Taskmaster The Podcast - Ep 126. Jenny Eclair - S15 Ep.3

Episode Date: April 13, 2023

Jenny Eclair joins Ed on this week's podcast to take a deep dive in to Episode 3 of Series 15. And what a great bunch of tasks to chat to Jenny about - one in particular made her incredibly happy. Jenny also talks Ed through her fellow contestants and how she felt prize tasks, team tasks and of course THAT barge task. BRACE!!*Next week on Thursday 20th April Taskmaster will go out at the later time of 10.30pm but will be available to watch on All4 at 9pm. The podcast will be available at 11.30pm*You can listen to Jenny's podcast Older and Wider wherever you get your podcasts from.Watch all of Taskmaster on All 4www.channel4.com/programmes/taskmasterVisit the Taskmaster Store for all your TM goodies!taskmasterstore.com Visit the Taskmaster YouTube Channelyoutube.com/taskmaster Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We can wait for clean water solutions, or we can engineer access to clean water. We can acknowledge indigenous cultures, or we can learn from indigenous voices. We can demand more from the earth, or we can demand more from ourselves. At York University, we work together to create positive change for a better tomorrow. Join us at yorku.ca slash write the future. Hello and welcome to the Taskmaster podcast. We're back, baby. I hope you've watched Taskmaster Series 15, Episode 3,

which has just gone out. Some of you might be here at 10pm listening to this, fresh from watching that episode, a brilliant episode. We are very excited to be discussing it with the wonderful Jenny Eclair, brilliant contestant on Series 15. I'm absolutely loving everything Jenny's done so far. I think she's fantastic i think it's the enthusiasm it's the energy the verve that she attacks everything with

uh absolutely love watching her she's an addictive watch and i can't wait to speak to her about her time on taskmaster uh if you like jenny which you should absolutely, you should love Jenny, she has a podcast called Older and Wider. Do go and check that out wherever you get your podcasts. It's absolutely fantastic. But for now, let's hear her on this podcast, the Taskmaster podcast discussing Series 15, Episode 3. It's Jenny Eclair. Welcome, Jenny Eclair, to the Taskmaster podcast.

Well, thank you very much for having me, Ed Gamble. Where are you, by the way? Where are you? Are you in a sort of bedroom, a rather sort of sad boy's bedroom? I'm in my office, which I guess could be interpreted as a sad boy's bedroom. There's no bed here, though. But yeah, it's like a little box box room a little box room in the attic okay i just want you to to dodge over to one side i want to see the artwork behind you oh yeah that's right is that a joe lysett it is that is a joe lysett original it's a baby in a cocktail glass and it says uh um wear a condom on it oh yeah that's that's rather splendid and I can see your taskmaster uh award which is yes you

know a little bit try hard um but you know well done if it means that much to you you know right well it really does it really does and you know what I was a try hard I tried very hard and it all paid off in the end yeah but it didn't really for you know the second round one you know when you went back with the winners winners and you nearly exploded with try-hardness. Thank you, Jenny, for reminding me of that. That made me laugh. That made me laugh a lot. I just thought, I had a flashback then. We were trying so hard. I had a flashback to that gig when you supported me in Tambridge Wells and you're trying hard and you're dying on your arse.

Oh, yeah. I was standing in the wings thinking, oh, Jesus God, I don't know what's going to become of this boy. I don't remember you standing in the wings, yeah. I was standing in the wings thinking, oh, Jesus God, I don't know what's going to become of this boy. I don't remember you standing in the wings, Jenny. I remember you throwing me on stage and immediately going back to your dressing room is what I remember. Yeah, but I was listening on the tannoy. I was listening on the tannoy and then I had to turn it down because there was like... I just thought, oh, I think I might have an asthma attack next. I don't know what's going to happen.

There's some flailing going on. Anyway, there we go. I think what people need to know is whenever I talk about supporting you, I did it a couple of times, Jenny, and this was probably circa 2010, so I have improved since then, I promise. I supported you at Bath Comedia, which went okay, I seem to remember. So you said, oh, come back and support me in Sunbridge Wells, which was, I think, to date,

the most silent an audience has ever been while I've been on stage. It was crisp. It was crisp studio quality audio. It was absolute silence. Pin drop, yeah. And I do think, I felt like, there's a famous thrash metal band called Slayer

who famously, you don't want to support Slayer because their audience are there for Slayer and they are so excited to see Slayer, who famously, you don't want to support Slayer because their audience are there for Slayer, and they are so excited to see Slayer. And I see you as the comedy equivalent of that. Your audience love you so much that anyone in the way of you and your audience is just going to get scared. I stopped having support acts very soon after that. I was just breaking them.

I was taking these young men out on the road and just breaking them they were sort of they were starting out in the tours all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and enthusiastic then after three weeks with me there were these sort of disheveled alcoholic broken pieces of rubbish crying in the back of a car anyway there we go I also love I think you might have even said this to me or someone else who supported you said this um me or someone else who supported you said this um basically they said don't do any filth because they'll stare at you like you're disgusting and then jenny will go on and say the most filthy things possible and they'll lose their minds yeah yeah a torrent of absolute disgusting muck will fall out of my mouth and they'll take

it they'll swallow it not from you not from you no no no disgusting despite all of those support experiences i was very very excited to hear that you were doing taskmaster um and honestly i mean especially in this episode your excitement at doing it and the way you've thrown yourself into it is fantastic i think it's slightly too much enthusiasm to be dignified i think i lose all i've never had any dignity to be dignified, I think. I lose all, I've never had any dignity to be quite honest. The thing is, Ed, I'm going to be honest with you, I had waited a bloody long time to do this Taskmaster series. Series 15. You know, the series is made by the management that I belong to. I'm part of their comedy stable. And every series I'd sort of, I'd kind of send an email to my agent going

any chance any chance any chance might do Taskmaster this year and then the the emails got increasingly sort of abusive as the series went on until there was and I'm not mentioning names that somebody got on it before me and I just wrote their name not saying it's a boy or a girl I just read wrote their name on this email to my agent and went blah blah for fuck's sake and left it at that fantastic and that worked it worked yeah well it was another three series before I actually got on but there we go one down the end um you know I tick a box don't don't I? You know, they sort of, I think now and again, they had to have an over 60.

And they go, oh God, who are we going to have? Well, I was thinking about this though, because interestingly, you can see already that Alex is trying to sort of paint you and Frankie into the sort of the older corner of the contestants. But I think quite often, I'd say almost all of the time, the older contestants are characterized by you know just not really trying that hard or you know they're in their persona of being of being slightly

older than the rest of the contestants I'd say you have more enthusiasm and energy for Taskmaster than the majority of the younger contestants on this year's lineup I regressed very badly but I find it very easy to find my inner child. What I find very difficult is sort of to not find my inner child. My inner child is always there coming to the surface being an absolute twat. So you know it just it appealed very much to, I was born in 1960, it's very easy to date me and I didn't have television as a child we lived in Berlin so I spent a lot of my formative years arsing around and the whole Taskmaster thing really took me back to my childhood where you just arsed around and did stupid things with balloons and water or what

just stupid stuff yeah just play it's like yeah you're just you're just playing um yeah that's great that it really comes across and then you go in for your tea before before you um did the show and they told you who the lineup was were you excited did you did you know many of your fellow contestants before the show i i met may really briefly um in melbourne uh gosh our jet setting um when we'd both been doing the comedy festival, and they were so young, they were sort of fetal at the time, May was so young back then, and, you know, I was probably, I can always tell how young I am by what size jeans I was wearing, I think I was in a 12 jean at that point so I was youngish and they were eating some we

had a very good breakfast at this in this it was like hotel apartments the medina hotel in in Melbourne that's where I saw them first so it was they know sort of some mutual friends of my daughters I mean it is quite there is an age gap thing I'm suddenly working mutual friends of my daughter's. I mean, it is quite, there is an age gap thing. I'm suddenly working with people of my own child's age, but my child is now a woman and I have to understand that. And I hadn't met Kyle, but Kyle is very, very easy. He's very, very, very, very friendly. And Ivo, I, you know, I'm always slightly suspicious of posh white boys, but I also sort of really sympathise with them as well because, you know, I'm always slightly suspicious of posh white boys,

but I also sort of really sympathise with them as well because, you know, everybody leaps to conclusions about them. And I just thought, he has such a sweetness. He has such an absolute adorable side. Frankie I was nervous of because despite us having been around, you know, since the arc, neither of us had ever met or gigged together. Really? That's really surprising.

We've never actually, no, been in the same room. No, I think that maybe people thought, oh God, it's just too much having Boyle and Eclair in one small space. So, and of course, you know, you sort of go in with these preconceived notions and he thought I was going to be a miserable cow. And I just thought he was just going to be

a hard-faced Glaswegian, you know, and just kind of... I started to sort of snivel a bit at the thought of... I'm quite cowardly about people who can create what I call an atmosphere in a room. And I don't like it. It makes me anxious. So I was really relieved when he just didn't do that. And what happens with Frankie

is occasionally you will really make him giggle. And it is a g it's not a laugh he giggles like a child like a toddler and it's a very gratifying thing so i was sort of you know if i did make him giggle i sort of i preened you know when you preen i think i've done a good thing i've made boiled that's nice yeah boiled pickle that's nice yeah now we're obviously talking about episode three today so we've had we've had a couple of episodes already I think we're going to have to talk to you about the barge task before we plow into this episode because of course it's it's the barge task is absolutely hilarious it's on a big scale and yours goes um so spectacularly sort of wrong wrong that you you could always tell when something's been a big moment in the filming when it opens the title sequence and brace brace brace which is the direct quote review opens the

entire title sequence was it stressful doing that or did you enjoy it really? Well, the thing was, I wasn't really concentrating because I had a car waiting for me to take me up to Manchester to do Countdown because Colin Murray had come down with COVID and they needed a sitting host. So I sort of had one eye on my watch thinking, well, I've got to go in a bit. So, you know, I've got to get on with this. And of course, you know, I am very bull in a china shop i do sort of i think sometimes people like may possibly sit down

for a couple of minutes before they do anything and think and i just didn't do i just sort of kind of steam ahead and there's always a bit of optimism in me where i'm a very odd mix of sort of a sort of well of optimism that quickly runs out and and it underneath is this sort of dank swamp of reality and pessimism and sort of where my actual life is most of the time but at the beginning of things I always think that something magical and and it might happen a miracle might happen and then the sort of reality sets in. I realised you've never done this before, Jenny, and you don't know what you're doing. I'm not even very good driving a car. I can't drive on a motorway.

I mean, I do have a licence and I do drive a lot, but I only drive in London. And it's not like a car, it's like upside down and back to front. And I, you know, I just, I couldn't get it. I just couldn't get it I mean it was it was amazing I mean we didn't see you say this but I think what will stick in my head forever is Alex uh saying that one one of the things you'd shouted when you were driving the boat was spin bitch spin oh yeah spin bitch spin I say that to everybody all the time you know

I say that phrase at least once a day spin bitch, bitch, spin, you know, I don't know, could be anybody. Yeah, I was trying to spin the bitch of a boat and it wouldn't, it wouldn't spin. They're quite cumbersome and unwieldy barges, you know, they're not quick, you know. And then there was, there was, you had this kind of narwhals kind of spike at the front of the boat and you had to hook these rubber rings off trees. And it was quite breezy and the rubber rings kept spinning. They were spin bitches. And I couldn't do it. It was really hard.

I couldn't do it. And then the big crash at the end is perfect. I'm glad someone just did it gung ho, to be honest, because watching five people go very slowly uh would have been disappointing but i'm glad you just floored it and rammed into a wall yeah well i had to get in that car and go to manchester and do countdown didn't i say you know the clock was against me but there was a sound man down in the in the sort of depths of the barge underneath hiding you know that and that poor bloke he came out and honestly the the back and he'd had had his headphones on so he was like at the epicenter of the crash and he came out and his teeth were still sort of shaking in his mouth

from the reverberations and he was like quite upset yeah I had bruising on my breasts oh yeah from the steering wheel I up the next day and I thought, what have I been up to? Because I had all these certain, I had bruising. So that was very exciting. Oh goodness me. First time anyone's woken up after Countdown with that.

Let's talk about the prize task in this episode, the most heroic thing. Let's talk about yours first, Jenny, because it gets the five points, and I think it was a wonderful prize. You brought in your father's DNA in the form of his hair. But a lovely moment when you said it was going to be his DNA. And there was just a little second before you said that it was hair where everyone looked very nervous. Yeah, yeah. I don't think there was ever a time when they entirely trusted me.

So, yes, there was. When my father died, my father was quite an extraordinary man. I mean, you know, I'm not allowed to say this, but I say it, you know, without saying it is he might have been a spy, but I wasn't like to say that on the programme because, you know, there's an official secret sack thing that he had to sign. But anyway, he's dead now. My mother's dead. And, you know, now my mother's dead and you know I know that we lived in Berlin and I know he went over to East Berlin a lot and all these things so he was he was a kind of he was a chap and he was from Blackpool but he learnt how to be posh so when he opened his mouth he was really raw like that you know yeah he was a major and uh he made me

laugh more than anybody else really he was very very funny he loved a poo joke um and he wasn't at all strict like an army major in that way he was he was a fool you know he was a very lovable talk to anybody chap and um when he died i cut some of his hair off, which my sister thought was kind of weird and appalling. And, you know, in Victorian times, they'd put them in lockets and things like this. They'd have jewellery and they'd make things out of them and all this. But I didn't really have anything to put it in apart from an oyster card carrier. So it's in an oyster card carrier. And now my mother died a few months ago

and her hair is not on the other side. So they are together in my Oyster card carrier. Just checking that, when did your father leave us? It wasn't during the time of Taskmaster was it? You weren't cutting his hair off thinking, one day I'm going to get on the show and I can bring this in as a prize task. No, that would have been bad.

Well, it's a wonderful prize task and I think it's the first time I've ever seen Greg truly backed into a corner where there is nothing he can do but give someone five points. Well, the thing is, there is another episode where he is stingy with his points, my grandson, which I don't think I'll

ever quite forgive him for. Well, at least he came through with these points yeah and no one else stood a chance uh especially i mean ivo got four points which was which was good he brought in the handcrafted model of greg's face using hero chocolates yeah looking chocolate that looked like it had been defecated out of ivo's own arsehole. It was, I genuinely thought it was going to be some kind of rather Klimt-esque piece of coloured, you know, wrapped chocolate, but it wasn't. It was just this melted kind of pool of chocolate shit.

Yeah, he just watched it all with his hand. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, was it his hand? I thought maybe he had even shat it all out. That's what it looked like. Well, it was when Greg said, oh, it's five points immediately, when he described what it was. And then Alex was quite insistent that they looked at it

because the actual reality of it was horrendous. And didn't Kyle bring in a towel? Kyle brought in, he brought in a cape. So that's one hero element uh made pictures of enrique iglesias iglesias's face because he has a song called heroes so it it was well thought through but the actual image of what he brought in you see i thought it was a i thought it was a beach towel i didn't know what it was i'm sure you could use it as a beach towel yeah yeah yeah yeah well no it was well thought out. Everyone really tried hard.

Sometimes those are really hard, the things you have to bring in. Yeah. You sometimes think you've got a really good idea and then you get to the actual studio record and people have been much cleverer than you have. And it's really kind of, you can feel your heart just crumble inside. Yeah. Yeah, especially when you're really excited about one and then because the thing the way taskmaster works is they're not

gonna then the production are not gonna go oh that's not very good maybe we could make get a better version of that or get a better reaction from the audience they are just gonna let you fail spectacularly yeah yeah yeah i mean i think that what they want is they don't want you to fail spectacularly all the time but they think it's really funny when you do. Anyway, there we go. I won that one. Presenting a prize task to hear silence from the audience

I think is pretty awful. It's supporting Jenny Clare at Tunbridge Wellsbad. It's exactly the same. It was another flashback moment for me there we go not that oh not on that occasion though that was a triumphant one very triumphant um may brought in the coward's glasses um now this may is may is very good at taskmaster let's just say it was a rare fail from may it was a rare fail yeah because may thinks thinks about everything a lot they put a lot of effort into everything and uh this time i feel like they overthought it um there was too much back story yeah it hard on it and um it yeah it was one of those rare occasions

where i i was sitting there quite confidently thinking yeah spin bitch uh i've beaten on that one um but it's i don't know it thing is, after spending very little time with May on the filming, it dawned on me with a sort of sickening realisation that they were really, really fucking clever. Yes, very, very clever indeed. And really knows the show and loves games of all sorts. Yeah, you see, I wasn't as well prepared as some of the others because you know when I told you I hadn't been allowed on it and you know I felt like I'd

been sitting on the reserve bench for about 10 years and I get so furious about not being invited on shows I think I should be on and that I have every right that I have earned my place on. I don't watch them, right? So I stopped watching Taskmaster about series 3 because I just thought, no, I'm not. Fuck it. Fuck this. You know, they're not having me on. I'm watching this shit. There's loads of programmes I haven't watched. Would I Lie To You?

I haven't watched 8 Out Of 10 Cats Who Count Down. I haven't done Have I Got News For You? There's loads of them. I'm not watching them. Why should they have my time if they haven't done um uh the have i got news for you there's loads of them i'm not watching them why should they have my time if they haven't paid me to do them joking i agree are you like that i am a bit like that yeah but with with taskmaster i feel like as you say you're on the felt like you're on the reserves bench for 10 years yeah if if it was a sport if it was football and you're on the reserves bench would you go well i'm not training i'm not i'm not going to touch

a football then until until they put me in the match yeah it feels like that's how spiteful i am yeah yeah probably i'm not gonna try and catch a ball stop it what i'm the goalkeeper no i i'm very i don't think you understand though, the bitterness of the older woman. I don't think, you know, you're not there yet. It'll grow. It just grows. It's a seed and it grows, Ed.

It grows in this industry. You cannot, the seed of bitterness, resentful, resentment and envy is like a sort of, it starts as a tiny sapling in your chest by the time you're my age it's this mighty great fucking oak that's sort of taken over you can barely breathe for it i i feel like i have had uh i have had that sort of thing in the past but i know i have a word with myself now i actively try and have a word with myself especially if it's my friends doing something no no not at all actually if it's my friends doing something no no no not at all actually

if it's my friends doing something I have to remind myself they're my friends and I'm very happy for my friends isn't it hard there's nothing like seeing a friend fall out of a high window you're just waiting for them to crash really aren't you

anyway what can you do Frankie let's talk about Frankie's finally. Frankie brought in the superhero fan art of Wolverine and Captain America, which was, of course, pixelated for us at home. Did you see the full version in the studio? Yeah, yeah. I just thought, Frankie, what have you done, really?

This is dark. I thought, oh, he has gone very sort of train spotting dark here i don't know i don't know whether i want to look at this um he brought in a few odd pictures um i don't want to see the full collection there's a there's a there's a definite streak in there of dark art um yeah because this is the third third episode i think it's three three prize tasks that have all been art so there was him on the horse with his children. Then there was weird cats. I don't think he should bring his children into the dark art either.

But there we go. No, that was a fail. I think that the art prizes that he brought in, I think, failed to ignite on any occasion. I think that's the kindest way i can put that even this one which um i mean i'm sure it was spectacular that picture uh and he likes comic books and he likes rude things so it's perfect he put the two things together but he didn't win no no three points three points though you won yeah there was no i mean imagine if any of these beat

yours jenny uh it was five points for you, four points for Ivo, three points for Frankie, two points for May, and one point for Kyle. Ivo, how are you? I'm extremely well. I'm excited about this prize, if I may. I've handcrafted a model of your face out of Heroes chocolates.

Looks like someone's got himself five sweet points. Let's have a look, though. I would have a look. Here it is. Ah! LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE It's heroic! It's a pretty strong oak. No, to have my face made out of chocolates.

Heroic. Heroic. And you're my hero. Yeah. Oh! No! Now they're a bit desperate, that bit. face made out of chocolates. Heroic. Heroic. And you're my hero. Yeah. Bit desperate, that bit. You've got to get everything you can before he starts talking to someone else. Task one. This is great, this task. Exit the caravan exactly 20 minutes after you enter the caravan.

Also, to complete the task, you must write down and say 40 words. Each word must either be the same length or shorter than the previous word closest to exactly 20 minutes wins now this was great for multiple reasons uh when it came to you jenny um firstly great bit of taskmaster logic writing down the same word yeah no one else spotted that and just it turned into a wonderful poem. It was Imagination 39 times and then broken. Broken, yeah. I had broken my imagination by writing Imagination 39 times.

So it was like a very long bad haiku in some respects. And then I just thought, the thing is, again, Bull in China Shop. I didn't want to stay in that caravan very long because it's damp ed you know i just went in there and i know i said oh i think i might get trench vagina if i sit in here for too long and they edited that out because i don't think you're allowed you're allowed to say trench vagina well can i tell you why they edited it out jenny gone because you say trench vagina in episode one of this series. Oh, right. So I think they probably answered that. It's a bit like spin bitch.

So you're not saying trench vagina every episode. Yeah, trench vagina and spin bitch are the two things I say as frequently as I possibly can. So anyway, I tried to think of a 20-minute set, and I think I bored myself out of the caravan in under 11 minutes i sort of got so sick of sitting there on a slightly damp bonkette um i just thought i think that's 20 minutes that's done and i i honestly had no idea until the studio date that i'd mistimed that so badly. Because you thought you'd done half an hour.

You said, I think I've overrun and done half an hour, but you'd done 11 minutes. And you said it was like a set of the Bearcat in 1993. Did anyone ever talk to you about underrunning at the Bearcat? The thing is, you see, on stage, I'm good i mean because i there's nothing worse than standing in the wings thinking i should be on by now and this yeah and this cow is hog is stage hogging and you know get off because it's my turn and you just don't do that it's like it's rude it's a really rude thing to do so i think that that did cross my mind that you know I mustn't overstay because it's rude

and I just completely I you know I've got to do a 20-minute set next week for a corporate I'm now really rather worried so let's let's talk about Frankie because he also uses the 20-minute set technique and doesn't use any of the equipment but he comes in at at 23.21, so he's an overrunner. Yeah, but you're not going to argue with Frankie Boyle, are you? If you're doing a club set with Frankie and he's on before you and he overruns by three minutes, as he walks past you in the wings, you're not going to say, oh, you wanker, three minutes over. Don't do that to me again. You're not going to do that, are you?

You're just going, good one, Frankie, good one, very good. You were very funny, weren't you? turn now my turn yeah would you ever would you ever say that to someone if they'd if they'd massively overrun if they'd massively overrun yeah i'd sort of do an eye roll and a look at my watch a very pointed kind of oh i wouldn't do you know half i'd half yeah i'd half in their direction yeah it's worth a half i think yeah but very i mean very strong strong work from Frankie there. And he gets all the words right and reads them out. And just at no point tries to find a clock or use one of the egg timers.

Both you and Frankie were like, no, we've got this. Old school. Instinct, old school. He had it. I didn't. But I sort of did better by default than I should have done. Yes. I didn't but you know I sort of did better by default than I should have done because both Kyle and May despite May being incredibly clever yeah um up on her words yes as did Kyle

yes and so I leapt a couple of places by default yeah May had I in essence, the perfect timing, 19 minutes 48. And very cruelly, that was announced in the studio. And May was very excited. And then disqualified for word length. And those were my best moments when I hadn't done very well at all. I'd done quite poorly. But, you know, the other people had unknowingly and unwittingly done something that um you know made them disqualified or what and I just honestly it just really made me laugh

because you know you have no right to come second or third or whatever but actually you do because you know something has happened it's gone wrong for them I took great glee in that there was there were some gleeful moments in those occasions but even though May gets disqualified it's where we see that they're very good at Taskmaster because discovering the clock immediately, finding that mirror and then going this means that something must be up here

and then finding the clock, even though the clock is broken because it's been rained on they still get 90 minutes 48 and it was just a shame about the words. Or was it a shame? It wasn't a shame for me. Not a shame for you. Not for me. Whereas, yeah, Kyle uses a small mirror,

tries to look at the cameraman's watch, which is a good technique if you've not been so obvious about it. I think he could have kept looking at the cameraman's watch, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it was a bit of a, you know kept looking at the cameraman's watch you know yeah yeah yeah but it was a bit of a you know stare at the cameraman's watch um I didn't even bother because I did the jungle years ago and um all the cameraman men were none of them wore watches then so I just I presumed that nobody would be wearing a watch on set so I didn't even bother to look that's how lazy I am late I'm lazy you know I'm I'm just there thinking, oh, 20 minutes, 20 minutes,

and then maybe lunch. Lunch would be nice. Oh, I wonder what we'll have for lunch today. What did I order? Oh, is it sushi today or is it sandwiches? I can't remember. Oh, lunch soon. Is it now? I think it's now. I'm coming out now. Lunchtime now. I loved it because you said you were thinking a 20-minute set. I love the idea that that's in your 20. You just talking about what you're going to have for lunch.

Is it sushi today? It's Jenny, all right. She lost her mind. Why do no cameramen wear watches in the jungle? Are they trying to disorientate you? Yeah, totally. So that you become sort of more of a lunatic quicker than you would anyway. Yeah.

It didn't matter what Kyleyle did anyway because again yeah disqualify for word length and he only writes 39 words so yeah disaster from kyle um also i think kyle is rapidly becoming the most indignant contestant in this indignant is a very very good way of a very good term for it fury there is absolute fury when and the unfairness what is i mean i think that kyle and i are sort of very in touch with our inner toddler yeah and i you know i was a buffoon toddler i was apparently just you know a child that rolled around laughing most of the time i was an idiot i i think kyle might have been a foot stamping furious little boy seeing the unfairness you knowping, furious little boy, seeing the unfairness. You know those toddlers that can really see the unfairness and you can see the emotion passed over their face

and it's like the rain clouds have rolled in. And Kyle's face sometimes, you just could see the three-year-old in him. Yes, absolutely. In fact, I think he posted a picture of himself when he was young the other day, when he was a young kid, and he does look exactly the same as he does now. Exactly the same.

I can see it, yeah. Even when it's completely deserved, so he was disqualified because he didn't do a bit of the task here, and even then he was like, what? Yeah. What?

I'm being picked on. I'm being picked on. Why are you picking on me? Let's talk finally about Ivo. I mean, this is exactly as I imagined Ivo would be on Taskmaster when I heard he was doing it. Just all over the place. He's using the egg timers.

He finds the clock on the roof. He's asking golfers for the time. There's so many techniques, and he's trying to use all of them at the same time. He's like a blur, really, isn't he? Yeah. It's just, and the thing is,

every sort of little thing he tried could work. He's sort of, it's either sort of, it's heading towards absolute triumph or heading towards absolute disaster with him all the time. He's like on this tightrope. Yeah. And I find it, I find it fascinating

because um there's so much going on and he gives so much there's like if you could you know wire him up to the national grid he would give a lot you know he's just like there's a lot of frenzy and i i really enjoy it and the sort of effort is so evident in every limb. Yeah, yeah, he's always moving. So he's got like, I can't remember the term. Nervous energy. It's like nervous energy, because he's really like slim as well, Ivo.

He burns it all off. Yeah, people literally burn it all off by constantly moving. But that sort of frenetic energy is great for Taskmaster. And in this case it does pay off he does it in 23 minutes oh he does rather well and i suppose he's fine on the words isn't he he's fine on the words he gets the words uh he nails that 23 minutes 17 asking the golfers was a good technique um which he should have done at the beginning and then also not done all the other

techniques but he still gets the five points he gets so delighted when he does well so it's something yeah it matters to him again you know the child in him i'm sure he was quite hard work as a small child i wonder whether they took him to some doctors do you think they probably consulted some experts i think they might have done i think it comes from posh i think it would have been down harley street a few times have done. I think it comes from Posh. I think it would have been down Harley Street a few times. Can you have, just, would you mind having a look at Ivo? What do you think? I feel

maybe, maybe he wasn't like that as a child because he was at Eton and all that sort of individuality is, uh, crashed out of you and then as soon as he left, he turned into the, uh, gibbering twitching wreck that we know now. It was five points for Ivo, four points for Frankie, three points for you, Jenny.

And then, unfortunately, no points for May or Kyle, both disqualified. Well, having been a stand-up comedian for a lot of years, we worked in 20-minute sets. Maybe I know what 20 minutes is. So I'm going to trust my internal

clock for that. I'm going to find a pen. Right, I'm going to concentrate on the words for that. I'm going to find a pen. Right, I'm going to concentrate on the words, so 40 words. You're concentrating on that rather than the time? Yeah. I'm trying to think of a 20-minute stand-up set. Oh, that's a good idea. Progression, I'm going for at the top, so that's 11.

What's your first word there, Jenny? Imagination. Lovely. Progressive was also 11. What's your first word there, Jenny? Imagination. Lovely. Progressive was also 11. I've just thought of something. Well, it doesn't say it can't be the same word. It could be the same word done 40 times. How long have you been in the caravan?

I reckon five minutes. Which word are you going to write down 40 times? Well, I like imagination. It's slightly ironic writing imagination down 40 times. LAUGHTER Whatever your next chapter, get support with health, education, finance, and more. At veterans.gc.ca slash services. A message from the Government of Canada. We can wait for clean water solutions. Or we can engineer access to clean water.

We can acknowledge Indigenous cultures. Or we can learn from Indigenous voices. We can demand more from the Earth. Or we can demand more from the earth. Or we can demand more from ourselves. At York University, we work together to create positive change for a better tomorrow. Join us at yorku.ca slash write the future. Now, I can't wait to talk about this one with you. Task two, catch the potatoes in the potato hat.

You must be sitting on the catching stool wearing your potato hat. You must not touch anything at any point. Anything in your hat that is not a potato will be subtracted from your potato total. Highest potato total wins. The conveyor belt will start moving three minutes from now. You are excited about this, Jenny, before you've opened the task. Yeah, look, thinking about it now, can you know I'm squirming with delight it's you know if I can't sleep at night that's what I go that's my happy place that I go to sitting on the stool with the potato catching hat

on my head and having however minutes of utter bliss why did it appeal to you so much? I have no idea okay first of all I like a bit of industrial chic. I get very excited in warehouses. There's something, there's so much potential for drama in a warehouse.

So you walk into a really kind of, it's kind, it's a murder. It could be the backdrop for anything. Anything could happen in this place. And maybe very bad things have happened and maybe very sexy things have happened I don't know it's just so full of potential you have no idea what it what could happen and um I get this thing that my grandmother used to call being a giddy kipper and it came upon me at this moment with this sort of I I don't know how I didn't manage to squeal because it was just so exciting and thrilling and every moment of that was a sort of revelation and a joy and it, I really thought I might have got the method as well because you're allowed to look

at the conveyor belt and see the pattern of potato and not potato but that very quickly went by the board and then all i i sort of allowed myself i gave in to the joy of sitting under a shower of objects that might have been potatoes and may not have been potatoes yeah you weren't worried by the end about how it was actually going i mean i could have watched you do that task all day you're so excited every time something dropped you're just giggling away so i would go back for seconds I'd go you know that could have as I said you know they would allow me to hire that for my birthday for the rest of my life I wouldn't do anything else I might do it naked I don't know I just sit there in a potato hat catching hat having the best day and it would only i'd only be

allowed to do it once a year because otherwise you know it wouldn't be a treat but yeah i could do that the rest of my life oh it was honestly brilliant jenny uh and look you did very well as well i mean even even though you were sort of carried away by the giddiness of it uh you still got the four points um and you just did the the memorization technique which kyle also did but he went with not not pot not pot not pot not not pot very fond of a little song or a rhyme is kyle well he's musical he is musical is kyle so you know you can understand that and um you know it i think it nearly worked how many points did he get he He got three. So he didn't... Okay.

His potatoe total was three, actually. He got three points. But I think what really foxed people was the repeating pattern so that it happened again. So it wasn't just the things on the conveyor belt that came in. No, there was more to it.

That's what nobody was expecting. Did May triumph in that one? I think they did. Yes, they did. They got the five points because both May and Ivo spotted the pattern was on the wall. So there was the red beer mats

and then Greg meaning a potato. They both spotted it, but it is always fun. I couldn't see that. I couldn't see that. You know, I'm at a disadvantage. I've got terrible eyesight and I've barely any use in my left hand because I had to have this operation in Christmas 2021.

I had a cartwheeling incident that had gone horribly wrong and I broke my neck. Not quite. I mean, it's obviously I didn't break my neck, but I damaged myself quite badly because I'm too old and I'm too fat to cartwheel. And Jenny, I think I think my listeners are going to email me if I don't ask you for more details on the cartwheeling accident. Oh, well, it was it was a it was a, you know, several. It was trying to do a cartwheel at the end of a show for a while. And they were they were pathetic.

They were sort of like a fat bunny hop in the end. But I was doing them, you know, there was quite a few dates on this tour and sort of towards the end of the tour, I was realising that my neck was seizing up. Yeah. Yeah, anyway, I had to, I just lost the use of my left arm in some respects.

Oh, God. But fortunately, I'm right-handed. So, you know, I was still able to masturbate. That's not true. I mean masturbate. I mean right, I mean right. And in the end I had to pay for an operation because I literally was losing the use of my left hand and I couldn't wait. So I paid for this operation and now I'm thinking I quite like wait. So I paid for this operation. And now I'm thinking, well, I quite like the money and I don't really care about my left hand. But anyway, there we go.

Goodness me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So were you recovering from that when you were filming Taskmaster? I kept trying to say that I was. And I kept trying to claim, you know, some extra time or points because of my dodgy left hand. They just weren't having any of it. They just ignored me, you know.

They were saying, yeah, that was six months ago. Get on with it. Spin, bitch, spin. But you did very well here. So yeah, May spotted the pattern. Ivo spotted the pattern. And I always love it on Taskmaster when two people work out the hack

or the way round of doing it. And one person nails it and the other person fails miserably. So Ivo just got so despondent. It's the first time actually in this series and generally the first time I've seen with Ivo, him getting a little bit stroppy. Yeah, I noticed that.

He really didn't like this one. He didn't like the game. He didn't like the game. I couldn't understand it. I just, no, that, and I was disappointed in him. It was sort of, you know, like an aunt who would take a child to an amusement park and say, this is going to be a great ride.

You don't like that ride. Yes, I was a bit disappointed in Ivo at that point. Yeah, and he was going, I think we should all be ashamed of ourselves. Yeah, he lost his sense of humour. He turned into his dad in some respects at that point. You saw the Ivo of the future and what awful things could happen. If things, you know,

if he wasn't happy, miserable. He's so despondent. And I love it when people are angry or a bit pissed off and they're so angry. It completely like drowns their self-awareness of how silly they look as well. So he's just sat there with that hat on looking genuinely grumpy while

potatoes and dinosaurs just drop onto him. There was a petulance that came out. Yeah, totally. That was very funny. Yeah. So he only got the two points. Frankie, on the other hand, I just don't think couldn't give a shit about this one really.

No. He does it. He tries to memorize it, but then he's just like, yeah, whatever. Yeah. No, no, no. I don't know. I don't know whether, I don't know why they didn't get yeah no no no I don't know I don't know whether I don't know why they didn't get the same joy I don't know but ah anyway there we go I think I would

have enjoyed it the same as you Jenny I think I think I would have absolutely loved this one it was uh it was honestly a delight an absolute delight there we go it was five points for May it was four points for you Jenny, three points for Kyle, two points for Grumpy Ivo and one point for Frankie. I was doing quite well in this show. Yeah, very well. No.

Yes. Yes. It's fantastic as well. Maybe follow the pattern. So that's a potato. So that means There's probably No, I lost it yes, I think it might be my least favorite task of the whole thing

What is what what and we should all be ashamed I Think I've done pretty well What is... What... What... And we should all be ashamed. That's a lot. I think I've done pretty well. So, did anything you planned work? No. No. But I don't care, because it's so stupid. LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE Task three. Choreograph the most elaborate and enthralling fight scene, then perform it in slow motion. Task three.

Choreograph the most elaborate and enthralling fight scene, then perform it in slow motion. Your fight scene must take exactly five minutes and will then be sped up so it lasts exactly one minute. You have a total of 30 minutes. Your time starts now. Good task, I thought. A good team task. I was petrified with this one.

I just thought, how... Really? Yeah, I just... I knew it was going, I don't know whether it was one of the first, I don't think we'd worked together that much by this point. So it was a bit of an unknown. And I was teamed with May and Kyle. And, you know, immediately I feel slightly embarrassed and thinking, oh God, they've been lumbered. You know, I don't know what, what am I going to bring to this party um and but in the end you see i thought we did really really well and i had no

idea that frankie and ivo would do a tad better i genuinely didn't think we could be beaten when i saw ours i had that slightly complacent sitting back in the studio chair thinking, we've got this one, we've got this one, well done us. And then, you know, the sort of disappointment of seeing two other people, and there's only two of them, kind of crack it even better. Yeah, I think it was that twist that they had of Ivo's sort of clone army coming out and beating them up. Yeah, the clone army. Two of which were Frankie's real children.

Teenage children, yeah. I know. I think though, what was good was that they were fairly evenly matched and nobody felt really embarrassed. Yes, totally. You know you could feel that thing in this studio where the audience enjoyed both but one had the edge and you just had to take your hat off and go no they

fair and square. Yeah it was very slight edge though I mean I really enjoyed both of them for sure and I liked that it was you who was the villain. And I liked that you won as well. Also, you saying, oh, I didn't know what I was going to bring to the team. Within a second of this task being announced, you were demonstrating your high kicks. Yeah, I can only do one leg. If I do the other leg, I fall over. I've got a really good working right leg that I can kick a copper's hat off um which in the olden days if

you wanted to be a tiller girl that's what you had to be able to do you had to be able to kick a copper's hat off kick a copper's hat off yeah yeah just by you know high kick yeah um and i yeah i mean these days i mean there's quite a lot of farting that goes on with that if i do a high right leg kick i often slip one out let's be honest with you you know that would have sounded great in uh in slow motion or sped up yeah great um no I loved I loved both of them I loved that you ended up sort of like tying them up at the end and Kyle saying I've I've I had plans this evening I thought it was great there was a story to it loved it um but yeah it was uh Frank I would be to it loved it um but yeah it was uh Frank I would be so worried if I was on the team with Frankie and he just looked me dead in

the eye and said I think we should start hand to hand and then move to weapons yeah yeah you could you could feel Ivo quake at that point you know he sort of covers himself up quite well but yeah there's there's the fear is there yeah absolutely um but I'm sure he's a real softy Frankie in reality yeah there is a soft side to him totally and utterly and you know especially when his children are around you know that there's no hardness when his kids are around

they've got him wrapped around the fingers so it was four points for you May and Kyle and it was five points for Frankie and Ivo but like you say, pretty evenly matched. Pretty close, yeah. There was no sort of defeat in that one. There was no sort of kind of humiliation or humiliation,

humiliation, as May would insist. I mean, it was powerful. Frankie was the taskmaster in a different universe, is that right? There was a bailiff coming to evict Ivo. Oh! And then Ivo seemed to call in some kind of clone army. A couple of whom were my actual children. LAUGHTER Your actual children? My actual children, who, let's be honest,

put the boot in. LAUGHTER It was such a lovely moment when Frankie Boyle's children agreed to help beat him up. Let's talk about the live task. Did you enjoy doing the live task, Jenny? It really did depend. I mean, there's just no getting out, is there?

There's nowhere to run at that point. You can't say, oh, actually actually can you just give me five minutes i can't i just i just got to go to the toilet i can't yeah i'm oh um you've just got to go with it um yeah i can't what was this one again just remind me so this this life task was know the most facts about sausages you have 100 seconds to learn some facts about sausages best score in the sausage exam wins yeah i went immediately into school girl mode and I really tried my hardest to remember everything um and I was very happy sitting at the desk because that took me back there was that was exactly like my school desk uh we didn't have I'm not like oh we

didn't have slates and chalk in my day um but inside your desk there was a sausage fact sheet and on the very last page which of course i didn't bother to turn over no uh was were all the answers in all the answers it's rare in a live task that there will be a little hack like that it's normally it's just like yeah cheat sheet normally there's no twist normally it's like you know get all these balls in this bucket or something there's no there's no way around it um so it's very sneaky that that they put one in there and Ivo was the only the only one to spot yeah yeah that's that's eaten for you though isn't it that's where you know it was worth the money just for that one task yeah I bet they do that on exam and the rest of us just went into

sort of kind of slightly panicky exam mode yeah you know yeah and there's I just thought oh god this is going to come across as a kind of Alzheimer's exercise if I don't get any right I'm going to somebody's going to say do you think maybe she should go and have a word with her GP well bearing in mind I was on a series with David Baddiel and I think lots of people contacted him with that exact advice so I think you're safe, you got three out of five in the sausage exam yeah Ivo looked at the back Ivo looked at the back of the sheet

and then almost when Alex says you know what you did Ivo it's almost like he doesn't want to admit it like he's genuinely cheated in the exam and that's good as well because it shows he's got some moral fibre, yes a bit of moral fiber but not so much moral fiber that he wouldn't cheat yeah absolutely he got five out of five and got the five points you got four points jenny uh frankie and may got three points uh and kyle only got one

out of five on the sausage exam that made me laugh um now at this point was this where ivo starts to sort of pull ahead from me is this where he well because i think we're kind of neck and neck on the points at this stage yeah it's literally this that does it i think so uh so the final episode scores ivo is 21 points and you have 20 points yeah so it was it was one sausage really it was just him cheating that yeah it was him cheating on the exam. Bloody typical Eton boys. He'd be Prime Minister one day, probably. Yeah, absolutely.

I'd love to see Ivo's Prime Minister. Honestly, I'd just cherish it every second. It's like squirming around in his seat in the House of Commons. So uncomfortable all the time. Sparking electricity Off his frenetic energy Frankie came third with 16 You know like you say

May, bit of a blip For May this episode, 14 points And Kyle with 9 points which is actually quite impressive Considering after the first two tasks he had 1 point, so to pull back another 8 in the interim was pretty good uh in the series though jenny you are currently in the lead by episode three 51 points followed by may on 49 i would think ivan 47 frankie on 44 and kyle at

the bottom of 38 so it's all still to play for. We are only on episode three. I've got a lot of promise. I've got a lot of promise. A lot of promise. And the title of this episode is I Love to Squander Promise. So we will see if that comes true. Was that my quote or someone else's? No, it was Ivo's, I believe.

Might as well have been me though. Because that is like the story of my life. Yes, I think that for so many comedians, we have so much promise and we know we have. Because that is like the story of my life. Yes, I think that for so many comedians, you know, we have so much promise and we know we have and we can't help but fall short of our own promise now and again. Yeah, absolutely.

And that's sort of what makes it funny. Yeah. In some respects. Yeah, you don't want to watch someone on stage be funny when, you know, they absolutely fulfil all of their promise and they achieve all their goals. There's something really horribly smug about that.

You don't want that. You don't want that. Jenny, thank you so much for coming on the Taskmaster podcast. But of course, you have your own podcast. Certainly do. Certainly bloody well do, mate. And that one is called. Older and Wider?

Yeah, it's Older and Wider. Yeah, Older and Wider. That's the joke. It's Older and Wider. Because sometimes people think it's Older and Wiser. And they think, they say, have you not got that wrong? Have you got that wrong? It's not older and wiser. Don't you mean older and wiser? No, we don't mean that because that's not funny. Do you not get it?

Don't listen if that's what you think. Older and wider is a Friday morning delight for your ears. And it's me and my mate Judith Holder who was a TV producer produced the Grand Pial Women's Series and we are sort of middle-aged chalk and cheese but um we're both wearing gilets now fucking hell we're turning into each other um but yeah it's it's it's got a particular demographic so if you don't like it that's your fault you're just not old enough um no just wait a bit all right come back to us when you've grown up a bit you don't really hear people plug their podcast by saying if you don't like it it's your fault just wait and come back in a bit that's yeah the perfect the perfect plug i love it podcasts will be around forever you know you can just loop back

and and binge listen when you're old enough oh Oh, God, can you imagine how much crap there is for filling the airways forever and ever? All that yakking on. Jesus. I've done most of it. We always ask our guests to rate their experience on the Taskmaster podcast between one and five points in the style of the Taskmaster. We always hope you've had a good time, Jenny.

But please give me an honest point score for it. Okay. I'm going to give you four because I'd quite like to have been paid. Is that alright? As you lose a point for lack of fee. Alright? Fair enough. Thank you very much, Jenny.

Okay. Tons of love to you and all the best with whatever you're up to at the moment, Ed. Alright? Thank you very much jenny okay tons of love to you and all the best with whatever you're up to at the moment ted all right thank you it's genuinely a pleasure to see you looking so lovely to see you bye-bye jenny thank you bye-bye thank you so much to jenny for coming on the podcast uh brilliant as expected um lots more treats in Taskmaster to come from Jenny. Do go and listen to her podcast, Older and Wider. Watch her on Taskmaster every week

with this podcast dropping straight after the main show. And our guest next week will be, drumroll, Frankie Boyle. Frankie Boyle, of course, the brilliant contestant on this series.

You all know that. Can't wait to hear about his experiences. Have a lovely chin whack with him about taskmaster in general uh we will be back straight after the main show back right here with frankie boyle see you next week We can wait for clean water solutions. Or we can engineer access to clean water. We can acknowledge indigenous cultures. Or we can learn from indigenous voices.

We can demand more from the earth. Or we can demand more from ourselves. At York University, we work together to create positive change for a better tomorrow. Join us at yorku.ca slash write the future.