black suit and sunglasses.
- Tastes Better Than It Looks: Nish's Marmite is the only one to make the audience groan in horror, and Greg described it as having the texture of frogspawn. Alex quite liked the flavour though.
- Those Two Guys: Nish's attempts tend to get paired with Mark's, as they are both prone to sub-par efforts (Nish more so though), and they are also on the same team. Nish lampshades it in the loaf-cutting task "The Leprechaun or the Lesbian".Nish: I have to say, I'm increasingly starting to understand why we're being grouped together in the way that-
Mark: Me too, me too.
Nish: Because when you got that grill out, I was like "this guy's a f**king genius." - Took a Level in Dumbass: Nish is a pretty smart guy, but he ended up being comically inept on the show; despite Mark Watson being set up as the fool, Nish trails the rest of the cast in terms of points. It got so bad that at one point Greg took him aside for a quiet pep talk.The Taskmaster: What is it? Is it self-sabotage? Do you want this or not? ... Pull yourself up by the bootstraps. Really have a go at the show. You're not a bad guy, Nish.
Sally Phillips
"I had a lovely time, putting chocolate cake under each armpit."
A comedy actress who starred in (and wrote for) Smack the Pony, and also played the role of Tilly in Miranda (2009), and Clare in Clare in the Community.
- Comedic Sociopathy: Although she doesn’t take it to the same levels as other contestants, Sally really enjoyed involving Alex in the tasks in some creatively embarrassing way.
- Crazy-Prepared: Correctly anticipated that someone would challenge whether her prize entry episode two note , a hat with a pair of hips attached to it, counted as headwear or a face covering, so she attached a beret to it to address the issue.
- Dirty Old Woman: Although she's only ten years older than him, there are definite shades of this in her behavior to Alex at times. Such as when the task was to give Alex "a special cuddle", and basically wound up mounting him.Sally: I was excited. [Claps her hands and pumps her fists] BRING IT ON!!!
- Establishing Character Moment: Her first broadcasted task was to “cuddle Alex.” Although Aisling immediately assumed Alex set the task in an attempt to be perverted, Sally doesn’t assume the same (or, if she does, is spectacularly unbothered by it) and instead starts mounting him while placing random food all over his body while he’s lying down, establishing the lack of personal space and Gadfly tendencies she has towards him throughout the series. It also establishes the seemingly desperate craving for sex that becomes a Running Gag in many of her attempts in the show.
- Graceful Loser: When she's disqualified from the basketball task in the first episode, she happily accepts that her approach broke the rules.
- Hidden Depths: Sally took full advantage of the show to demonstrate her creativity and bizarre way of thinking. Alex has described her as the contestant who was the most different to what he expected.
- Lady Drunk: When she needed to make her own Marmite, she just starts listing out alcoholic drinks and has Alex eat a slice of toast soaked in absinthe.Sally: What actually happened when he had the absinthe was he went bright purple and couldn't speak for 20 minutes!
- No Sense of Personal Space: Sally is possibly the contestant most willing to completely violate Alex's sense of space for tasks, including straddling him on two separate occasions.
- Noodle Incident: On the podcast, Mark mentioned that a task where the contestants had to make outlandish predictions and then make them come true had to be cut because something Sally did for that task "was legally compromising in some way". Alex reportedly refused to tell him anything more than that.
- Show Stopper: On two occasions, her task attempts were so decisively superior to the others that the entire studio gave her standing ovations while she stood up to bow.
- Simple But Awesome: Occasionally knocks a task out of the park with a simple approach others wouldn't have considered, or else takes the same approach and wins so decisively that it becomes awesome.
- The Unfettered: Sally's task attempts show a wild disregard for social norms and taste, ranging from shoving cake into Alex's armpits to bringing in Bob's preserved faeces as a prize task submission.
- For the Marmite task that ended with her just feeding Alex absinthe on toast:
Greg: Sally misheard the task-Sally: No, I’m not going to accept this…Greg: She misheard the task as, “Can you please show Alex the time of his life?” - You Need to Get Laid: Prompted quips about this from Greg due to doing things like simulating sex with a water cooler and creating a graph that compared how much sex she wanted versus how much she was actually getting.
