Taskmaster / Tropes R to Z

Taskmaster tropes index
A to F | G to Q (Loophole Abuse) | R to Z (Shout Out)

This is a list of tropes from R to Z of the British TV programme Taskmaster.

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R

• Race Against the Clock:
  • Most of the challenges are done with a fixed time limit to complete in, e.g. in "There's Strength In Arches", one of the tasks involves constructing the highest bridge to support a potato within 20 minutes.
  • Starting with Series 6, some timed tasks have additional stipulations that make the task more difficult where the contestants aren't allowed to see any clock and must work out the running time based on intuition. Examples include getting to the Taskmaster House and kissing the Taskmaster portrait as close to 30 minutes as possible^note both Asim and Tim misunderstood that part of the task as racing to the Taskmaster house and kissing the portrait as quickly as possible, and placed last and second-last respectively ("The Old, Soft-Curved Padlock") and inflating as many balloons as you can and popping them all in under 10 minutes, with any balloons remaining unpopped past the 10-minute mark disqualifying a contestant^note Jo and Katy were both disqualified in this round because Jo had one leftover unpopped balloon that she missed and Katy hadn't started popping any balloons until just after the 10-minute mark ("Don't Like Them Go Bang").
• Rage Breaking Point:
  • In Series 7's "The Pendulum Draws The Eye", Rhod Gilbert completed the "find the sock with the satsuma" task by finding a satsuma in the kitchen and stuffing it into a sock at random. When it looked like he was going to win the task due to Loophole Abuse, James Acaster — who was already seething a little bit due to a previous task wherein his attempt at demonstrating improvement with the hula-hoop was strictly judged and marked down due his choking his first attempt — snapped and launched into a rather angry tirade heavily suggesting that Greg was going easy on Rhod due to the long-standing friendship the two had outside of the show. A rather lengthy argument ensued, and while Greg ultimately decreed that there would be no official winner of the task as a result, there was a notably hostile, bitter and on-edge feel in the studio for several minutes afterwards.
  • After spending the entire series being rather mild and polite about things, with little to show for it, in the final episode of Series 8 Joe Thomas reaches this when his lengthy and exhaustive effort to dispose of an eraser turns out to be for naught after other contestants exploit Exact Words and just lazily flush the eraser down the toilet. He's rather forceful when arguing that this technically doesn't count as "erasing" the eraser (since it's still intact and could, if someone was particularly determined, be retrieved and used as an eraser), but it's when Iain Stirling — who, let us note, hasn't exactly been shy about chucking a bit of a wobbly when tasks haven't gone his way throughout the series — demands to know "where the fuck this is coming from" that he just snaps:
    Joe: I just feel — [angrily] I'm just so fed up with putting, like, loads and loads of just genuine physical effort into the tasks, and then these other people come up with some wanky work-around! I mean -- rea -- put some fucking effort in! [calming down] I'm sorry, I dunno where that's come from.
  • In "Don't Like Them Go Bang," the competitors are split into teams for the live task, with David and Ed facing Jo, Katy and Rose. The task is for the person at the back of each queue to pass along a drawing by tracing the drawing on the back of the person in front of them, with the person out front putting the drawing to paper. In the first round, Ed is passing a drawing to David, who holds Ed's finger in one place! And it builds up from there. It proved rather well the joke that Greg had made at the start of the task - that while Jo, Katy and Rose were handicapped by having two backs to draw through, Ed was similarly handicapped by being paired with David Baddiel.
  • Ed Gamble, normally very cheerful, became furious over the final taped task of Series 9 and went on an epic rant when it seemed as if he'd be penalized for following the rules on a task that was actually several mini-tasks designed to be frustrating if opened in the wrong order with a condition that the whole thing would be reset if a single mistake was made. He essentially did the whole thing twice due to making a mistake towards the end, but David, Jo, and Katy didn't bother restarting and Greg began wondering if he should show leniency in his judging. When Ed's anger reached a crescendo, Greg gave the camera sly Aside Glance to show he'd goaded Ed into getting angry.
  • Daisy May Cooper has two in the episode "Hippopotamus," one during a pre-recorded task and one during the live task.
    • The quiet cocktail-making task was particularly trying. She had to yell at the drinks trolley and pace around the lab to calm down after being forced to repeatedly start over for being too loud.
    • In an echo of Ed Gamble's outrage towards David Baddiel, Daisy has an incredibly difficult time with getting her team partner, Richard, to guess her animal drawing correctly and really lays it into him for not recognizing the titular hippo.
• Rage Quit:
  • Joe Wilkinson gives up the final task of Series 2's first episode in a state of high dudgeon after his attempt to fit a large pinata into a small suitcase results in a lot of the sweets inside spilling over the stage. When Alex points out that the task technically requires the sweets to go in the case as well, Joe's response is to angrily kick the pinata off the stage.
  • After Rob wins the live task of the Series 3 finale, Paul Chowdhry knocks over his donut stand and splatters donut across the stage.
  • Nish in "Their Water's So Delicious" after he tries to throw a coconut over a hedge, only for it to come back to him. Alex only realises that he did a Rage Quit after watching it back, as Nish could have just picked up the coconut and thrown it again.
  • Iain Stirling in "Stay Humble" - touches the sand he's not allowed to touch, moves the bucket he's not allowed to move, re-reads the task and sees the only other instruction is 'you may not leave the room'. He instantly leaves the room, swearing and cursing at himself.
  • In the episode "Bready, Bready, Bready," one task was to get a watermelon up a slide and into the caravan, the catch being that the slide cannot be adjusted in any manner, you can only use breadsticks to move the watermelon, and only breadsticks can touch the watermelon. David's watermelon fell off the slide onto the ground and he spends the majority of his time struggling to use breadsticks and other implements to get the watermelon back onto the slide. At the end, he uses a croquet mallet to smash his watermelon to pieces.
  • Daisy May Cooper in the finale of Series 10, after failing to construct a spaghetti bridge to hold all her provided biscuits, angrily throws a coconut, tears apart a grapefruit with her teeth and consumes a lot of mints at once. Perhaps justified, as she'd been leading narrowly both in the episode and the series points, and in doing so she completely blew her chances of winning either.
  • In Champion of Champions 2, Ed Gamble spends over 90 minutes trying to get his solution to the rubber duck task to work, before giving up in frustration, sawing the rubber duck in half and burying the halves in two separate shallow graves.
• Rake Take: The prize task in "A Wind-Dried Puffin" was to bring in the "best high-octane item." Aisling's offering is a rake with a pie attached at the end of the handle.
• A Rare Sentence:
  • "Mel's done very well, if she can juice a lime with a shoe."
  • "If only I had sharper scissors, I could've put more of the camel through the gap."
  • "Great pea throwing!"
  • "How much does water weigh?"
  • "You've got 19 sniffs left."
• Real Fake Door: Starting with Series Six, a door was added to the side of the Taskmaster House by the shed. It wasn't clear whether it was a real door or not until "Butter in the Microwave" when David and Jo attempted to use it as a shortcut to the kitchen, revealing that there is only a greenscreen behind the door. The greenscreen portal has since only been used in the ad breaks for "Bready, Bready, Bready."
• Reality Show Genre Blindness:
  • Applies any time a contestant tries to outright cheat at a task, after several series made it abundantly clear that any attempt to do so will be caught on camera and result in their immediate disqualification.
  • One would think, with the amount of physical activity involved in some of the tasks, contestants would realize it's a good idea to dress practically for shooting. Yet Noel Fielding wore a pair of high heeled boots during his series, which even he pointed out (in "Spatchcock It") made a task even harder for him.
• Real Life Writes the Plot:
  • A task in Series 4 involving shepherding dogs onto a red mat originally involved chickens. However, after Lolly Adefope had filmed the task but before anyone else could, there was an outbreak of avian flu which required the switch. Lolly was judged separately from the other contestants and was awarded bonus points given her version of the task was much harder.
  • Season 10 was significantly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic; while most of the location tasks were filmed before the pandemic, the studio sections (and some of the team tasks) were filmed afterwards, so everyone involved were socially distanced. A few team tasks had to be modified, such as "I Hate Your Trainers"'s watermelon feeding task, a team task which was quite a lot harder for the team of three that consisted of Katherine Parkinson, Mawaan Rizwan and Johnny Vegas as they had to use sticks with pre-prepared cut watermelon, whereas the other two (Daisy May Cooper and Richard Herring) were not restricted by the social distancing rules due to filming before they were put in place. The team of three were awarded a bonus point due to the circumstances being out of their control. The socially distanced conditions were in force through Series 11 (all the studio, team tasks, and airfield hangar tasks) and 12 (the entirety of Series 12 was filmed with social distancing protocols).
• Really 700 Years Old: Played for laughs with Frank in series one, as he was the oldest on the panel, as he makes self deprecating jokes claiming he's from the 1930's.
• Recurring Element: At the Taskmaster House, various props and set pieces are rotated in and out each series, while others become permanent fixtures (most notably the caravan starting with series four):
  • "Patatas," the toy cat that has to be rescued in "Welcome to Rico Face," reappears in later series when contestants used it for creative tasks like the flick book film of "Boing Boing" or the best extension to the Taskmaster House in "The Perfect Stuff."
  • Two props from earlier series are reused in "Toshwash." The baby head with a plant that memorably had aubergine stuffed in it and was called a "quaby" in series nine and a birdcage with knitted dolls of the series seven cast were respectively chosen by Daisy and Johnny in their successful attempts to convince Richard the security guard to look in their shopping trolleys.
• Red Herring:
  • The entire Taskmaster squash task in "Down An Octave" was one big red herring. The teams were sent to a squash court, and had to score 11 points as fast as possible. They were given things to aid them such as cakes, a bucket, and squash rackets and balls, but in the end, all they had to do to score points was to touch their head.
  • In "Friendship Is Truth", one task is presented pinned to the side of the caravan, with a telescope being set up outside the house so that the contestants can read it from a distance. The contestants struggle to make out what the task says, with Hugh Dennis being particularly vocal regarding the poor quality of the lens. The telescope ends up being completely unrelated to the task, with Greg even pointing out that nobody even asked the contestants to look through it.
  • Played with in "Residue Around the Hoof". The five contestants each go outside to be met with an array of objects. The task initially appears to be completely unrelated to any of them, and involves blowing up a balloon whilst blindfolded. However, when they remove the blindfold, they discover that that task was just a setup for the next task; the objects were moved around and changed whilst they were blindfolded and they now have to spot the ten differences.
  • A more literal example can be seen in "The Noise that Blue Makes", during the duck-finding task. Chris Ramsey attempts to open a confusing wooden box in search of a duck, only to find a picture of Richard Herring in it. No guesses as to what color he was...
• Revenge is Sweet: In one season 14 team task, the contestants are required to set a short scene to a quite jaunty piece of score. Dara, Fern and John elect to devise the opening credits to a 1980s-style hospital set comedy, with Dara and Fern playing doctors inflicting what appear to be numerous painful and unnecessary procedures on their hapless patient played by John. Given the numerous examples of John being inept, bumbling and, in one notorious example, engaging in outright sabotage for his own benefit, though they didn't know this at the time, it's hard not to get the feeling that Dara and Fern are taking a certain amount of vicious pleasure and catharsis in inflicting imaginary painful indignities upon John.
• Right-Hand Cat: In "There's Strength in Arches," the potato masher Bond villain from Doc, Joe, and Katherine's stop motion film also had a cat (Patatas) that gleefully supports the masher.
• Rube Goldberg Device: A task in "Little Polythene Grief Cave" is delivered in this way. The contestants push a ball, which pushes another ball down a piece of gutter pipe, which pushes over some loo roll, which kicks a football, which knocks over some books, which activates a scissor mechanism that lets loose two balloons, which drops a payload onto some dominos, and then the final domino plunges off the edge of the table and swipes away a cloth that was hiding the task on the table next to them all. Al in particular was impressed. The task in question was to make a domino rally.
• Rule 34: For the prize task in "I Love To Squander Promise", Frankie brings in a sexually explicit fanart of Captain America and Wolverine.
• Rule of Funny: The show lives and dies by this rule. Greg's willingness to allow an outside the box interpretation of a task almost always comes down to how entertaining that person's attempt was. Similarly, Greg will sometimes give questionable or unfair judging for the sake of a joke.
• Running Gag:
  • The tasks always end in "Your time starts now." Lampshaded in "Hello", where a disclaimer pops up on-screen to not inhale perm lotion, with the phrase attached to the end of it.
  • Alex will occasionally announce the seconds of a task completion time before the minutes, stemming from a small bit about it in Series 2.
  • Greg's introductions of the five contestants in Series 1 tend to include making a recurring joke about each one based on a particular theme:
    • Frank Skinner's tended to be about his age, seeing as he was the oldest contestant;
    • Josh Widdicombe's would be about his youthful features;
    • Roisin Conaty's would tend to be an embarrassing anecdote about her that Greg revealed based on their long-term friendship;
    • Romesh Ranganathan's would be a poke at his grumpy persona;
    • Tim Key's would be a bit more random, but would often be about his general lack of popular success compared to the others.
  • "Pork Is A Sausage" has Doc Brown saying several times that he is "not a [food] man".
  • Greg referring to Richard Osman separately from the rest of the Series 2 cast, with phrases like "four comedians and a TV producer" or "four comedians and a game show host".
  • In Series 3, tax evasion is brought up, as it was quite topical at the time, with both Google and boy band "Take That" being name dropped. On more than one occasion this has lead Greg to penalize a contestant when they bring up those two tax evaders.
  • Any time Joe Lycett needs to leave the house via the front door, he tends to run back to kiss the main portrait of Greg first, perhaps what is being referenced in a task in "The Old, Soft, Curved Padlock".
  • Joe Lycett also seems to have a habit of stealing props at the end of a task. Over the course of series four he steals a bowl of lemons, some rice, a large bar of cooking chocolate, a mannequin, and a silver serving dish.
  • Every pre-recorded task in Series 4 has Mel take the seal off of the task and put it into her right breast pocket, apparently to melt down later.
  • Hugh almost always losing the prize task, to the point where by "Meat" it's lampshaded by both Greg and Hugh.
  • Mark looks like a heron.
  • Almost any time Alex meets Aisling to give her the task in Series 5, the way it's framed somehow manages to make him look like an Accidental Pervert.
  • In Series 6, Alice greets Alex in the pre-recorded tasks with a different pet name ("Hello, my little ferret").
  • Asim Chaudhry and squirty cream appearing in his recorded tasks, which is lampshaded by Russell in "Roadkill Doused In Syrup".
  • Phil's inability to haggle down the price of the objects he nominates for the prize task.
  • James refusing to greet Alex at the beginning of each task. When questioned why by Alex, he says "It's not part of the task".
  • Discussed in "Mother Honks Her Horn" — After a VT shows Rhod attempting to strip search Alex for the little blue book, Greg remarks that there are two running gags at play throughout all the tasks: Rhod taking every opportunity to take Alex's trousers off, and Alex is always wearing pink underpants or longjohns. Alex then reveals that he is also wearing pink underpants in the studio!
  • In "Stuck in a Mammal Groove", Iain makes two references to him potentially being a part of the roster for a future "Champions of Champions" special, the first was by getting miniature toy figurine versions of Bob Mortimer, Josh Widdicombe, Katherine Ryan, Noel Fielding and Rob Beckett placed onto a massive self-made volcano, and him proclaiming that he hopes to join them, and the second is apologising to Alex via song for stuffing a pie in his face, and wishes to be a part of "Champions of Champions".
  • In "This Is Trevor", all the tasks were related to "pink" in some way, with most tasks involving pink lady apples, and another was to use your pinky finger to do something powerful.
  • In Series 9, babies are a recurring motif in Ed Gamble's recorded tasks.
  • Daisy-May Cooper bringing in very mundane prizes to fulfil the prize task requirements of Series 10, with Greg getting increasingly exasperated and annoyed at this. Her "nicest thing to put in your mouth" was white wine, her "best thing with lots of holes in it" was crumpets, her "best thing that probably has a spring in its mechanism" was an umbrella, her "cheekiest food" was Billy Bear Ham (ham in the shape of a bear), her "best pointy thing" was a metal kebab stick, and her "best top heavy item" was a cottonbud wearing a pirate's hat. Only the white wine won her the round.
  • Charlotte Ritchie's ongoing audition to become a children's TV presenter in Series 11.
  • Alex announcing the weight of an object and following it with "or the same weight as [weird thing]". In one challenge in Series 10, the first result was described as being the same weight as a hamster, followed by the next two being the same weight as a hamster missing one leg and the same weight as a hamster who's swallowed a C-type battery.
  • One cast member will speak of a person they've met outside the show, only for another cast member to gesture to the audience and grandly announce, "And they're here tonight!" In particular, Rhod jokingly did this in reference to Greg's mother, only for Greg to matter-of-factly confirm that she actually was. Rhod was mortified.^note He had submitted a somewhat racy photograph of her in a bubble bath, wearing nothing but a fez, in order to annoy Greg.
  • A funky smell in the lab room becomes one of these in Season 14. In the first task shown in that room, Munya Chawawa complains of a strong, unpleasant smell that no one else using the room seems to notice. This gets a surprising amount of payoffs throughout the season: it turns out that the smell was caused due to Sarah Millican pouring out two entire bottles of milk over the floor in a later-shown task and, despite the best efforts of the team to clean it all up, a small amount was left to go sour before Munya completed his tasks. And for added value, Munya and Sarah happened to be on the same team for the team tasks; in a further task which again takes place in the lab, Munya once again complains about the smell only for Sarah, unseen by Munya, to silently yet visibly realise that she was responsible for it.
  • In more recent series, Greg will often introduce Alex by claiming he once told him something offensive or objectionable in confidence.
    Greg: And next to me, a man who once told me in private that he doesn't really like women, because he thinks they've got a bit "too chopsy of late". It's Little Alex Horne!

S

• Sadist Teacher: Played with; while the show isn't directly about a school, Greg Davies is a former teacher and clearly often finds himself lapsing back into old methods when dealing with the contestants. Accordingly, his persona in the show generally comes across as a mixture of a sadistic headmaster and a Bad Boss tormenting his "students" (the contestants) and especially his employees (i.e. Alex) for his own amusement.
• Sarcastic Clapping:
  • In the "collect as much sweat as possible" task in "Little Polythene Grief Cave," Rob Beckett got no drops of sweat and 12 different accents, but managed to place fourth because Al has been disqualified for attempting to substitute sweat with urine. Greg asks the audience to give him one clap.
  • In the "camouflage yourself" task in "Hollowing Out a Baguette," Mel "camouflages" herself by hiding behind a flower vase inside the house. Greg allows the audience to give her one clap when she is announced as having placed last.
  • "It Might Be Wind" is a nailbiter because Judi Love is the only contestant in her series not to have won an episode by that stage. Going into the live task, she is leading the episode... only to get disqualified and have Chris Ramsey overtake her. To rub salt into the wound, Alex offers up a number of simple solutions that could have won her the episode. Judi can be seen "applauding" with just her index fingers during the credits.
• Say My Name:
  • In "BMXing", the Prize challenge was a thought-provoking prize, and when Liza revealed her prize to be about Nikola Tesla (specifically the concept of "Tesla" itself), and Liza also revealed his fate of basically dying alone in a hotel without a penny to his name, while another man took his idea and sold it on without proper credit, which had Greg shout Nikola Tesla's surname upwards while he sat down. She came 4th, and got 2 points, with Greg claiming her prize was "a bit too dry."
  • In "Join Our Cult," Rose Matafeo does this while dressed as a bush for her dramatic entrance, yelling "STELLAAAA!!!"
• Scandalgate: During the team task in "The System of Endless Plates", which revolves around a small white feather, one team loses the feather and spends several increasingly frustrated minutes trying to find it again. Greg refers to the incident in his judging as "Featherlossgate".
• Schmuck Bait:
  • Any time Alex asks a contestant if they want to see a triumphant achievement again, the correct answer is "No". It's almost always because he's about to reveal additional footage that will result in a disqualification, although once, in "Pea in a Haystack", it was just to torture everyone with time lapse footage of Sara Pascoe's adorable ice-cream snowman — which had drawn a spontaneous "Aww" from the studio audience — succumbing to the heat after the task was over.
  • One task involved moving a large number of coconuts, with the provision that if any two contestants used the same item to move the coconuts they would both be disqualified. One of the items provided was prominently labeled "coconut harness", and contained foam padding with a number of coconut-sized depressions. Nobody used it.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Money!:
  • Played with following footage that showed Tim Key lying about filming for Comic Relief. Greg wants to put him into last place unless Tim donates some money to Comic Relief. Tim then asks how much he has to donate in order to secure first place instead, but he rejects the offer of £12,500, and settles for third place.
  • Played straight with Al in "The F.I.P.". When Alex tells him he won't move a bucket full of water, Al then proceeds to lure him to move the bucket by waving cash in front of him, and ends up paying Alex £80. This ended up causing a bit of controversy in the studio, as Sara had asked Alex to move the bucket for her only to be rejected. Ultimately, Sara was given a bonus point in light of this, and Alex was forced to donate the money away and remove a shoe and sock for the remainder of the episode.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here:
  • Jon Richardson was so mortified by his attempt at impressing a mayor that, when the video clip was being shown in the studio, he was genuinely moved to leave the room until the clip had ended.
  • Both Sally Phillips and Alice Levine played this for laughs when they were faced with embarrassing playbacks, but they ended up staying.
• Sdrawkcab Speech: The team task in "Legit Glass" uses this. One member of the team gets to see an object inside a safe and then they have to leave a tape recording identifying that object. The recording is played backwards for the rest of the team, and they have to decipher the message and identify the object correctly. The object is a reversible sequin pillow decorated with a picture of Greg with an alpaca.
• Secret Handshake: A task in "No Stars for Naughty Boys" asked the contestants to come up with a handshake between Alex and themselves. Most of them were overly elaborate hand gestures and moving about. Joe and Alex just rubbed each other's palm with a finger for 3 minutes straight while maintaining eye contact. Joe won first place.
• Sensual Spandex: Phil's pre-recorded outfit in series 7 is a very tight-fitting suit that Homages Bruce Lee's yellow and black tracksuit in Game of Death. The revealing nature of the outfit is constantly lampshaded.
• Separated-at-Birth Casting:
  • invoked In Series 3, Greg observes that Rob and Sara share a passing resemblance and Sara notes that internet trolls often try to upset her by saying she's Rob in a wig. As a result, Rob and Sara are referred to as siblings (or in one instance, the "creepy Aryan twins") when introducing team challenges. (The resulting Squick factor of them later playing a couple in one of the video tasks is lampshaded.)
  • Invoked in the series 3 episode "A Very Nuanced Character." One task asks the competitors to correctly identify what a retiree named Hugh used to do for a living using only yes and no questions. After reading the task aloud, Dave asks whether the other competitors would also be speaking to someone "who looked like their future selves" (he and Hugh were wearing similar outfits). Hugh's resemblance to Alex is also remarked upon and there are jokes that he is actually Alex's father.
• Separated by a Common Language:
  • In "I've Sinned Again," Katherine, who is Canadian, spends precious seconds searching for a drawer in the living room, at one point looking inside the Taskmaster pineapple. When questioned about the line of thinking, Katherine claims that because of this trope, it was possible that drawers meant pineapple to the British.
  • Canadian Mae Martin, upbraided for using the word "humiliate" when they needed a three-syllable word, claims that Canadians pronounce it "hoomleyate", like how they call aluminium "aluminum", with four syllables rather than five. They go on to pronounce it "hoomleyate" later in the episode.
• Serenade Your Lover: ...or rather, Serenade Yourself. A task in "Bready Bready Bready" was to do exactly that. Lampshaded by David Baddiel who points out that a self-serenade sounds too much like bragging about masturbating.
• Serendipity Writes the Plot: In the third Champion of Champions special, a rubber band is accidentally left on the living room table before the "do something really stupid" task is presented to one contestant. That contestant (Dara) proceeds to base their attempt around rubber bands.
• Serial Escalation: The start of "Stay Humble" has Alex play a game of "what's in his pocket?" Greg guesses (correctly, to his surprise) another smaller pocket. They play again, and the smaller pocket is followed by another smaller pocket. The two play again, and Alex reveals the pocket concealed a locket, which, when the game was modified to "What's in my locket?", it has a tiny felt pocket inside.
• Serious Business:
  • The trivial, silly nature of the tasks is often contrasted with the laser-focussed sense of competitive seriousness with which the contestants attempt to complete them. Genuinely heated arguments and tension have broken out over matters such as finding a satsuma in a sock as quickly possible. This is made even more ridiculous by the prizes the contestants are competing for each week which are usually, in Greg's words, "complete tat." This is both an intentional part of the format (Alex Horne has discussed in interviews how part of his inspiration for the show is how ridiculously competitive comedians can get with each other) and is frequently lampshaded, with Greg often commenting on how insanely seriously everyone is taking everything, or how weirdly invested he's become in the outcome of whether the contestants can, for example, tell whether the person behind them is touching their neck with a finger or a sausage. The drama in series 2 when Joe Wilkinson's superb single-shot throw of a potato into a golf hole is disqualified after he is shown to have accidentally stepped on the "red-green" with his toe is also described by Greg as "a surprisingly genuinely harrowing moment".
  • Certain elements of the fanbase can get very into the scoring / competition side of the show, to the point where at times and in places it seems to be treated more as an Olympic sport which just happens to feature comedians rather than a comedy show which just happens to have a competitive element. Expect lengthy threads on social media discussing the intricacies and fairness of Greg's point-scoring, impassioned defences of contestants who have been judged 'unfairly' (according to them) and, at times, a certain sense of humorlessness about the whole thing. This has not gone unnoticed by the show itself, with Greg in particular making it very clear he has absolutely no interest in what they think, and that he will in fact on occasion deliberately make some of his judging decisions purely to wind them up.
  • Decisively subverted by Frankie Boyle in "100% Bosco", during a debate regarding the prize task:
    Greg: Frankie, why's your photo of a child^note his son, at a gig where he intended to tell a joke better than Jenny's bed?
    Frankie: [Casual] Who gives a fuck?
• Servile Snarker: While Alex Horne is set up as "the assistant" and tends to get Butt-Monkey status from most of the competitors, his soft-spoken way of winding people up with helpfully unhelpful comments can be just as cutting and snarky as anyone else's.
• Sexy Backless Outfit: A backless suit, worn by Alex for the series 11 finale. While Greg found it "disgusting," several contestants were more appreciative.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: A lot of tasks end up this way when the contestants are disqualified for breaking one of the rules, especially if they only discover this in the studio, several months after filming the tasks. Additionally, everyone will have been filmed completing a tiebreak task in case it is needed, but not all of the shoots will be shown unless the person has tied for first place in that episode. How well they did in the tiebreak task would essentially be moot (example: Mark Watson's impressive yoghurt kick below):
  • The stand-out incident for a disqualification is when Joe Wilkinson perfectly threw a potato into a golf hole and everyone made a big to-do over the feat, only for it to be nullified (after some very intense debate) because his foot was touching the "red green" that he wasn't meant to touch.
  • One task in "Tony Three Pies" scored the contestants based on their ability to construct an "exotic sandwich", with bonus points for how much of the sandwich they were able to subsequently eat. As it happened, the bonus points were given at exactly the inverse rate of the base points, so everybody came away with exactly 6 points, rendering the entire task moot. Except for Noel, who got an additional point for eating a bit of Alex's beard, and Mel, who got a pity point for getting an M&M stuck up her nose.
  • When tasked to stack cans while introducing herself as from a different country every ten seconds, Aisling Bea failed to do the first introduction within ten seconds, but nobody filming on the day caught this, so she kept working at the task for several minutes. When this was revealed in the studio, she throttled Alex and kicked over her chair. She managed to fit in 61 introductions and stack a 10-can high tower that day (taller than what the other contestants had), but only had a one-can high tower when her task ended.
  • Mark Watson was given a special task to send Greg a "cheeky text" every day for five months, which he admitted was one of his most stressful demands for that time. However, he got no points because he only sent 148 of the required 150 texts.
    Mark: I'm devastated it was just me, and I'm absolutely shattered to get no points out of something that, if I look back over this calendar year, is genuinely one of the major things I've done with it.
  • Mark Watson's impressive yoghurt kick, as seen in this outtake for "Spoony Neeson," was recorded for a tiebreaker task. Bob and Sally were the ones who tied for first in that episode, so only their attempts were shown in the episode that was broadcast. Most spectacularly, Mark was the only person who was able to get any yoghurt onto the target at all.
  • Not quite disqualified, but James Acaster's attempt at the "improve your hula-hooping" task in Series 7 ended up being something like this from his perspective. After being assigned the task on location, both he and Phil Wang were given until the studio shoot — some eight weeks — to improve their ability to hula-hoop, with points being awarded for demonstrating the most improvement. Unfortunately, when the studio task arrived, James choked on the first effort, which was slightly worse than his original one, despite having spent the time seriously practicing and subsequently demonstrating quite impressive skill. Despite this, Greg ruled that although he demonstrated more improvement than Phil, his first attempt had to be the one that was judged, so while he did get some points and technically 'won' the task it all ended up being for naught. James was visibly seething as the judgement was passed, and it contributed to a genuinely hostile and bitter Rage Breaking Point later in the episode when it looked like Greg was going to go generously on Rhod Gilbert's attempt at finding a satsuma in a sock.
• Shaky P.O.V. Cam: In Series 1, the final team task in "The Last Supper" was to film the best blooper reel. Roisin handled the camera for her team, and unfortunately due to this trope, most of the actual bloopers were hardly captured on the reel. She attempts to justify her filming by stating that she went "too method" and that she was "Blair Witching" it.
• Shaped Like Itself:
  • Some of Alex's unusual measurements are like this, such as saying that 52 metres is "the distance to the moon and back, if you start 26 metres away from the moon."
  • In "This Is Trevor", the prize task category is "most slippery thing". Both Sian and Paul offer up a pair of slippers on the ground that nothing could be more slipper-y than actual slippers.
• Sharp-Dressed Man: Alex is always in a suit, although the only times he's been seen wearing a tie as well is whenever he was filming with Mel.
• Shipper on Deck: Several contestants seem to ship Greg and Alex, such as Asim based on the outtakes for "The Old Soft, Curved Padlock". Russell also has signs of this in "One Warm Prawn". When Greg and Alex actually do kiss in "We Met at Mealtimes," the contestants are heard to comment "Finally!" And in yet another outtake during the "very close and intense lean-in and whisper" scene in "Five Miles per Day," Ed is visibly turned on, and Rose loses her patience and simply yells, "Fucking kiss!"
• Shirtless Scene:
  • Greg rips Alex's shirt off at the very end of "Their Water's So Delicious".
  • In "BMXing", the second task of the show was to be as manly as possible with a box. Tim Vine took this to mean standing shirtless in the middle of the street while standing and posing inside of the box. Russell did one better and drew "Manly Words" onto his stomach and arms and did some DIY outside, with Alex asking questions about what to do about specific things (for example asking girls out via Tinder, which apparently requires you to roast a pig). Greg was suitably flustered. Tim and Russell got 4 points.
  • Rhod is particularly fond of doing this. The first recorded task of the first episode of Series 7 involves him directing Alex to remove his bikini top.
  • In the task where the contestants must create the best water feature from "Quisps," both Ed and David use Alex in their water features and ask Alex to take off his shirt. In his attempt, David takes off his shirt "in solidarity" with Alex, to the amusement of everyone in the studio. Ed creates a merman with a water jet shooting out of one boob, while David creates a "Greek god" statue standing triumphantly in a bathtub. Ed won the task, and David placed second.
  • For the team task in "Quisps" ("recreate a classic board game"), David and Jo choose to recreate Operation. David, stripped down to his underwear, takes on the role of Cavity Sam (with a light up buzzer on his nose that he hits if he feels the clamps on his skin), while Jo and Alex are the players. Most of the items they have to remove are biscuits, but they do also need to remove an actual kidney.
• Shout-Out: So much so it has its own page.
• Show Stopper:
  • In "Welcome to Rico Face", after listing out what things Jon was throwing at a cat to get it down from a tree, one of the items was a Lacrosse stick. After Alex mentioned that Jon had called him a dick as he was cross, Greg immediately follows up with "LaCross... He was LaCrosse!", which prompted Alex to stand up and clap, followed by everyone else.
  • In "Phoenix," Sally Phillips completed one task so quickly and conclusively, Greg leapt up to hug her and brought her out to the front of the stage and take a bow as the audience gave her a standing ovation.
  • Sally Phillips, again, in "Spoony Neeson" when her P.O.V. Cam movie (the graphic birthing of a fully-grown Alex) is screened.
  • In "Clumpy Swayey Clumsy Man", one task was to get rid of an eraser by erasing it, with the quickest to do so winning. The task never specified how to erase it, and so the rules were open to interpretation. In Joe's attempt, he broke his eraser up into tiny pieces and threw the dust in the garden, with Paul, Iain and Lou flushing the eraser down the toilet (Lou did this after trying to eat it, but still). Joe was quite furious in the studio that Paul, Lou and Iain were employing Exact Words, and went on a rant about how his efforts in his attempt essentially go to waste when Iain and Paul go with the least creative method possible, with him also arguing it was quite possible to retrieve the eraser back from the sewers. This rant prompted Greg and Alex to stand up and clap, followed by everyone else. He technically comes last in the task, but Greg gives him three bonus points for his efforts.
• Silly Walk:
  • A task in "Pea in a Haystack" was to get to a microwave in as few steps as possible. Cue contestants either taking very long steps or trying to avoid traveling on their feet.
  • In "The 75th Question", contestants are tasked to record the highest number of steps on a pedometer. Bridget Christie doesn't seem to realise it only works if you take normal steps, and ends up taking ridiculously exaggerated steps, then tiny little ones. Everyone is baffled at her inability to walk normally.
    Greg: Bridget, I never thought I'd ask this, but: do you know how to walk?
• Silver Fox: In "He Was a Different Man," Greg is flattered by Asim's description of him as one ("the tall motherfucker with the ivory hair") for the latter's declaration of love.
• "Simon Says" Mini-Game: The final task of "Residue round the hoof" was to balance on one foot while wearing a spiked shoe over a balloon. Alex would shout out instructions in the form of "Greg says...", which they then have to do, and "Alex says...", which they would ignore. Aisling wins, then Mark, then Sally, then Nish, then finally Bob.
• Simple, yet Awesome: Greg repeatedly praises Kerry Godliman throughout Series 7 for her straightforward, but effective approach to tasks.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: Daisy in series 10. This is most notable in the live task for "I Hate Your Trainers", when the contestants had to say as many unique words of a certain length without leaving a gap any longer than 2 seconds in-between each word. When they had to list four letter words, Daisy just swore, and even had one word censored.
  Alex: [after Daisy had finished] There are no more swear words, as far as I can tell.
• Sixth Ranger: Frederick the Swede could be considered one, as he appeared in one task each series for the first five series (and then another in the thirteenth).
• Slave to PR: Teased, but ultimately defied (at least when it comes to the live audience). Greg will occasionally second-guess his judgements out loud based on the live audience reaction, but ultimately sticks with his opinions. See the entry for Yes-Man.
  Greg: [while grading the prize entries] Fourth... it's the Chuckle Brothers, I—
  Joe Lycett: What?!
  [audience boos and groans]
  Greg: [addressing the audience] You shut your fucking mouths. I will put him last!
• Slippery Skid:
  • The first pre-recorded task in "Meat" is to slide the furthest. Joe and Lolly construct slip-and-slide runs and slather on (variously) butter, soap, running water, and a sled. Despite their preparations, they each slid the shortest distances and came bottom
  • The prize task for "This Is Trevor" had the contestants bring in the most slippery thing. Sian brought in slippers, Iain brought in a toy alien egg (which he admitted is more slimy than slippery) Lou brought in a slide with a drawing of "Nasty Nick" on it, Paul brought in a banana peel, ban-jelly pie, and slippers (which Sian wasn't happy with), Joe brought in... soap. Sian got 2 points, Iain got 3 points, Joe and Paul "Banana King" Sinha got 4 points, with Lou wining the round, and getting 5 points.
• Slow and Steady Wins the Race: Greg has noted that it's a consistent trend that contestants who take their time at the start of a task to stop and think on how to approach it, instead of rushing off because of time limits, tend to do better. For example, Rhod Gilbert in Series 7 is repeatedly shown intensely thinking at the start of his tasks, often pressing his fingertips to the side of his head. In contrast to some of the others who rush off as soon as the task starts, this extra thinking allows him to come up with more imaginative (and sometimes more effective) solutions, such as digging up and carrying a golf hole closer to the tee to make his shot easier.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Iain comes across as being this in Series 8, repeatedly talking about appearing on a future "Champion of Champions" installment and throwing fits whenever he doesn't get the points he thinks he deserves.
• Skewed Priorities: Discussed in "The Curse of Politeness"; Mae Martin can only attribute a sudden stroke of inspiration which led to them discovering a neat ball of string that could be used to complete the "put a neat ball of string on this cushion (after being tricked into unravelling the ball of string)" task to the intervention of God. Frankie Boyle, who did less well in the task, then rather acerbically notes that it's a good thing God took time out from what was presumably His busy schedule of, among other assumed things, attending to the victims of natural disasters to "check in on this show" and help Mae out.
  Alex: Everyone needs a hobby. He's a fan.
• Small Role, Big Impact: In a contestant's personal life, at least; on the official podcast, Romesh Ranganathan reveals that, contrary to expectations, he actually didn't get into as much trouble as you'd think for losing his wedding ring or his wife's car in the prize tasks (it's unstated, but it can be assumed that jokes aside he sought her approval for both beforehand), both of which are generally held as key examples of just how far contestants can be willing to go to win the prize rounds. In fact, the prize that actually caused him the most trouble turned out to be the cheap trinket snowglobe given to him by his sister-in-law he brought in for episode one. Romesh revealed that his sister-in-law was genuinely offended by the merciless put-downs and mockery he subjected it to on the show, causing a bit of bad feeling and leaving him with some explaining and apologising to do.
• Smuggling with Dolls: Played for laughs in the series:
  • In Series 4 episode "Look At Me," the team task is to get as much dry flour onto a dartboard from their bandstand gazebo. The trio of Joe, Lolly, and Noel at one point cut open a stuffed toy fox and put as much flour as they can before tossing it onto the dartboard.
  • In Series 9 episode "Join Our Cult," the first recorded task is to hide three aubergines around the living room for Alex to search. Ed treated this task similar to a prison search for contraband, and hid his last aubergine by stuffing pieces of it into the baby head figurines around the room.
• The Smurfette Principle:
  • Applies to the first three series. The two hosts are male, as are four of the contestants, leaving Roisin, Katherine, and Sara the token women of their series. Averted with every series from the fourth through the fourteenth, as well as the sixteenth, which each feature at least two female contestants while the ninth, twelfth, thirteenth, and sixteenth feature three. The fifteenth series has three men, one woman, and one non-binary contestant.
  • Justified in the first Champion of Champions special since Katherine was the only woman to have won a series at that point.
• Soapbox Sadie: Played with; on occasion, several of the contestants (particularly the ladies) have raised objections to a task which seems to be worded in a way which is discriminatory or politically incorrect. However, while they've often framed their objections in humorous terms, the hosts are often willing to consider and acknowledge when they've got a valid point.
  • For example, in the last stage task of series 2, Katherine Ryan objected to the requirement that the contestants put on a man's tie "correctly", since as a woman she'd never learned to do that, and framed her objections as an example of "top down misogyny". As it was agreed that she had a point, a compromise was reached wherein a comma was moved before 'correctly' instead of after, meaning that it was only necessary to put it on.^note As it turned out, this ended up screwing over Joe Wilkinson instead; this changed the next requirement to "correctly eat a banana", and as he claimed to be allergic to them he just stuffed it in his mouth without peeling it, thus failing to meet the amended requirements. Greg, however, suspected he was making it up and declined to give him any consideration.
    Greg: Do you not know how to put a tie on? Is that—
    Katherine: No!! Let's all put on a tampon, and then we'll see! [thunderous applause]
  • Aisling Bea was also quick to raise feminist-based critiques of the show and tasks throughout her season, but this trope most obviously kicked in during the graph task in the final episode, when she attempted to construct a graph outlining the female representation versus male representation on the show to this point. However, as Alex pointed out, the graph was flawed because it inaccurately appeared to chart the first season as having equal representation of men and women when this wasn't the case (there had only been one woman in that season). A mortified Aisling realised that her own poor grasp of mathematics had provided an opening for two men to justifiably "mansplain" to her about representation.
  • Although he plays his complaint for some laughs, Lee Mack appears genuinely irritated when a task led to him biting into an egg, when he had told the production team he's a vegan. When he brings it up in the studio, Alex is clearly embarrassed.
• Soap Within a Show: the "most suspenseful soap opera cliffhanger" task in "A coquettish fascinator." Kerry and Jess's entry even featured a Soap Opera Organ Score.
• Sound-Effect Bleep: Averted for the most part as the show airs at 9pm on British television, where swearing isn't normally censored. "Spatchcock it" is a very notable exception, where both Alex and Greg say "Mega Cunt" in response to Mel's refusal to swear. In "What kind of pictures?", a task was to put "something surprising" in the middle of a chocolate egg. Alice's "surprise" was apparently the PIN for Alex's bank and burglar alarm^note after the video, Greg happily says 3047, much to Alex's frustration which got bleeped out.
• Speaking Simlish: Sarah Kendall does this in "An Orderly Species", as the aircraft safety announcement task demands that the contestants speak in either a different accent to their own, or a different language. Since Sarah isn't bilingual and is also unable to do accents, she decided to speak gibberish.
• Spiteful Spit: Throughout Series 16, Julian appears to harbour disdain for Alex and his antics., usually manifesting as withering comments about him. This culminates with the task to do something shocking (but family-friendly) with a doughnut in the series finale — Julian decides to chew up his doughnut, asks Alex to get on his knees, and then spits the doughnut into Alex's face.
• Spoiled by the Format: While not universal, there are some common tells that can indicate exactly how a contestant did in a task before Alex reveals their performances:
  • If a contestant's attempt is being shown separate from the others, they either did exceptionally well or were an utter disaster. Such contestants will also usually be shown last, though they can also be shown first.
  • A general rule of thumb is that the contestants whose attempts are shown first did okay-but-not-great.
  • Within the footage, if more than one contestant's attempts are being shown at the same time, it is generally possible to tell when one contestant has beaten another one in a timed task before Alex reveals the times because of the edit; each contestant is often shown finishing roughly in the order that they finished.
  • If a task includes no statement of the win condition ("Fastest wins," "Best X wins," etc.), it must be the first in a two-part task. Contestants rarely seem to figure this out.
• Spoiler Opening: The title sequence for the regular series is made up of fast-paced clips of that series' contestants carrying out the pre-recorded tasks. (However, they tend to choose shots that are so wacky and madcap that they make no sense out of context and don't spoil much of anything.) Subverted for the one- or two-off episodes that didn't give them enough material to build a whole title sequence from:
  • In the first Champion of Champions, the sequence is made of clips from the champions' original series (in the second episode, interspersed with Josh Widdicombe's "sing the most heroic rendition of the theme tune" trick task).
  • The openers for the New Year's Treats show the contestants simply walking toward the Taskmaster House (in the second one, striding heroically though coloured smoke), with a very small number of clips from the episode.
  • In the second Champion of Champions episode, the contestants are given a task to record at least five shots of them them doing "heroic things" which can be used in the titles.
  • One more subversion: a few series' openers have included clips from tasks that ultimately weren't shown in the series^note Tim Key popping bubble wrap in series 1; Paul Sinha in a bath reacting to a loud noise in series 8; Richard Herring with some spaghetti taped together in series 10; Dara Ó Briain going down an escalator in series 14, as well as various brief reactions that didn't make it to the final edit.
• Stealth Expert: Lolly in "No stars for naughty boys". A task required her to find a hiding place, and she hid so well, it took over 20 minutes for Alex to find her.
• Stealth Pun:
  • It's possible that the "make an edible mask" task from "I've sinned again" came about because switching the first two letters of "task" and "master" produces "mask taster".
  • In Series 11's "Slap and Tong", a task was to make an outfit for a replica bee. The contestants all wore bee-keeping outfits, and some did sew items to the bee. This is most likely a shout out to The Great British Sewing Bee, only taken to its most literal interpretation.
• Stern Teacher: Not literally, but Greg's teaching background has come in surprisingly handy for disciplining contestants on several occasions:
  • In "Spoony Neeson", Greg takes Nish aside for a talking to about pulling his socks up and actually putting some effort into the show after his dismal POV video of him completing a sudoku puzzle (incorrectly, according to Greg), as if Nish is the class clown who has untapped potential he refuses to apply. (Part of the comedy, of course, is that all of his video tasks had been recorded months prior and there was nothing more he could do about them.)
  • Even more notoriously, in "Ollie" Greg's fumbling attempts to open a puzzle box brought in by Phil lead to the infamous "Just open it, you pussy!" callout from James, which in turn leads to Greg taking him aside and giving him a dressing down like a teacher who's reached the limits of his patience with a troublesome student but is aware that he has to tread carefully in how to discipline him. James immediately crumbles.
  • In "Moments of Silence", Greg is so unimpressed by everyone's failure to fill a cup of water suspended over the red green without touching it that he orders everyone to sit in silence for a minute while standing and glowering at them.
• Sticky Fingers:
  • Seems to be a Running Gag with Joe Lycett, who took a bowl of lemons in "A Fat Bald White Man", a small bag of rice in "Look At Me", the mannequin in "No Stars for Naughty Boys", and a silver serving dish in "Tony Three Pies".
  • Mel has a habit of pocketing the wax seal from the task envelopes.
  • The prize task in Series 9 episode "A Cuddle" is the best thing stolen from somebody's house. David took one sheet of toilet paper from Buckingham Palace, Ed brought in a collection of souvenirs from Greg's house, Jo brought in a ceramic phrenology tattoo head that she admits she borrowed from a personal friend, Katy brought in Kerry Godliman's Taskmaster trophy, and Rose took a pink cowboy hat from the Taskmaster house and improved it with photos of herself wearing the hat. David won the task with 5 points, Katy received 4 points, Ed received 3 points, Rose received 2 points, and Jo received 1 point.
• The Stoic:
  • Alex rarely shows any extreme reactions to what the contestants do during tasks and in the studio. One task had contestants try and raise his blood pressure, but most barely got it up beyond a negligible tick.
  • Paul Chowdhry from Series 3 maintained a deadpan attitude throughout his appearances. So much so that Greg had to prod him to get a cheerful reaction in the studio.
• Strange Minds Think Alike: This tends to happen on occasion:
  • In "Pork is a Sausage", while brainstorming for the 'make a music video for a nursery rhyme' task, both Jon and Richard recall the same vulgar version of Hey Diddle Diddle, rhyming it with 'the cat did a piddle'. (Though only Jon carries on and recites the whole song.)
  • The prize task in "Welcome to Rico Face" was to bring in the coolest blue item. Doc, Katherine and Richard bring in blue-coloured items, but both Joe and Jon interpret the word "blue" as meaning indecent. Joe brings in a pornographic novel called Sea Going Sex Pot and Jon brings in a novelty fridge magnet from Lanzarote of a pig with an album of its sex adventures.
  • In "Pea in a Haystack", Al Murray and Dave Gorman brought in cooking appliances to the prize task for that episode, which was "flamboyant clocks". Al brought in an oven, while Dave brought in a microwave.
  • In "The Dong and the Gong", a task required the contestants to surprise Alex after an hour of him being in a shed. Both Al and Sara had the idea of taking his kids from school and bringing them to him, though Sara went further, and said she'd tie them up to a chair!
  • In "Hollowing out a baguette", Lolly and Noel both thought of cheese-based subscriptions, the former is a service that sends you various cheeses, the latter sends you a gourmet cheese-toastie kit.
  • In "The leprechaun or the lesbian", the final task tasked the contestants in painting themselves as a vegetable, sweet treat, or toy with a canvas round their face. Stunningly, three of the five comedians painted a carrot as their choice.
  • In "Wiley Giraffe blower", the final task was to write down the second longest word while on a plinth with three steps. The second longest word got to move down, and the first to touch the floor won. Josh, Noel, Rob and Alex all had the word "Toblerone" as an example of a 9-lettered word, which got them disqualified from the round. This happens again in the following round to Katherine and Bob with the word "To", which put the three disqualified contestants back in the game again, and disqualified the other two.
  • In "One Warm Prawn", a task involves writing and illustrating a bedtime story for adults. Both Liza and Asim tell stories involving a man having a Potty Emergency after eating a meal involving spoilt prawns.
  • In Series 7 episode, "The Pendulum Draws the Eye," Phil quips that the feet are the hands of one's legs, referring to the task to find the satsuma hidden amongst 49 socks and one of the allowable actions was to wear up to 11 of the socks. Three series later in "Point of Swivel," while attempting to catapult a shoe into a bathtub with only her feet, Katherine Parkinson muses that she wishes her hands were her feet.
  • In "I Can Hear It Gooping", the prize task is 'magnificent stationery'. Kerry prefaces her offering by talking about her love of stationery, leading to a brief good-natured argument with Greg about which of them loves stationery more. It ends with Greg suggesting that on a count of three he'll say what he considers "the king of the stationery items" while Kerry simultaneously says what she's brought in. On three, they both say "a laminator", and Kerry wins the task.
  • In "Quisps", having been instructed to construct an impressive water feature, both David and Ed decide that the centrepiece should be a statue of a mythical creature associated with the sea — and both decide that the statue should be represented by Alex with his top off.
  • In Series 11, when challenged at one point over their lengthy preparations before completing a task both Sarah Kendall and Lee Mack refer to the quote "give me six hours to chop down a tree and I'll spend four sharpening the blade", often attributed to Abraham Lincoln, as a retort.
  • In Series 13's "I Think I've Got This", all three ladies grab the same orange net and use it to complete the task to help Alex bite a rubber duck. The men, on the other hand, both decide to drench Alex.
  • In Series 14’s “The System of Endless Plates”, after being instructed to choose a weapon and a room, three contestants (Dara, Munya and Sarah) chose the frying pan in the living room.
  • In Series 16's "I'm Off to Find a Robin", one task involves the contestants choosing a place in a room to put a cardboard cutout of themself that's as far away from where the others choose as possible. Multiple contestants decide the least likely place is right on the border of the room, and so lose points for thinking alike.
• Strange Secret Entrance: In the Series 6 finale ad bumpers, Alex uses a wardrobe as a time machine of sorts to travel back to various challenges from Series 1 - 5.
• Straw Misogynist:
  • In "The Mean Bean," apparently ahead of the recording, Jessica mentions that her dad thinks Greg unfairly penalises women on this programme. In response, he does exactly that, awarding Jess's prize last place and Kerry second-last:
    Greg: I'm going to put Kerry, because I despise women, joint second to last.
  • Several of Greg's introductions of Alex have painted him in such a light (presumably jokingly and in order to humiliate him as usual), such as this one from the second New Year's Treat:
    Greg: And next to me, a man who whispered his New Year's resolution to me after a few drinks at Christmas; whether he'll succeed in "bringing back the patriarchy", only time will tell.
• String Theory: The teams (Asim, Tim and Liza vs Russell and Alice) in "H." had to "Find the link, then do it 100 times" in the shortest amount of time. The board contained string connecting an overhead projector, various letter scrawlings, the word "Urination", as well as other odd pictures that seemingly mean nothing. The table below had whiskey, a bunny, and a hotel bell. The link? They had to hop 100 times. The bunny was referring to... well "hopping". The string arrangement spelled out the word "hop", the whiskey was an allusion to the word "hop scotch", the hotel bell would be used to call a bellhop. Liza's team got 5 points, while Russell and Alice got 3 points.
• Studio Audience: Presented as a theatre show of sorts. The audience gets to make decisions on the odd occasion.
• Stunned Silence:
  • Greg reacts this way when Josh shows him a tattoo on his foot he had done for a task involving giving Greg the best present for £20. It was "Greg". He won first place.
  • Often subverted when the audience gives a polite round of applause to an unimpressive prize submission or task attempt that Greg really feels doesn't deserve it, with Greg lampshading the audience's generosity:
    [after Tim Vine's "join-the-dots" artwork of the wreck of the Titanic is unveiled:]
    Greg: We've done several series of this show. I genuinely do not know what they're applauding.
  • Greg is literally speechless when Mike reveals his mohawk for the Series 11 finale.
• Stylistic Suck:
  • In "Pork Is a Sausage," Joe Wilkinson's nursery rhyme video consisted of him delivering the wrong lyrics to "Old MacDonald Had a Farm" in a monotone whilst standing in front of a green screen of a farm with Alex who dons various props when each animal is mentioned.
  • The team task in "Hollowing Out a Baguette" is to create the best trailer for Taskmaster: The Movie. The team of Joe, Lolly and Noel make one in this style - narrated by Joe, the trailer features Alex performing (and dressed) as "Huge Denis, Jo Liset, Lollly Adderfopay, Mell Gedroche, and Noell Fieldang," while overseen by Noel as "Grog Davids" and Lolly as "tiny bitch-puppet Alix Horrny."
• Subliminal Seduction: The team task in "Rock 'n' Roll Umlaut" had Sian and Joe parody this with them manually rewinding the vinyl that Alex had specially made to read the task out, with them dubbing over it:
  Joe: Satan is your best friend in the world.
• Subverted Rhyme Every Occasion: For the duel task in "The Noise That Blue Makes", Sophie challenges Alex to a rap battle. After exchanging a few rhyming couplets, Alex ends the battle like this:
  Alex: I'd like to surrender and not do the duel any more
  Because I can't think of any more rhymes.
• Surprise Incest: For the "create the best soap opera cliffhanger" task in "A Coquettish Fascinator," Jessica and Kerry devise a show called "Cul-de-Sac" and they play Donna and Donna who fight over their lover (played by Alex). Donna (played by Jessica) dramatically announces that Donna (played by Kerry) is actually the mother of Alex's character, which causes Donna (played by Kerry) to vomit.
• Surprisingly Creepy Moment: The introduction to "A Fat Bald White Man"'s Felling Ducks task has the typical visual showcase of the task with the typical music being cut into a few times with discordant shots of the aftermath of the task, making it look like a horrific rubber duck massacre.
• Swapped Roles: In "Welcome to Rico Face", a task was to set Jon Richardson a task to do. As Jon was not aware of this at the time, he got points for working out who set which task that he had to complete, one point for each task he guessed correctly, and if he guessed wrong, the contestant would get the point. The tasks in question were; "Prove how strong you are" set by Joe, "Watch a clip of the Taskmaster" set by Richard, "Perform a recognizable rendition of the William Tell overture" set by Doc Brown, and "Do a makeup tutorial" set by Katherine. The results had Jon guess all of the tasks' creators correctly, and wins all 4 points.

T

• Tablecloth Yank: In "H.", Asim, Tim, Russell, Alice and Liza all succeed in getting 10 eggs off of a piece of cloth without breaking any eggs. Greg is a little annoyed by this.
• Take That!:
  • Sara Pascoe and Greg got in a couple of jabs against the group Take That (Band) and the members' tax avoidance scandal in "Little Polythene Grief Cave". This continued in the next episode, "A Very Nuanced Character".
  • Happens in "Spatchcock It":
    Noel: There's no such thing as a carrot skipping rope. You just made that up [...] it's not a real thing though, is it?
    Greg: Right, and you don't like flights of fancy, Noel, do you?
  • In The Edinburgh TV Festival episode, A task required the contestants (who are TV Executives) to pitch an original TV show to Alex. After they read the task out, they cut back to the stage, and it was revealed that Alex wasn't listening to the contestants at all, and was instead booking a restaurant for the Taskmaster. Alex goes on to point out that some of the words the contestants used were Technobabble, and that's what made him bored. He didn't even edit down the footage for the live show, and says it's such as shame that the concepts they came up with will never be seen by anyone. They immediately cut to the final task. This is an obvious jab at TV executives that deny original show ideas when someone pitches them.
• Take That, Audience!:
  • Occasionally, Greg will take a swipe at the studio audience based on their reactions.
    Greg: You know your way around a boiled egg don't you?
    Rose: I do.
    Greg: I'll tell you why, it's because that noise — that "Oohhhh" — is the sound of a room full of adults... being excited by a boiled egg.
  • At the start of Series 10, Greg announced that he'd be strictly enforcing the rules due to viewer complaints. This led to the entire cast being disqualified for two tasks and the lowest scores in the show's history.
  • In Series 12, Greg essentially told the home audience to bring it on.
    Greg: Finally, just to annoy everybody, I'm giving a man who found an old wig in his attic five points! That's Taskmaster and, if you don't like it, tough shit! TWEET AS MUCH AS YOU LIKE AT ME!!!
• The Tape Knew You Would Say That:
  • In "Quisps", on being asked to say a letter of the alphabet, Ed Gamble says "a letter of the alphabet". He's then given another envelope that laughs at him and asks him, less ambiguously, to choose a letter of the alphabet and say it out loud. It later turns out that Ed was the only contestant for whom this eventuality had been prepared.
  • In "Lotta Soup", Rhod makes a random dig at Greg's weight during the preparation for the final task. Immediately Alex produces a note from his pocket proving that Greg had anticipated him doing exactly that.
  • In "A New Business End", Sarah checks under the table in one of her tasks, like she had been consistently doing throughout the series, to find an extra task envelope. All it says is "Hello Sarah".
• Tastes Like Purple: In "This is Trevor", a task was to guess the flavor of crisps while wearing a silly costume. Iain thought that the Gin and Tonic crisps tasted like purple.
• Temporary Substitute:
  • Katy Wix missed the studio recordings for two episodes of Series 9 due to illness, and was replaced by former contestants Kerry Godliman and Katherine Ryan (both champions of their respective series, but presumably primarily chosen because they kept the gender balance the same, and kept everyone in the same seat^note contestants are seated in alphabetical order by given name). This left the substitutes in the position of having to justify somebody else's performance, apparently without having seen the tasks in advance.
    Greg: [addressing Kerry during the prize round for "Another Spoon"] What did Katy bring in and can you fill a minute talking about it?
  • Alan Davies similarly filled in for Jonnie Peacock in the second New Year Treat. The substitution doesn't preserve alphabetical order this time, but does keep the gender balance.
• Tempting Fate: Happens on occasion:
  • In "Little Denim Shorts", the prize task was the most valuable item. Josh put in the pot a blank signed cheque, meaning whoever won could take up to £20,000 out of his account. Frank won, and took out £19,000 (though he apparently did return it immediately afterwards).
  • Lou in Series 8 is wearing a bright pink high visibility jacket with the words "Taskmaster Winner Series 8" written on the back, despite the fact that the points for each task are (mostly) decided in the studio, not on the day the task is recorded. At the end of Series 8 Lou wins and gets 164 points!
  • At several points in Series 8, Iain Stirling confidently asserts his intention to win the series by expressing a desire to appear in a hypothetical Champion of Champions sequel, including at one point while launching his truly epic attempt at creating a model volcano. He's less successful in both winning the series and his volcano; although he does manage to come second in the series, his volcano turns into an absolute Anti-Climax.
  • In the live task for "The Perfect Stuff", Greg reassures Kerry Godliman that she's not likely to fall off the stage while performing the task, which involves attempting to hit a drum after doing a magnificent walk for exactly 9.58 seconds (Kerry was confused because the competitors have to wear blindfolds during the others' attempts, but not during their own). Shortly after, Jessica Knappett falls off the stage during her attempt.
• Testosterone Poisoning: Russell Howard's contribution to the "Do the Most Masculine Thing" challenge in Series 6 is to take his shirt off to reveal "tattoos" of various manly interests (such as beards and Top Gear), repeatedly saw the same bit of wood, rant about his ex-wife and bellow life advice at his "son" (Alex), most of which revolves around going on a using a hammer on animals at an abattoir and cooking the spoils on an open fire to attract a mate. His one regret is forgetting to also put a tie on.
• Thanks for the Mammary: In "No Stars for Naughty Boys", one of the tasks is a game of hide and seek. Mel hides in a wardrobe, using a hanging shirt to cover herself. When Alex reaches into the wardrobe, he unintentionally brushes his hand across Mel's chest and is mortified.
  Mel: It was fine! It was — you saw there was a little bit of awkwardness.
  Alex: Yeah, I found you after two and a half minutes, then felt embarrassed for three days.
• That Came Out Wrong:
  • When Greg interrogates Mel on how she got a rubber duck into a courier's box:
    Mel: I made him look away and then slipped it into his box. [realizes what she says and grimaces]
  • Bob reading out the live task in "The Leprechaun or the Lesbian":
    Bob: With your head placed firmly in your hole^note a canvas which they are wearing around their necks — [stops to laugh]
  • In the simply-titled episode "H." of Series 6, Greg makes two innuendos about his...sexual prowess (for context, he was judging "sturdy items" that would survive his weight when he gets dropped onto them)
    Alice: You'd bounce right off, spread the load.
    Greg: I'd spread my load [immediately realises what he says, cue laughter and disgust]
    Greg: So until I distribute myself... [stops to laugh a bit]
    Greg: So until I distribute myself across Alice's Mum's Poly Tunnel.
  • In "Old Honkfoot", Jenny's entry in the prize task is (a photograph of) her infant grandson, leading to Greg asking (to a grimace from Alex and laughter from the audience) "Frankie, can you beat a baby?"
• Thing-O-Meter: In "The Dong and the Gong", for the task "Surprise Alex when he comes out of the shed", Greg had Alex rate how surprised he was by each contestant on a hypothetical, ill-defined "Surprise-O-Meter". (Which Greg insists is pronounced "Surprise-oh-me-ter", not "Surprise-ometer".)
• This Is Gonna Suck: If a panellist winces when the next pre-recorded task is announced, it can be taken as read it didn't go well.
• Those Two Guys:
  • Romesh and Tim in series one, referred to by Greg as "the two psychopaths". They both approached the challenges much more brashly than the other contestants, and had a habit of attempting to hinder each others' progress in the live tasks by fighting each other.
  • "Brad" and "Jeff" from Frank and Tim's blooper reel in "The Last Supper." Every year, they have high hopes for huge plans, and every year something goes awry.
  • Mark and Nish have this vibe in series five. Not only do they form a team together, their efforts are usually shown together as well (partly because they both tended to do poorly), and if one does particularly badly they often physically comfort each other. Nish even points this out in "The Leprechaun or the Lesbian" after watching his and Mark's attempts in the bread slicing task.
    Nish: I have to say, I'm starting to increasingly understand why we're being grouped together [...] because when you got that grill out, I was like, "This guy's a fucking genius."
• 3 + 5 = 4: Used as one of the mini-tasks in the bingo task from "How Heavy is the Water?". Mae, who's the only contestant to actually attempt this mini-task, Cuts the Knot by calculating how high the 5-pint bottle should be filled, as the mini-task doesn't include any of the puzzle's usual restrictions.
• Tickle Torture: In "Welcome to Rico Face", Richard and Jon build a "Taskmaster Tie-up Tickle Station" as part of their hostage video/tent infomercial to the Taskmaster. Alex is tied with gaffer tape and seated in front of Richard, both wearing the top of a tent. Jon threatens (in a Colombian accent) to tickle Alex, which Richard does.
• Tiebreaker Round: If two or more contestants are tied in first place at the end of an episode, then a tiebreaker happens. (If a series-wide tie for first were to occur, a live tiebreak would happen). All tie breakers are pre-recorded tasks, with the exception of the tie-breakers in "The Poet and the Egg", "My Eyes Are Circles", and "Dog Meat Trifle". So far, this has happened in twenty-two episodes:
  • "Melon Buffet" involves a game of hide and seek played to determine whether Frank or Romesh won. Frank won.
  • "The Poet And The Egg" sees Alex ask Romesh and Josh in the studio to guess how old Frank was in minutes. Josh won.
  • "Hollowing Out a Baguette" has a tiebreaker between Noel and Joe. The task is to decant as much wine as possible in one minute while seated in an umpire chair. Joe won.
  • "Meat" has a tie breaker between Mel and Hugh. The task is to eat as many peas as possible in one minute. Hugh won.
  • "No stars for naughty boys" has a three-way tie between Hugh, Lolly, and Joe. They are tasked with opening a Vaseline-covered mayonnaise jar. Joe won by figuring out the task, completing it, and then opening the task sheet to start his time.
  • "Residue round the Hoof" has a tie between Mark and Aisling. They have to sit in a chair and throw a picture of Fred the Swede into a bin behind them within the least amount of attempts. Aisling took 66 attempts whilst Mark took 15, meaning that he won overall.
  • "Spoony Neeson" has a tie between Bob and Sally. The task is to kick a pot of yoghurt at a shooting target, and the winner was whoever got the most yoghurt nearest to the bullseye. Sally won. Bob missed the target completely, while Sally kicked the container into the target, but no actual yoghurt got onto the target. Greg asked an audience member who he thought should win the task and picked the one that the audience member didn't choose.
  • "The Old, Soft, Curved Padlock" has a tie between Russell and Alice. That task is to spin as many times as possible, then to kick a football at a caravan. Alice won.
  • "What Kind of Pictures?" has a tie between Russell and Liza. The winner is determined by whoever received a text the fastest. Russell won.
  • "My Eyes Are Circles" has a tie between Kerry and Jessica. In the studio, they have to guess the number on Alex's arm. Kerry won.
  • "OLLIE." has a tie between Rhod and James. They have to create a paper plane using toilet roll and get it to travel the farthest. Rhod won.
  • "Hello" had a tie between Iain and Lou, who have to peel a banana with only their feet, with the fastest winning. Iain won.
  • "The Barrel Dad" has a three-way-tie between Sian, Lou and Joe. They have to whip a bottle off of a barrel from a distance, with the fastest time to do so winning. Sian won.
  • "Think About the Spirit" has a tie between Ed and Rose. They have to make a pop-up toy pause for the longest amount of time using one of the provided food spreads. Despite both using peanut butter, Ed won by a long shot with a time of just under an hour and a half.
  • "A Documentary About Despots" has a tie between Katherine and Richard. They have to select a wind-up dinosaur toy and have it travel the furthest distance without the toy falling off a table. Despite her toy traveling a minuscule distance, Katherine won by default because Richard's toy fell off the table.
  • "Legit Glass" has a tie between Johnny and Mawaan. They are given 30 seconds to guess the number of individual sheets on a toilet roll. Johnny won.
  • "Dog Meat Trifle" has a tie between Richard and Mawaan. They have to guess the number of green eggs underneath Greg's chair. Richard guessed 6 eggs and Mawaan guessed 8. Richard won, as there were only 2 eggs.
  • "Absolute Casserole" has a tie between Jamali and Mike. They have to flick as many rubber bands into a bum bag which Alex is wearing under a time limit. Jamali won by flicking 7 rubber bands to Mike's 1.
  • "A Couple of Ethels" has a tie between Alan and Guz. They have to blow a feather across and off a table using only their noses the quickest. Alan wins by a mile.
  • "Shoe Who" has a tie between Ardal and Chris. They have to flip as many beer mats as they can within 30 seconds, with only the ones remaining on the table counting. Ardal beats Chris with 64 beer mats to 59.
  • "The 75th Question" has a tie between Chris and Sophie. They have to sing into a microphone "I've won" in the highest note and then "this tiebreak" in the lowest note that they can, and whoever has the greatest range wins. Sophie beats Chris with 25 notes to his 21.
  • "A Yardstick for Failure" has a tie between Jenny and Mae. They have to scream the loudest with their mouths closed. Jenny wins at 114.7 decibels to Mae's 98.4.
• Time for Plan B:
  • Roisin opts for this in one task. Instead of painting a horse while riding another horse, Roisin paints a horse while riding a mechanical horse provided by the crew. Although her painting was initially judged as the third-best painting, she was penalised for not actually riding a horse and was awarded last place / 1 point.
  • Lolly does this for the prize task in "Tony Three Pies". The winner was whoever bought in the most cash, so Lolly decided to put in the pot a cheque with a value of 1 pence more than the amount of whoever had bought in the most cash. Greg points out that they're looking for bank notes and coins, so Lolly opts for her backup plan—an envelope containing £2,000 in cash. In comparison, Joe Lycett took second place by bringing in £250.
• Title Drop: Most episode names are taken from a line spoken during the show. The exception thus far is the Series 1 finale "The Last Supper." As there's too many to list here, examples can be found on each series' Recap page. For each season, Alex and the producers try to use quotes as evenly as possible between Alex, Greg, and that season’s 5 guests. The greatest exception is Series 11, where Mike Wozniak named over half of the episodes, due to his use of unusual euphemisms, rare sentences, and other hilariously bizarre phrases. Sarah Kendall was the only other contestant to name an episode, but only once.
• Toilet Humour: Numerous jokes about urine, faeces, farts, and genitalia pop up in nearly every episode of Taskmaster. Highlights include such examples as Bob Mortimer's story (from the episode "Spoony Neeson") about his... unique toilet habits due to a high anus.
• Token Minority:
  • Every series has had at least one contestant who was not white; series 12 and 13 (and the second New Yaer's Treat) had two each. They also had exactly one woman for the first three series (and the fifteenth, albeit alongside a non-binary contestant).
  • Although all the contestants are UK-based comics, quite a few hail from outside the UK, usually about one per series:
    • Canada - Katherine Ryan (S2) and Mae Martin (S15)
    • Republic of Ireland - Aisling Bea (S5), Nicola Coughlan (New Year's Treat 1), Ardal O'Hanlon (S13), and Dara Ó Briain (S14)
    • New Zealand - Rose Matafeo (S9)
    • Australia - Sarah Kendall (S11) and Sam Campbell (S16)
    • United States - Desiree Burch (S12)
  • A handful of other contestants are foreign-born but grew up mainly in the UK. Sally Phillips, David Baddiel, Mawaan Rizwan, Morgana Robinson, Jenny Eclair, and Ivo Graham were born in Hong Kong, the US, Pakistan, Australia, Malaysia, and Japan respectively. Conversely, Phil Wang and Munya Chawawa were both born in the UK but spent significant parts of their childhood in Malaysia and Zimbabwe, respectively, before returning to the UK.
  • Series 15 has a zigzagged instance where Kiell Smith-Bynoe is the only non-white contestant in his lineup and the only one born in England - Frankie Boyle, Ivo Graham, Jenny Eclair, and Mae Martin were born in Scotland, Japan, Malaysia, and Canada, respectively.
  • Of the four countries which constitute the UK, England is well-represented among the contestant demographics. In the main series, there have only been three Scottish contestants (Iain Stirling, Fern Brady, and Frankie Boyle - four if John Hannah from the New Year Treat is included), three Welsh contestants (Rhod Gilbert, Sian Gibson, and Katy Wix), and zero Northern Irish. Series 8 has one Welsh (Sian Gibson) and one Scottish contestant (Iain Stirling), but this is the only series where they overlap.
• Tone Shift: Each series can have a quite different tone due to the changing line-up's chemistry, sense of humour and competence. Series 4 and 12 are remembered for being particularly cheerful due to their contestants consistently emotionally supporting each other, Series 7 is often considered the most chaotic, Series 10 is defined by its contestants' incompetence, etc.
• Too Clever by Half:
  • Tim Key is capable of thinking outside the box to win a task, but this creativity often veers into outright cheating which costs him on more than a few occasions.
  • Dave Gorman shows signs of this at times, and ends up being disqualified for cheating twice in the third series.
  • Hugh has shades of this in series four. Most of the time, he gets disqualified for it.
  • In "Butter in the Microwave," the contestants are given 5 bins and are only able to follow the 7 commandmants to locate which bin Alex is hiding in. Katy Wix attempts to try Cutting the Knot by looking at the bottoms of the bins to see which one looks like it had barely any gap between the bin and the ground, but she chooses an incorrect bin and is disqualified.
  • "A Cuddle" has a task where the contestants have to get an entire egg into a "metal thing" from a chair in a fixed location, with the highest score winning. The scores are inscribed on the tubes themselves, something that more than a few contestants misses. After one throwing attempt, Rose Matafeo notices that the eggs are positioned on a "metal thing" and puts her remaining eggs inside it. What she fails to notice is that -5 is written on that "metal thing," and she scores -10 for having an entire unbroken egg (but scores 1 point for the task). Greg even admonishes her for attempting to outfox Alex.
  • Rylan Clark-Neal in the New Year Treat 2020 special clearly wanted to win the episode and looks for creative solutions, with mixed results.
    Alex: Is there anything you are looking for in particular?
    Rylan: Not really. I'm trying to work out how I can cheat.
• Too Much Information: In "Spoony Neeson", a task wherein the contestants are given a Go-Pro and asked to record a POV film leads to Bob Mortimer giving Greg, Alex, his fellow contestants, the in-studio audience and the TV audience rather more information than they expected or may have needed regarding his method of using the toilet.
• Trail Of Breadcrumbs: The first task in "Boing Boing" features the contestants being led blindfolded to the same point in the middle of a field and told to walk, still blindfolded, in any given direction for three minutes before finding their way back to the starting point. In a homage to Hansel and Gretel, each contestant was given a slice of bread, with the clear (but unspoken) implication that they were to use it in some way to find their way back. Incredibly, only Bob Mortimer realised the reference straight away; both Aisling Bea and Mark Watson only figured out what the bread was for a little distance into their walk (and what Mark did drop was eaten by a dog), whereas Sally Phillips and Nish Kumar never picked up on it and ended up wandering around aimlessly. Perhaps not surprisingly, Bob won the round.
• Training Montage: The team task in "Chip Biffington" is to choreograph a routine for the given musical backing. While the team of three opt for a cheesy and horrific '80s style hospital sitcom, Munya and Sarah decide to choreograph theirs as a training montage. With Munya playing the Sensei and Sarah playing Sarah, they go through various fitness regimes and physical tests such as one-finger press-ups and punching a loaf of bread, it ends with Sarah successfully punching through a brick wall.
• Troll: When Ed Gamble gets into an angry rant about other contestants not being held to the rules while he was, Greg's reaction is to say "think about the spirit..." and then pull a delighted grin to camera when this has the desired effect.
• True Art Is Angsty: invokedPaul Chowdhry's "Snow Bear"^note a toy rabbit with some ice on it, with some blue slush puppy as colouring and as "tears" creation for the "make the best snowman" task in "Pea in a Haystack," which is both dark and hilarious at the same time.
  Paul: The expression and the tears reflect what I'm going through on the inside. [sad ambient piano] Bastard's crying, innit?
• True Art Is Incomprehensible:
  • Parodied by Joe in "This Is Trevor", where he had to do something powerful with his pinky finger. He attached a lit match to his pinky finger, and burnt some string to unveil an art piece, which is just the spray-painted word "Recycle" inside a large frame. He then exits the shot with a powerful and confident sashay.
  • From the same "do the most powerful thing with your pinky" task, Lou's attempt is a "performance art" piece about pollution that involved pushing a brick (originally a bowling ball complete with words like "VEGAN?" written on sticky notes attached) off of an oil drum into a bowl of water filled with rubber ducks and baby dolls.
• Two First Names: In Series 6, Alex jokes about Russell Howard's name by saying "Russell, Howard, and Alice" when grouping Russell and Alice Levine together for a task.

U

• Unexpected Successor: Discussed in the first episode; in his introduction for Tim Key, Greg sarcastically quips that Tim is a future Poet Laureate "if there's some sort of massive poet disaster".
• Unfazed Everyman: Jo Brand was bemused by the tasks set for her, did things at her own pace despite the ticking clock, and nonchalantly dismissed tasks she knew she wouldn't win. In episode 3 of the official Taskmaster podcast, Jo said that this behaviour of hers is a remnant of her time as a psychiatric nurse, and that she used to have to deal with truly pressing situations on a regular basis, so the tasks and the show's stakes didn't raise any real sense of urgency from her.
• Unfortunate Implications: Invoked on a couple of occasions by either Greg or the contestants:
  • Accidentally invoked and discussed in "A Very Nuanced Character". When the team task comes up, the conversation turns to the fact that Rob Beckett and Sara Pascoe, who were in the same team that season, look very similar, with a joke arising that they are in fact siblings who were accidentally separated at birth. When time comes to watch their submission for the team task, it turns out to be a video... in which they are playing a married couple. The Surprise Incest Subtext that this creates does not go without notice:
    Dave Gorman: Introducing them as "brother and sister"'s taken on a sinister twist, hasn't it...
    Rob Beckett: Shoes are the least of our worries.
  • In "Heg", this is both discussed and accidentally invoked. Given the task of making a sculpture out of food, Sophie Duker manages a surprisingly accurate recreation of female genitalia primarily out of butter, only for this to come back to haunt her when she is then given the task of eating the sculpture. She states that she wants to consume the whole thing in order to avoid implying that the act of "eating" the real thing^note that is, performing the act of cunnilingus is disgusting. Unfortunately, the amount of butter she thus has to eat clearly doesn't agree with her, and while she manages to finish the whole thing she can be audibly heard vomiting it back up as soon as she leaves the room — thus accidentally implying the same thing she was trying to avoid implying by not eating.
• Unit Confusion: When Alex describes the size of something for a task, he will often use utterly bizarre measurements, such as referring to a bubble blown by Tim Vine as "1/2 of a Danny DeVito". Subverted in that he also gives imperial/metric measurements as well.
• The Unreveal: In "The Noise That Blue Makes", Chris's submission for the prize task is a closed briefcase, which he describes discovering in mysterious circumstances and spending hours getting open to find out what was inside; he then refuses to reveal what he found, saying that everybody will have to wait until the prize montage at the end of the episode. At the end of the episode, the winner opens the briefcase, looks pleased at the contents, and then closes it again without showing the contents to the audience or any of the other participants.
• The Unsmile: Romesh in series 1, on those rare occasions where he tried to play the game outside of his usual "grouchy killjoy" persona. Naked attempts at emotionally manipulating Greg for points would often be matched with an incredibly forced saccharine smile that just came off as unsettling, as many of his fellow contestants would note.

V

• Visual Pun: One or two occasionally make their way into the setup of a task:
  • The premise of Series 4's "get this stuffed camel through the smallest gap possible" is possibly inspired by the Biblical saying "it is easier for a camel to through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."
  • For Series 8's "create a ventriloquist dummy" task, a bottle of beer was sitting on the table next to the task envelope. Joe Thomas was the only contestant to pick up on why this was: "bottle of beer" is one of the hardest things for a ventriloquist to say without moving their lips.
  • For the duck finding task in "The Noise That Blue Makes", one of the objects that could be found is a puzzle box (the same kind Phil brought in in "Ollie" back in series 7). Inside it is a picture of Series 10 champion Richard Herring, but he is tinted red. In other words, inside the box is a Red Herring.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Rhod and Greg in series 7, to the point that Greg correctly predicted when Rhod would make a fat joke about him.
• Voice Clip Song:
  • In the task involving transferring water between two different fishbowls in "Hollowing Out a Baguette", despite the fact that the very first line of the task is "Without moving the fishbowls", Lolly Adefope appears to not take this in. Her reading out "without moving the fishbowls" interspersed with her repeatedly moving the fishbowls was set to music.
  • "House Queens" has a task in which the contestants have to fill up a basket, which is in the back of Alex's tricycle that he is pedalling around a tree, with as many ducks as they can in the allotted time. There are also a few rules which they need to follow, one of which is to carry only one duck at a time. Bridget is initially shown to have broken the task (and give herself a massive advantage) by removing the basket from Alex's tricycle. However, she has had a habit of reading tasks and deciding that some of the rules could not possibly apply and ignore them outright. At the end of the segment, Alex screens another VT of her saying "You may only hold one duck at a time. That can't be right, surely not" spliced into clips of her clearly handling more than one duck at a time.
• Vomit Discretion Shot:
  • During the "get to the microwave in as few steps as possible" task in "Pea in a Haystack" Rob's method of getting to the microwave was to roll on his side, which makes him dizzy and causes him to retch several times because he had a large coffee ahead of the shoot. The vomit is concealed by the microwave and table.
  • In "Heg", Sophie Duker can be heard audibly vomiting up her primarily butter-based female genitalia sculpture as soon as she leaves the room following the "Make the best statue out of food (then eat it)" task.
• Vomit Indiscretion Shot:
  • For the "eat the most watermelon task" in "Melon Buffet," when Alex blew the whistle signaling the end of the task, Romesh immediately retches and throws up some of the watermelon.
  • For the "soap opera cliffhanger" task in "A Coquettish Fascinator," Kerry (as Donna) pukes when she finds out that her lover (played by Alex) is also her son.

W

• Wacky Marriage Proposal: A task in "Caring Uncle Minpict" involves the contestants making the most irresistable proposal to the Taskmaster's Assistant.
• Walking Spoiler: Any of the contestants in the "Champions of Champions" series, which are made up of the winners of the past 5 series. There's a good reason the names of certain people are spoiler tagged on this page when talking about Champions-of-Champions-related tasks, otherwise, it would ruin at least 5 series of television.
• Washy Watchy: When challenged to destroy a cake as beautifully as possible, Noel Fielding opted to put it, plate and all, into a washing machine. Greg admitted that he could happily watch it spin for hours.
• Water Torture:
  • As part of her "special hug" with Alex, Sally brings in a platter of food and smears it on him while sitting atop him, ending with pouring a bottle of water on his face as time runs out. Greg points out that she waterboarded Alex.
  • Katy's egg timer in "Another Spoon" amounted to the Chinese water torture variant - her instructions to Alex were to hang a bag of water above his head, poke a hole and allow the water to drip out onto his head until empty.
• Waxing Lyrical: Happens in series 2 whenever Doc Brown (a comedian/ actor/ rapper) talks to Greg.
• We Are Experiencing Technical Difficulties: In "Wiley Giraffe Blower", after the first round of the final task the contestants discover the markers they have been given are permanent markers, instead of whiteboard markers. The show unceremoniously cuts to a little later with whiteboard markers having been handed out.
• We ARE Struggling Together:
  • Normally the team tasks require and demonstrate a certain amount of cooperation, but this trope came fully into play in Series 4's "Meat", when one such task required giving each participant different instructions regarding a bath without (initially) telling the others what these were; to illustrate, in one team Joe Lycett was told to cover the bath with clingfilm, Lolly Adefope had to fill the bath with as many objects as possible, while Noel Fielding had to fill it with water. As none of them seemed to realise this was a team effort, this quickly degenerated into outright chaos with Joe and Lolly ending up not just undoing but outright sabotaging each other's efforts while Noel just watched the bath fill up with a hose and didn't lift a finger to intervene. Conversely, Hugh Dennis and Mel Giedroyc, when given the same task (minus the water requirement) quickly realised that they were supposed to complete both tasks at the same time, with Hugh ending up helping Mel with hers once he'd finished his.
  • Played fairly straight in Series 7's team tasks. James Acaster grew very frustrated with Rhod Gilbert's lack of familiarity with the show's conventions and at-times unhelpful and uncooperative attitude, while Phil Wang awkwardly stood off to the side. Reached a nadir in the "construct the best extension to the house in thirty minutes" task when, after standing around thinking intensely for a few minutes without helping, Rhod ended up wandering around looking for a truck to use as an extension before eventually sticking some cardboard on the garage door and spray-painting "This Is An Extension" on it. Much to James's incredulity and frustration, he ended up roping Phil into helping him, leaving James to work on a more serious (if admittedly not much better) attempt at completing the task all by himself. It was also revealed that Rhod had discovered that the garage was open and stocked with all manner of potentially useful items, but not only didn't use any of them but didn't bother to inform the others that they were there. When judging the task, Greg decided that as James had essentially been abandoned by his team he'd get an extra point, with Rhod being punished for his unhelpfulness and Phil for his "spinelessness" in enabling Rhod by only getting one point each. In comparison, Kerry Godliman and Jessica Knappett got on quite well together.
  • Played straight in Series 8, when owing to a combination of intense competitiveness, stubbornness and some clashing domineering personalities, Lou Sanders and Iain Stirling seemed to spend a substantial amount of their team tasks together shouting at each other while Paul Sinha tried to unobtrusively work in the background. The definitive example of this happening would be the team task in "Barrel Dad" ("put as many things into this hammock - heaviest hammock wins, and if an item falls out, the team is disqualified"). On the other team, while Joe Thomas and Sian Gibson didn't really seem to "click" together, they at least proved more cooperative and less inclined to argue.
• Weather Saves the Day: In "My Eyes Are Circles," Kerry happens to film the "biggest circle" task on a snowy day. As soon as she realises, she dashes out into the garden and made a huge, beautiful circle in the snow using a long pipe as compasses, winning the task.
• Welcome to Corneria:
  • In "Hollowing out a baguette", a task required contestants to move water from one fish bowl to another without moving the fishbowl, while only using items found on the table. They also had to speak in third person to themselves. Lolly got shown first, and immediately broke one of the rules (don't move the fish bowl), which got edited in the final video as the clip of Lolly saying "Without moving the fishbowl" repeated numerous times and interspersed with footage of her doing exactly that. Not surprisingly, Lolly was disqualified.
  • In "Hello", Paul Sinha says "Hello!" a lot into a baby monitor in order to find the other baby monitor his one was connected to. According to Alex, he said it 64 times.
  • In "Spoony Neeson", during a task where a candle had to be carried through numerous obstacles to light another candle in the caravan, Mark Watson was given the additional hurdle that he wasn't allowed to say any word which contained any of the letters in the word "Taskmaster" at the same time. This was presumably intended to be a frustrating impediment to communication for him, but in practice he just ended up being largely silent except muttering the word "fiddly" every so often. Which, as Mark noted in his defence, was largely because the task was "bloody fiddly".
• Wham Line:
  • Any time a contestant really goes above and beyond for a task (this is especially common in prize tasks). For example, Romesh putting up his wedding ring.
  • From the "buy the Taskmaster a gift for £20" task in Series 1:
    Josh Widdicombe: Greg, I felt you and I have been getting in on this show.
    Greg: Yeah, it's been alright.
    Josh: And I was afraid that you'd forget me, so I got a tattoo.
    A photo of Josh getting Greg's name tattooed on his foot appears on the screen.
  • Any two-part task. Contestants never know that there's a second part to a task until they've completed the first part. It's especially common to make the second part of the task harder the better you did at the first part. This includes things like eating "exotic" sandwiches they were tasked with making, or using charades to get the other members of their team to figure out obscure animals they'd made a list of.
  • Jon gave one of these during Series 2 when he cracked the code on the "Build a Bridge" challenge too late:
    Jon: I'm very frustrated to have asked if you knew what "debajo de la mesa" means.
    Greg: Have you worked it out now?
    Jon: Yeah, not followed through on that.
    Alex: What does it mean, Jon?
    Jon: I think it means "under the table".
    Other Contestants: big gasp
  • In "Premature Conker", Sarah Kendall realising the bag of "salt" is actually sugar.
  • In "Dafty in the Middle", just before a team task video is played, another video is played first...
    John Kearns: (reading from a task) "Sabotage your team in the next team task..."
• Wham Shot: The infamous overhead shot of potato golf showing that Joe Wilkinson's toes were on the red green, disqualifying his hole-in-one.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • James delivers one to Rhod in "The Perfect Stuff", after watching back that episode's team task. On the day, he originally believed that Rhod had only stuck up a poster saying "this is an extension" on the garage door, not realising until the studio record that Rhod had also opened the garage, had seen the useful extension-building material stored inside, and had not given it a second thought before putting up the poster.
  • In "Another Spoon", Katy Wix's water-torture egg timer, which required Alex to sit for over six minutes having cold water dripped onto his head, is compared to David Baddiel's rudimentary hourglass as they worked on a similar principle. Alex made a crack that Katy's was "slightly better executed", since her timer got closer to a perfect egg. Annoyed, David retorts that this isn't a very nice thing to say considering that his attempt didn't require Alex to be literally tortured.
  • Greg has this reaction when Katy Wix brought in Kerry Godliman's Taskmaster trophy and becomes even more irate when Katy reveals that Kerry had tossed it away in a grungey garage and doesn't even know it's missing.
• What Were You Thinking?: Greg might occasionally ask a contestant what their line of thinking was if their attempt at a task leads to an Epic Fail and it's not immediately clear how they thought it would work. In "The Mean Bean", James Acaster's attempt at the "build a cardboard box tower" task is so bizarre that Kerry beats him to the punch:
  Kerry: What — what was he doing?
  Greg: Oh, trust me — we're coming on to that.
• When She Smiles: In Series 3, Paul Chowdhry plays up his comedic persona by being grouchy throughout the live and recorded parts of the show, and even (jokingly) pipettes blue tears onto a snowman he built to show his pain inside. But when he finds out that he is winning in one episode despite consistently performing awfully, he breaks into a wide grin in disbelief.
• While Rome Burns: Invoked by Greg in "Meat", who quips this verbatim as a description of the cooperation Noel, Lolly, and Joe had in a team task: fill a bathtub (Noel and Lolly's job), then cover in clingfilm (Joe's job). Noel just got a hose and filled it with water, Lolly tried putting a table into the bathtub, while Joe kept taking the table out.
• Who Would Be Stupid Enough?: Often after a task is described, Greg and Alex will casually discuss how the most obvious approach would definitely not work, and the competitors should be smart enough to realize this and come up with an alternative solution, which almost always leads to a Gilligan Cut showing at least one competitor following exactly the method described.
• Wholesome Crossdresser: Noel wears a dress at his wedding to the duck.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Josh Widdicombe is terrified of balloons, as is Mark Watson. Mark is unable to complete a task that involves stuffing objects in it and blowing it up, and has to ask one of the crew to do it for him.
• Why Didn't I Think of That?: Often crops up, complete with Face Palm, given that the contestants are watching their efforts back weeks or months after struggling through a task they might not have had ample time to prepare for and are surrounded by snarky comedians also watching it back.
  • In "Friendship is Truth," the envelope for "the highest splash" task was posted on the side of a caravan and a telescope had been set up pointing towards it. Most of the contestants struggled to read it through the telescope (Noel complained about the sun's glare and Hugh took a photo of the envelope through the telescope lens). In the studio, Greg tells everyone that nobody had asked them to read the task through the telescope.
  • For the "stacking the tallest tower of cans" task in "A Wind-Dried Puffin," Alex asks the contestants to stand inside a rope hoop around their waist that was tied to the table on which they were to stack their tin can tower before giving them the task envelope. Only Bob questioned whether they had to keep the rope hoop on, re-read the task, and then took off the rope hoop, which made completing the task so much simpler for him.
  • For the "don't blink" task in "The Perfect Stuff," Phil shut his eyes for 5 seconds before the whistle was blown. In the studio recording, Alex notes that if he had kept them shut, there wouldn't have been a blink (to the dismay of all the contestants). Alex also notes that his 7-year-old came up with that solution. In fairness to all the contestants, they were only allowed 10 seconds to prepare before the whistle was blown and the clock started.
  • In the "hide in a red phone-box task" in "Rock 'N' Roll Umlaut", we see Paul Sinha struggle to cover the windows of the phone-box with newspapers only for them to keep blowing away in the heavy breeze. The very first thing Greg points out once the clip is complete is that Paul could have put them up on the inside of the phone-box rather than the outside.
  • In the same episode, in the "memorise the cards and tell Alex the order they appear in" task Iain had been getting particularly frustrated by the apparent lack of a pen in the room to allow him to note down the order of cards. He claims that Alex had a pen that he was taunting Iain with by refusing to give it to him; Alex denies this (though it was shown that a pen had been concealed on the table the contestants had been sitting at)... but then points out that the iPad he was holding has a camera setting. The contestants could at any time have asked to borrow it, or indeed any of the numerous other cameras in that room being used to record the events, and photograph all the cards had it occurred to them. This does not help with Iain's frustrations.
  • In the "fill the glass from the furthest distance" task in "A Yardstick for Failure", contestants will be disqualified if they and someone else use the hose. While Kiell is the only person to use it, he fails the task by trying to spray the water from the nozzle into the glass, and doesn't fully fill it. When he complains in the studio about the "hose" line on the task being a Red Herring, Alex points out he could have put the nozzle directly in the glass, then turned the tap on from a very long distance. Kiell ends up in a Stunned Silence.
• Willfully Weak: On occasion, some contestants will essentially kneecap themselves by either (a) identifying a loophole in the task wording that they can exploit but for some reason failing to exploit it all the way, or (b) inexplicably adding a complication or unwritten rule to the task that hampers them more than even the original task intended:
  • In the "guess what's in these pies" task in "The Pie Whisperer", Roisin realises that while she cannot "breach" the pastry of the pies, there's nothing in the rules stating that Alex cannot. However, she inexplicably turns her back while Alex does so and tries to guess what's in the pies from his taste reactions, thus making the task even harder for herself. Amusingly, it is in keeping with how Roisin has previously argued that Josh and Romesh had cheated in the same task by "breaching" the pies with their eyes.
  • Katherine Ryan quickly realises that the "red green" surrounding the golf hole in the "throw a potato into a golf hole" task in "Fear of Failure"ias just a carpet, and she could avoid stepping on it by rolling it up with a push broom that she finds. However, as Greg points out in the studio, she for some reason decides not to roll it up the whole way (meaning she could essentially just walk up to the hole and easily drop it in) and instead decides it would be more profitable to tie a piece of string to the potato so that she could retrieve it without stepping on the red green. Katherine claims that she had been trying to respect the spirit of the game, but considering the surprisingly emotional speech she delivered immediately after about how much she hates sports and couldn't figure them out, it's equally likely that she just didn't think of it at the time.
  • Richard Osman accidentally does this to himself in the task where the contestants have to acquire facts from Fred, a Swedish person who has been prohibited from speaking in English. When asking about Fred's greatest fear, Richard hits on the idea of getting Fred to spell it out by going through the letters of the alphabet one by one — but forgets to clarify that Fred should spell the word out in English. This means that they end up getting halfway through the Swedish word "misslyckande" before Richard realises what's happening. He's consequently rather dryly amused to note the irony when the fear Fred was spelling out in Swedish turns out to be "failure".
  • Lolly's attempt in the "felling ducks" task in "A Fat Bald White Man." She chooses to use a hose to knock the ducks off of the wooden fences, but also realises that there is not enough water pressure from where she is standing behind the velvet rope. She enlists Alex and the crew to move the fences closer to her, but as Greg notes, the fences were not moved very close. In Lolly's case, she justifies if as not wanting to fell any ducks in the process of moving the fences (the task rules state that the contestants must be standing behind the velvet rope while felling their ducks).
  • Not exactly a task, but in "Friendship is Truth" a task is attached to the wall of the caravan, with a telescope set up by the front door pointing at it. Every contestant struggles to read the task through the telescope, with Hugh Dennis particularly indignant about how poor it was. In the studio, however, it was noted that at no point were the contestants asked or told to use the telescope to read the task, and they could have simply walked up to the caravan to read the task normally at any point.
  • In "The Leprechaun and the Lesbian", Mark Watson is the only contestant who realises that the rules for the "paint the best rainbow in a pitch-black room" task don't preclude him from switching on the light to do his painting. However, while his end result is accurate in terms of colour, for reasons known only to himself he inexplicably decided to paint a "flat" rainbow, resulting in his incredulous competitors noting that it somehow ended up less accurate than the attempts they made while painting in the dark.
  • Played with in "My Eyes Are Circles", in which Kerry Godliman engages in a certain amount of loud, stroppy whining on the subject of how the materials she has been given for the purpose of drawing a circle in the "draw the biggest circle" task are inadequate for the purposes of size... not stopping to consider for quite a long while that not only does the task not specify that she has to use only the materials provided, but that the snowy day she happens to be filming on has laid down a blanket of snow which would make the perfect canvas for a circle. Ultimately subverted in that she does eventually make this connection and goes on to win the task, but it takes a significant amount of moaning from her before this happens.
  • In the "make the best portrait of the Taskmaster out of fifty random items you have previously collected" task in "A Coquettish Fascinator", not until she is in the studio weeks after her disastrous attempt does Jessica Knappett ruefully note that she alone of all the contestants had gathered paints and art supplies among her items, and so could have tried to paint the Taskmaster instead of just using them to represent his hair.
  • In the same episode, another task requires the contestants to choose a box in which to collect "pairs of glasses" (referring to drinking glasses, not spectacles as they might have expected) before they leave the caravan. Seconds after reading the task, Rhod Gilbert rushes out of the caravan to see the glasses in order to help him determine the size of the box he'll need. While this is bad enough in itself, as it's an automatic disqualification, in the studio a bewildered Alex notes that even despite this knowledge Rhod still inexplicably decided to choose an incredibly small box that could never fit all the glasses.
  • In "Rock and Roll Umlaut"'s "score a goal from the furthest distance" task, everyone except Sian Gibson elects to take a kick from a distance that would be difficult for even a professional soccer player to score from. However, it's noted that Joe Thomas, for reasons known only to himself, elects to add a further challenge on top of that by positioning the ball at an acute angle to the goal, meaning that to score he would have to curve the ball in rather than kicking it straight.
  • "Clumpy Swayey Clumsy Man's" task to 'design the most tremendous legs' was already hard enough, but Iain Stirling made his life even harder by taking it upon himself to design substitute arms for himself as well, to the point where he admitted in studio that he got too carried away and ended up treating the legs as an afterthought. The result was that not only were his legs less than tremendous, but he could barely move without either falling over or 'breaking' his new limbs.
  • Subverted in "Quisps". The tape of Rose's attempt to fill a tray with things beginning with P shows her handicapping herself by refusing (unlike most of her rivals) to push her luck with arguable items, deciding not to try passing a tube off as a pipe and discarding a stack of newspapers because she's not sure they'll be accepted as 'paper', and she ends the task with a visibly less heaped tray than anyone else. However, Alex reveals afterward that thanks to one of the things she did put in the tray — a bag of frozen peas which she emptied out so that each pea would count as a separate object — she collected more objects than anyone else, and won the task.
  • In "Another Spoon," Rose realises that she can move the line (marked by a piece of tape) closer to Alex in order lasso him. However, she initially folds up the carpet and doesn't move the line very close. Eventually, she does move the line immediately in front of Alex just like Jo and Ed do but, as Greg incredulously notes in the studio, more than half of her time spend completing the task was used after her first line-move.
  • Ed Gamble initially comes up with a very cunning plan to secretly get a five word message to Alex in "Don't Like Them Go Bang" by recruiting a crew member to dress up in a very noticeable boiler suit and walk around conspicuously, clearly planning to distract Alex into thinking this is Ed making a poor attempt at subtlety. However, he ends up completely shooting himself in the foot by loudly charging over the field and basically throwing the message at Alex before his decoy has even reached the area, completely undermining his own attempt at distraction.
  • Katherine Parkinson may be the show's patron saint of this trope; her embracing of this trope extended to the fact that, for some reason, she was often unaware that she was even allowed to leave the room she was completing the task in, meaning that her attempts to complete the task — never exactly overly-competent at the best of times — were utterly hindered by the limitations of the near-surroundings that she was currently standing within. Perhaps the nadir of this for her is the "put the boots on the spider" task, wherein this self-imposed limitation completely bewildered her as to what "the spider" was supposed to be, until she eventually just ended up putting the boots on an eight-legged table in the room. (The spider she was supposed to use was, of course, a gigantic furry artificial one located in the garden.) While Greg does allow her a point for ingenuity in this case, he makes it clear that the point is also given with heaped portions of condescending pity as well. In total fairness it's also subverted in what is arguably her moment of greatest triumph — her attempt at the "longest marble run" task, wherein this self-imposed limitation leads her to think outside the box and devise a simple-yet-effective marble run driven by gravity which ultimately wins the task.
  • In Series 13's "Shoe Who", Ardal O'Hanlon decides that in the "guess which shoe Alex is thinking of" task, it would be a good idea to ask whether the shoe in question is appropriate to wear at a funeral. While the question itself is only of relative help in completing the task, as many of the shoes were formal in nature and others were somewhat subjective, the problem was compounded by the fact that he kept forgetting whether he'd asked if the shoe was or wasn't appropriate. This led him to accidentally throw the actual shoe away.
• William Telling: Subverted in "Welcome to Rico Face." Jon is selected as the victim for the solo task in which the other four devise a small fun task for the victim. One of these is introduced by Alex where the task is rolled up and slotted through an apple which sits atop Alex's head. The actual fun task is to recreate the William Tell overture using only one's hands and cheeks.
• With Cat Like Tread:
  • In "Hollowing Out a Baguette," Lolly tries to camouflage herself by covering herself in a square of Astroturf and lying on the lawn. This would have worked better if she hadn't had Alex sprinkle icing sugar all over the square, making it stand out distinctly against the rest of the lawn. She came in second only to Mel, who tried to hide behind a flowerpot that was much smaller than she was.
  • In "No stars for naughty boys", Hugh tries to hide by changing locations within the house, and peeking outside to see where he was. He gets caught in just over a minute, as Hugh had been peeking at the wrong person (a cameraman). Greg calls him "as stealthy as a cow". The next person to try their luck was Noel, who, as Greg graciously points out, was wearing a yellow boiler suit. Noel got spotted by Alex in sixteen seconds after he tries hiding behind the caravan. Noel comes last, while Hugh comes joint third.
  • In "Rock 'n' Roll Umlaut", a task was to hide in a red London phone box, but they had to cover themselves up so no part of them or their clothing was visible from the outside the phone box. Once done, they had to shout "I'm invisible!" to denote that they've stopped. The fastest who was also fully covered up wins. Joe used red bubblewrap to cover up the windows, Sian wrapped herself head to toe in three bin bags, Iain made a mattress fort inside the phone box with some mattresses, Lou concealed herself in a grey blanket, while Paul got people to stand around the phone box and used mattresses to cover the windows (he tried using newspapers to cover the windows initially, but they blew away). Paul came last, and Lou came second. Iain came first, with Joe and Sian failing the task at joint fourth.
  • There is a task in "Don't Like Them Go Bang" where the contestants need to deliver Alex a set of 5-word instructions in the most spy-like manner. Ed Gamble recruits one of the production staff to walk up to Alex dressed conspicuously in a boiler suit with a decoy set of instructions. While this is a good idea in theory, it's completely undercut when Ed (in Greg's words) "thunder[s] across an open field" and throws the instructions at Alex before the decoy even reaches him. He places joint fourth with Rose, who disguised herself as a walking boulder.
• Word Salad Title: A couple of episodes have ended up with these:
  • The episode "Twelve Blush Majesty Two", which turns out to be the least successful result from the lip-reading live task: "Phil Wang's tool sacks twelve blush majesty two."^note The actual sentence was "Phil Wang's shoe size is twelve plus two minus two."
  • "Caring Uncle Minpict" is the result of Victoria attempting to read Alan's description of Greg, as spelled out with his body^note Alan was actually spelling "Grand, florid, big tall man". They actually beat the other team, because Desiree didn't even get that Morgana was trying to form letters, and Morgana's description included the word "grumpy".
• Writing Around Trademarks: In "What Kind of Pictures?", one task is "Put something genuinely surprising inside a chocolate egg." The phrase 'Kinder Surprise' is carefully never mentioned, even though it's obviously the inspiration for the challenge and the chocolate egg provided is recognisably a hollowed-out Kinder Surprise egg.
• Wrong Genre Savvy:
  • In one task in Series Two, on encountering a collection of groceries including an airbed next to a canal, having clearly learnt his lesson about being prepared Richard Osman decided to inflate the airbed before opening the task just in case it was necessary to do so. On actually reading the task, he ruefully noted that it said nothing about the airbed, meaning he might as well have not bothered.
  • Rhod Gilbert didn't realize that the competition was real and thought that it was all about getting the biggest laughs. Because of this, he spent each prize task needling Greg and getting placed last.
  • A task-specific variation occurs in "Think About the Spirit" where the teams need to make the best cup of tea where all the tea-making implements are locked or sealed to the table. Ed was certain that Alex had the key that would unlock the implements hidden (much like the task from Series 3 episode "The Dong and the Gong") and spent a good 5 minutes searching Alex's person for a key while his teammates worked on the tea. He didn't have one, and they didn't need it anyway since Ed was able to forcefully pull one of the mugs off the table.
  • In the first team task of Series 11 (which was also apparently the first team task recorded), Jamali Maddix and Sarah Kendall meet each other at a park, where they are required to stand on two boxes with the task resting on a third, identical one. They immediately seem to assume that acquiring the task is part of the task, and immediately start brainstorming ideas for how they can get it... apparently not stopping to consider the possibility that they might simply have a third teammate who hasn't arrived yet. Naturally, when Charlotte Ritchie — said third teammate — finally shows up, they've reached the point where they're stripping belts and shoelaces to tie together to form a rope.

Y

• "YEAH!" Shot: Greg and Alex do this during the credits of "I've Sinned Again" after the Champion of Champions is crowned. Amusingly, everyone else is still moving.
• Yes-Man:
  • The comic dynamic between Greg and Alex tends to be characterised by homoerotically-charged fawning towards Greg on Alex's part, with a bit of Stockholm Syndrome mixed in thanks to Greg's constant bullying.
  • In several tasks, particularly prize tasks or those which require doing something specifically for the Taskmaster, the contestants have tried making overt attempts at flattering Greg, such as getting a tattoo of his name on their foot (Josh Widdicombe) or buying a piece of land that entitles him to use the title "Lord" (Katherine Ryan). Though it's played with: while Greg is far from immune to flattery and frequently makes a Self-Deprecating Humor Running Gag about how needy he is for positive attention, he often doesn't seem particularly impressed by overtly obvious or insincere attempts at sucking up. He generally seems more willing to reward people who apply creativity or a sincere attempt to find out something about him and what he likes rather than just shameless flattery. For example, in a "Buy The Taskmaster A Gift" task in season 3, he rewards Rob Beckett, who bought him a comfortable foot-cushion for the throne he uses the in the series, fewer points than Dave Gorman, who bought him some memorabilia from his hometown of Wem, because Dave's contribution showed some effort to find out something about who Greg was and where he came from.
• You Need to Get Laid: Sally is diagnosed with this by Greg at the end of Series Five after a collection of responses to tasks which have included, in order, a weirdly sensual food-based "special hug", a one-night-stand with a water-cooler, the birth of a fully-grown Alex-baby, and finally a graph charting how much sex she wants versus how much sex she gets over time.
• You Say Tomato:
  • The cast of series nine get a lot of mileage out of making fun of Rose's Kiwi accent and her pronunciation of certain words like "mayor" (sounding like MEER) or "shed" (sounding like SHID).
  • In "God's Haemorrhoid," Greg objects to Alex's pronunciation of the words "room" (with the same vowel sound of the word "book") and "tissue" (as in TIS-you).
  • In "Birdy Hand Finger," Ardal takes Greg and Alex aback with his prize task entry, a "murr" (mirror).
  • In "I Think I've Got This", Chris Ramsey's submission for the "item which sounds funniest when you say its name over and over" prize task is a cookbook, which sounds slightly different, and thus funnier, in his Geordie accent. Greg calls it a "regional response".
• Your Mom: A variation appears in "A Pistacho Eclair" after Doc Brown's dinner party guest^note The Last Skeptic, a rapper is subject to mockery from the other contestants due to his rather rough-looking appearance.
  Doc: It was a toss of the coin for me between the Last Skeptic and my mum, and now I'm so glad. Because you lot would have just cussed my mum out for like ten minutes.
  Greg: I would never have cussed your mum unless she looked like a common criminal.
  Doc: ... You lot would have just cussed my mum for ten minutes.
• You Have to Believe Me!: Basically said word-for-word by Ardal O'Hanlon in "The House Queens" when he and Chris Ramsey have to convince Greg that they performed an unbroadcast task which apparently involved Chris feeding Ardal aubergine, in order for their lyrics in the "perform the best multi-track song about your team" task to make sense.

Z

• Zip Me Up: In a task to poke something surprising from the grotto in "Mother Honks Her Horn," Phil elects to undress and poke out his infamous jumpsuit. After he completes the task and while he is putting the jumpsuit back on, he asks Alex to help him zip up the back. Alex is uncharacteristically not shy about it and adds that he also blew on Phil's neck.

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