When you got five comedians trying their damnest to finish their tasks to please another comedian and his assistant, you'd better be certain that there's plenty of humour to go around. So much to go around, in fact, that it needs to be split up into separate pages.
Each page also includes the Champions of Champions special that features the championsnote from those series.
UK Series
New Year Treats
Basic Recipe 28
- In the opening titles, the contestants are shown at the Taskmaster House property walking triumphantly through clouds of coloured smoke... except Claudia, who is coughing and wheezing.
- The first recorded task is to put an egg into an eggcup in the most daring way:
- The source of the episode title: Adrian reading out a recipe for plain pudding mixture from an old cookbook he found in the caravan, which has no relevance to any task whatsoever.
- Claudia's attempt at putting an egg into a eggcup in the most daring way involves throwing the egg lightly over the cow, celebrating, then picking it up and putting it in the eggcup. She also reveals that she completed this in under three minutes (out of the 30 available) and had enough time to apply extra eyeliner, have a chat with Alex, and eat some pot noodles:Alan: You were lazy, profoundly lazy!
Greg: Thank you!
Alan: When you missed the eggcup, I thought you were gonna throw it into the eggcup—
Claudia: No.
Alan: —it sailed over the eggcup into the grass—
Greg: Yeah!
Alan: And then you went, "Yeah!"
Claudia: But it didn't smash—
Alex: No, they famously don't smash when they land on grass.
Alan: Fill the eggcup with grass, see? [Claudia suddenly has a realisation] If you'd thought about it for four minutes, you might have got there. - During his VT, Adrian mentions that he had to crawl underneath a fence in the past year. Greg interrogates him on this detail:Greg: Wow. First thing's first, why, earlier this year, did you have to crawl under a fence?
Adrian: Because I couldn't get over it.
- In the task to drink all the vinegar:
- Jonnie Peacock is the only contestant to pick up on the clues around the room that identify the correct shot. The moment he tries to grab said shot, however, he knocks it over, spilling the vinegar everywhere, and ends up having to suck it up with a straw.
- From that same task, Claudia, Lady Leshurr, and Sayeeda all gave up on finding the vinegar mere moments before they would have actually found the vinegar.
- The third task involves the contestants carrying a window cleaner's pole around an obstacle course, but every time the pole touches something other than the contestant's hands, 10cm is taken off their final pole length:
- Claudia starts with a 420cm long pole, but she strikes it 41 times, meaning her final score is 10cm. She is so mortified in the studio that she hides behind her chair.
- Lady Leshurr's attempt is just as chaotic as Claudia's. She begins by immediately ramming the end of the pole into the (closed) front door. At one point, the pole passes through the tyres smoothly—until it suddenly comes to a stop, and the next shot reveals that Lady Leshurr's arms are stuck in one of the tyres. She then wonders if she is meant to climb through the tyres or not.
- The studio task sees the contestants drawing the face of another contestant on a ball that they had chosen.
- Sayeeda draws Adrian's face and wins the task. When the leaderboard shows the final scores, Adrian's picture has been replaced by the ball.
- Lady Leshurr does a terrible job of drawing Claudia on a basketball. While Greg ridicules her effort, Alex notices one likeness:Alex: Well, it is orange.(Claudia gives Alex the middle finger and silently mouths "Fuck you" at him)
- From the prize task:
- Amelia kicks things off by bringing in a coffin for an fly:Greg: Why did you make a coffin for an fly?Amelia: Because a fly died.
- What the bald Sir Mo Farah brings in: a hairdryer. This wins him the task.
- While scoring the prizes, Alex points out that Greg Davies has written his own name instead of Greg James:Greg: I'm so self-centred I can't comprehend the idea of another Greg!
- Amelia kicks things off by bringing in a coffin for an fly:
- During the 'count the dots' task:
- Greg James is the only person who thinks to answer the phone, where a voice tells him how many dots there are... but then he immediately forgets the number.
- There's also his conclusion after finishing the task, which Greg Davies quite rightly puts into the Taskmaster Book of Quotes:Greg James: It's Taskmaster. It's not supposed to be fun!
- When instructed to speak like a pirate, Amelia and Rebecca get nowhere close. Special points to Rebecca for somehow ending up sounding Irish.Greg: You do know what a pirate is, both of you, right?Rebecca: We're...young!
- When Sir Mo receives the instruction to yell until the doorbell next rings, he doesn't immediately realise he's supposed to return inside and just communicate by yelling. Instead, he just starts yelling randomly.Sir Mo: Hello! Woo!
- From the painting task:
- Carol Vorderman's approach to finding out where the bucket is: throw balls at Alex.Alex: I'm not the bucket.Carol: No, but if I hit you enough you might tell me where the bucket is.Alex: [audibly frightened] The bucket's behind you.
- Everyone's reactions to the head massager, particularly Sir Mo, who enjoys it so much he completely forgets about the rest of the task afterward, and Greg James, whose moan can only be described as pornographic.
- Carol Vorderman's approach to finding out where the bucket is: throw balls at Alex.
- The 'get the most carp pellets into the fishbowl' task, which specifies the contestants cannot bend at the knees or waist. Cue all the Silly Walks.
- Carol Vorderman's 'full body lean':Greg: You look like a robot that's run out of power.
- Carol Vorderman's 'full body lean':
- Alex convincing Deborah Meaden that a toaster is voice-activated.Deborah: (to the toaster) Go down.
Miscellaneous
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Taskmaster: The Podcast
- Episode 4 of the podcast, which recaps Series 10 episode "Toshwash," has Paul Chowdhry (from Series 3) doing a spot-on impression of Johnny Vegas.
- In Episode 11, Greg cheerfully states that he thinks Series 10 champion Richard Herring looks like a sex offender.
- In Episode 14, which is a look back at Series 1 episode "The Pie Whisperer," Tim Key accidentally activates Alexa (by saying Alex had) and has to tell it not to sign up for a "free" trial.
- Episode 15, which features Josh Widdicombe as the guest:
- Josh reveals that when he was announced as the winner, "an unnamed contestant" was heard saying, "That fucking bean point." Fast forward a few episodes, and Ed brings this up with Romesh, who just laughs.
- Josh reveals that the trophy of Greg's body was displayed at his agent's office, which is awkward because Greg is signed to a rival talent agency.
- When Ed questions Kerry Godliman about her choice of trophy storage location and whether she put it in a better location once Katy Wix returned itnote , without hesitation, she answers that she stuck it back onto the shelf in her garage — mainly because she finds the trophy to be creepy.
- Episode 26, the companion episode to Series 11 episode "Run Up a Tree to the Moon," features Katherine Parkinson as the guest and has quite a few moments:
- Katherine mentions that as Series 10 was broadcast, whenever she looked herself up online, the number one autocomplete search terms were "Katherine Parkinson mental health."
- On the podcast, Katherine Parkinson confirms that she was genuinely hurt when Greg made fun of her clay masks (for which he apologised profusely both on and off camera afterwards). She had been compulsively making them over the first UK lockdown and (to Ed's audible dismay) stopped making any more masks after completing the studio shoots for Taskmaster... if only because she has moved on to acrylics.
- Both Ed and Katherine took Mike's prize entry (the allegedly smashed glass sculpture) at face value, with Katherine even asking for the sculptor's details. It turns out that Mike had used the same idea for Taskmaster Zero (a close look at the packing slip shows that the sculpture was obviously a fake), a fact that some diligent Taskmaster fans were quick to point out to Ed. Ed acknowledges this and presses Mike on the glass sculpture prize a couple episodes later.
- Katherine struggles with pronouncing the word "mnemonic."
- At the end of the interview, Ed asks questions from the listeners. The last question from a listener asks Katherine whether or not she had actually done a fart in the infamous outtake from "Toshwash." Katherine immediately and loudly denies that she had done the fart and refuses to answer any more questions. For what it's worth, she points the finger to one of the production crew as the responsible party, whose sniggering made the fart-like noise.
- As if the reveal that Mike audibly pushed out a haemorrhoid during "Absolute Casserole" wasn't bad enough, Mike decided to double down and go into even more detail on Episode 29 of the podcast, both horrifying and amusing Ed.
- Charlotte mocks her performance in the team task where they tried to set off the alarm as few times as possible. First, she mentions how stupid her suggestion was that someone was watching them and then setting off the alarm when necessary, since the producers obviously wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of rigging up an alarm system for one task, especially since the alarm would have consisted of paper squares on the ground. She then can’t believe she said “what’s the situation?” given that literally the entire point of the task was to figure out the situation. Ed mentions that “what’s the situation?” could be the new name of the show. Charlotte counters that it’s such a generic question that it could be the title of any show ever.
- Episode 48, Paul Williams, the NZ Taskmaster's Assistant comes onto the podcast and has a lovely conversation with Ed. At the end, however, Paul pounces and gets revenge for all of New Zealand by asking where Ed stores his gardening equipment and ridiculing how English people pronounce "shed".
- At the end of Episode 51 which features David Correos from Taskmaster (NZ), David debuts a new rap
that he prepared specifically for his podcast appearance. - Episode 76 discusses the first episode of series 13. Ed reveals that the duck finding task was a retooled version of a task that was originally intended for Champion of Champions 2, and that the bonus duck Judi found was an accidental leftover from the original task. When guest Desiree Burch asks Ed about the bonus duck, Ed admits his first reaction was irritation because he had failed to find it during his attempt.
- In Episode 80, Chris Ramsey confesses he hadn't seen any Taskmaster before he got cast. The reason? Pure spite. He has production offices right across the hall from Taskmaster at Avalon headquarters and he was miffed that no one ever thought to knock on his door to ask if he'd be interested in participating. Episode 83 with Rosie Ramsey, Chris' wife, sheds further light on the grudge as she reveals that not only did he not watch Taskmaster, he also stopped her and other members of his family from watching it.
- Episode 84 (discussing Series 13 episode 9) reveals that Ed Gamble was among the people Bridget contacted for facts about the Taskmaster. Ed was apparently completely baffled by the phone call, and says that watching the episode didn't really clear things up.
- In Episode 103, Dara Ó Briain spends most of the conversation grumbling over the fact that he was brought in to discuss "Long-Legged Lobster", which features some of his worst task attempts. He also mentions that part of his motivation to take part in Series 14 is the fact that he lives right down the street from the Taskmaster House, similar to Al Murray, so getting to-and-from set was easy.
Taskmaster does Edinburgh
Between the airing of Series Two and Series Three, a special episode of Taskmaster was filmed for the Edinburgh Fringe where TV executives were the contestants.
- Greg mentions that they are happy to be in Edinburgh only because it's their contractual obligation to say so.
- When an audience member asks why they had grouped the women's video footage together Greg says it was just to spite said audience member.
- Alex sets a task for the TV executives to pitch a brand new original concept tv show in one minute and Alex confirms they did pitch their little hearts out. Unfortunately, Alex zoned out because he lost interest and was busy arranging a tapas meal for him and Greg, as well as the car to get them there. Ultimately Alex decided not to show the attempts because the ideas "weren't right for them at the time" and no points were awarded for their efforts.
Other
- When James Acaster appeared as a guest on Rhod Gilbert and Sian Harries' podcast The Froth, the two talked about their time on Taskmaster. Amongst other things, a particular highlight is James elaborating on the prize task for "Lotta Soup", and what led to Jess smashing Rhod's submission, a candle-holder, at the end of the episode.
- Series 12 featured special promotional tasks sponsored by Google, which had a couple of corkers.
- Al Murray makes a triumphant return, demonstrating — yet again — that he can't accept the fact that he's no longer on the show.
- One of the tasks involves getting a teacher to make an origami boat, and Al and Desiree need to work out which of the two strangers in the room is the teacher. Desiree demonstrates that she speaks a bit of French. However, she fails to realize that the Frenchman wasn't the teacher until the task had been completed.
- After Desiree is announced the winner of the "Eat the malinanote , don't eat the パイナップルnote " task, Al immediately grabs some pineapple slices, stuffs them into his mouth, and challenges Alex to disqualify him.
- For reaching 1,000,000 subscribers to the Taskmaster YouTube channel, YouTube sent the show their golden play button award. Alex happily bursts into Greg's dressing room with a hammer to put it on the wall, only to discover Greg casually eating a roast chicken off it.
