Taskmaster The Podcast - Ep 127. Frankie Boyle - S15 Ep.4

Episode Date: April 20, 2023

On the podcast this week Ed is joined by Frankie Boyle who reveals what he thinks Taskmaster really is! Frankie speaks out on the throwing v's casting debate and he and Ed get philosophical about bananas. Enjoy! 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.

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Along with your favorite restaurant food, alcohol, and other everyday essentials. Order Uber Eats now. For alcohol, you must be legal drinking age. Please enjoy responsibly. Order Uber Eats now. For alcohol, you must be legal drinking age. Please enjoy responsibly. Product availability varies by region. See app for details. Hello there. Welcome to the Taskmaster podcast. It's me, Ed Gamble. We are going to be discussing Taskmaster Series 15, Episode 4, this week.

It's just been out, if you're listening to this, straight after the main show. If you've not seen Taskmaster Series 15, Episode 4, do not listen to this yet. There will be spoilers, but lovely spoilers and great discussions and we'll be chatting to a contestant from series 15 it's Frankie Boyle very excited to chat to Frankie uh hear about his time on Taskmaster uh hear about his highlights his low lights all of this sort of thing uh love to chat to Frankie Boyle very excited to do that now specifically about Taskmaster series 15, Episode 4. Here's Frankie!

Welcome, Frankie, to the Taskmaster podcast. Hey, how you doing, man? Very good, thank you. Thank you very much for coming on the podcast. It's my pleasure. I don't know how you feel about talking about things that you've done in the past, sort of surgically going back through them? I just, I cannot bear to watch myself on anything or even really to hear about having done anything. And I just throw everything out of my mind the minute it happens.

Well, this is going to be an absolute nightmare for you for the next hour or so. But the very nature of Taskmaster is you do have to sit in a studio in front of people and watch things that you've done so is it just torture for you though all those studio records i love the studio records i really loved it it's such a great time because um there's a i guess the main show i do is new Order, which is like you're hosting it and you're trying to remember a lot of stuff. And there's also a lot of, I guess, technical things where you're trying to bring people in and you're going, I want to cover us legally on this issue and all this stuff.

So to just be on something where you're like, oh, this is just stupid. And I could just enjoy myself. Yeah, it was great. Yeah. But the element of then watching something that you've done. Oh, it's so disgusting. Was that tricky?

I have this Gnostic hatred of seeing my own stupid face and my own stupid body. And it's like, it's actually, I guess, in psychiatry, we would call it disassociation. Like the experience of seeing yourself from the outside that would have been come up with before we actually had the opportunity to do that and now we can have what people in the early 20th century would have considered like a profound mental illness like as that's just part of our work you know and i hate it i hate seeing myself that's i i'm really enjoying the idea of another comment coming to you and saying uh i've been asked to do taskmaster how do you think i should do it and then you're describing it as a profound mental illness

oh i still think they should genuinely do it like you know it's a great experience i can like seeing as we're at the top i could tell you what i think it's about taskmaster this is my theory i came up with on the last episode i think alex horn traveling around the country look alex horn went to a public school i mean presumably a pretty good one right so he's he's used to meeting people with a certain element of hubris right a certain element of pomposity and then he goes into stand-up comedy which is like you know out of the frying pan and you know you're meeting all these egos and he's devised this show which is about humility it's about you know humbling the self and then the joy of it is when

he presents that to a tv channel they don't even let him host it and he is then humbled and so he gets greg on to humble him but greg is simply too large to have been able to live a normal life so all his jokes are about humbling himself so really it's a show about humiliation and humility yeah okay so it's it's sort of it's sadomasochism but there's no sadists no one's no one could be a sadist yeah it's sadomasochism with tickling sticks i think that is the perfect description of Taskmaster. Had you wanted to do Taskmaster before? Because I know that you're a much-requested contestant throughout the whole history of the show, really.

I think people were very excited to hear that you're finally coming on. Were you reluctant to do it initially initially or did you snap it up they'd asked me to do it and I'd sort of looked at it and I was a bit like I don't really understand this like at first like why why is it funny to see if someone can like peel a boiled egg with their elbows I don't like what is this right i didn't quite get it and then my daughter got really into it my daughter really loves taskmaster and also i have a lot of friends who like most of my friends are quite serious political types i mean that's i know that's weird but it's true right um and they love taskmaster you you know. That's interesting. Isn't it, though?

Yeah. Because I think you have to switch off at the end of the day. If you're doing really serious stuff, you know, you're not like us, where you're like, oh, I can come in and watch Fellini of an evening after a gig. You're like, I just want something that's going to amuse me, but not stretch me. Something purely silly, yeah. Yeah.

And so then I sort of started to get it from you could see how other people get it do you know i mean so your your daughter's a fan you say was and your and uh i understand uh that a couple of your kids were um in the ivo masks uh beating you up um in the slow motion fight task yes they give they gave me a proper kick and they put the whole bit in. And they loved it and they got to hang out with Ivo Graham, you know, which was an experience and, you know,

he was very lovely. Oh, I'm sure. So did they come to the house for the day when you were filming then just to hang out and see what it was like? Yeah, they came down and chilled and they watched me try to write a song with Ivo and then they got some masks on and fought fought with me it was good brilliant brilliant um we're only on episode four so far but already plenty of highlights from you uh frankie um the i mean

the barge task in general i think was a highlight for everyone it seemed like everyone was having a pretty good day i enjoyed i certainly enjoyed sailing that barge around but like i'm sure i killed a lot of stuff i crashed it a lot and there was the guy on the barge and i really like to say this is the guy on the barge to make sure we don't quite crash the barge and like he nearly fell off at the end and i grabbed him like because i parked it so violently that he nearly fell into the water. I mean, it was horrible. I can't drive a car, so it was grim.

Yeah, I think you and, well, I think Jenny maybe outstripped you in terms of danger on the barge, in terms of the violence of the crashing, but the fact that you nearly killed the man who was there to make sure that you didn't get killed. Yeah, I should have got points for that. He didn't take it that well either he like wasn't he didn't really laugh it off as much as you would have hoped he's quite angry no because i mean i guess his main job is to make sure everything's safe right and if he's he's the

one who's in the most danger he's probably you couldn't fail more than that at your job it's probably quite a nasty injury a barge injury isn't it yeah you know that's not one you want to get it's probably crushed between a barge and the and a wall yeah it's not great i feel like there's it's probably there's no such thing as a barge injury it's it's barge survival or barge death yeah um and uh also the uh your timing skills going into the caravan having to sit there for 20 minutes and just, I mean, the way, the way they've edited it as well to show how well you were doing at so many different points, just saying, I think I've been in here for five minutes and it's exactly five minutes.

I think I've been in here for 15 minutes. It's almost bang on 15 minutes. You must've felt pretty proud of that. Yeah. But you know, that's the thing, isn't it? Like I never overrun. So what was I doing there? Like, I would always come off on, like, 19. I always figure if you're booked for 20 minutes and you do 19 and then go, let's have a round of applause for the bar staff, you know, that's very much job done. It's very strange I ran over.

Yeah, and you didn't even do the round of applause for Alex and the crew either. I should have done,'t i yeah um also we just got to briefly talk about the i think it's my favorite meeting of a team in taskmaster ever uh when ivo walked through the gate uh on team day and you looked over your shoulder i think did you say you thought it was just someone delivering something and they'd wanted to yeah i thought it was just some bloke like i didn't recognize him i've only ever seen him from the waist up on mock the week like and uh i don't have great eyesight at the best of times and i was just like who the hell is this so that was an awkward beginning but what flourished and

what flourished into a beautiful friendship i think well already uh you've been compared to a sort of uh having a father and son uh style relationship yeah i'd love to have a son like ivor and medicate him into some kind of normality he does need something to calm down calm down his little twitching um for sure that's great you wouldn't You wouldn't change it though, would you? You wouldn't change anything about him. No, not at all. I'd want him to wear trousers during Taskmaster. I think the shorts were a big let's let's just get stuck into this episode then i'm aware you don't like watching yourself back and that you brain dump everything after you've done it but i'm going to do my best to remind you throughout this uh of what you did and what other people did um let's talk about the prize task well let's talk

about prize tasks in general first of all did you enjoy doing the prize task and selecting the things for that yeah my house is full of shit like really strange shit and i was like oh great i'm going to ace this so like also i knew that i must have done horribly on the tasks so i thought i can make up points here a by bringing in some stuff but also b by carping it and and uh scoring points off everybody else's stuff which is my real skill you know taking apart everyone else's efforts yeah yeah that probably had an evolutionary purpose to it at one point you know you'd have like you needed people to build the dam and build the camp and stuff, but you also needed someone to go, oh, shit here.

You know, let's move. And, you know, I would have had a purpose once. Yeah, sort of village grump. Yeah. Yeah. And I really enjoyed them. I really enjoyed seeing what people had brought in. I think this is the, I mean, actually, I mean,

you bring in an art thing here but I think the previous three episodes you've brought in pieces of art you know not necessarily from your house but the first episode

you had the painting of you on the horse oh yeah quite an imposing an imposing portrait of you which I'd imagine hangs above the fireplace or something like that

yeah it's in my yoga room mate oh yeah of course it's in your yoga room I pull it above the fireplace or something like that yeah it's in uh it's in my yoga room mate then there was the uh weird medieval cats which i don't believe you have in your house i think that was more of a sort of research project that was a research project yeah yeah and then um last week uh we had well for, for us, the viewer, it was a heavily pixelated Wolverine and Captain America sort of slash fan fiction. Oh, God, I'd forgotten about that. Yeah.

We spoke to Jenny Eclair about that, and she still seems quite shaken by the content of that. They would be a good couple. They would be a lovely couple. I think you said you made the superman comparison of you know superman would would suck you inside out i believe is the phrase that you used but wolverine's wolverine's a tricky lover surely yeah i mean like you know so much easier for him he's always going to recover he's always going to recover but the old

the old claws surely if they come out in heightened moments of tension and excitement then he's got to be careful where he's putting his hands also just generally if you took the whole superhero thing out of it a guy who was in special forces and had memory blocks inserted to make him forget that he'd murdered his own wife it's not your ideal gay lover you know there's a lot of red flags there yeah for sure but you know i think you know there's i'm not going to say what i was going to say um but let's just move on from that um but yeah unfortunately heavily pixelated uh by the time it reached the viewers but i'm sure i'm sure people can find similar stuff online if they want to do a bit of research i bet they will yeah let's talk about come on does jenny and claire have that picture yes of course did someone win it um i think uh no because jenny wins this episode i

believe it was ivo that that won last week's episode oh well he's definitely got it hasn't he he's definitely got it i'm not sure if he's a comic book fan, but I feel like this might be the gateway. Yeah, yeah. Let's talk about this prize task. The most fun thing to wear on your head that you aren't supposed to wear on your head. Now, this is a victory for you in this task. Is this something you had in your house anyway?

It was the recreated scene from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang using a Sylvanian family on top of a mortarboard. Was that kicking around? No. An art therapist made it for me. And she's a very creative lady, but she's also obsessed with Sylvanian families. So my idea was that we would do a crucifixion scene,

but Channel 4 were understandably uneasy about a crucified Sylvanian Christ. And instead we had this. Yeah, I mean, I think Greg says he's looking for the darkness and I guess that's the sort of darkest Channel 4 would let you push it is the child catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. But I think what's wrong with the crucifixion scene with Sylvanian families?

You know, surely it's more harrowing. The crucifixion has a happy ending. Yeah, exactly. It comes back. And it's more harrowing when you see a bloke on there, surely. It's actually a softer way of doing it with Sylvanian families. Yeah. I mean, anyone who argues that the story of Christ

is more downbeat than the child catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. I mean, I don't agree. Well, we would have loved to have seen the crucifixion, but the child catcher was great as well. And I also think that it was imaginative. You know, it was fun and it was quite sweet. We're seeing a sweeter side of you already in this series Frankie I'm a pretty sweet guy yeah you know I I know you're a sweet guy but you know the the obviously your onstage persona

not not a cutie pie not not a sweetheart I would say yeah there's that sort of on stage thing isn't there and there's like Ivo said this to me in the in the recordings like in the panel show bit of it he said um god is this a bit of a stretch for you because like um you're you're used to being like someone in a suit on a panel show or whatever and I was like thinking when I started I did a lot of daft sketch stuff yeah and i did it like topical comedy as well and this was just the bit that people would employ me to do because they hated all the daft stuff you know but but i still quite enjoy you know being daft did you give the art therapist direction on what you wanted yes or so you specifically said i want well you wanted the crucifixion but

our sylvanianvanian families her medium? I said, what about Chitty Chitty Bang Bang then? And I sort of imagined it would therefore be the car Chitty Chitty Bang Bang rather than a grim story of child abduction. Yeah. I mean, that's awful. You said Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. She was like, I assume he means the child catcher.

Yeah. That's probably. You said Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. She was like, I assume he means the child catcher. Yeah. Yeah. That's probably what he meant. Five points. Even though I could see Ivo was annoyed that you got five points. He got one point. It's very funny watching Ivo try and get angry, but also remain extremely polite because he brought in a turkey

and he's so earnest the way he presents it. He really thinks he's got the points in the bag and is baffled when he gets one point for the turkey. What did you think of the turkey as a prize? I thought it was very poor. I thought, you know, I think, wasn't it that something that would be the most fun? What was the actual thing?

The most fun thing to wear on your head that you aren't supposed to wear on your head. And he brought in a turkey and then gave us several stories about people who'd worn turkeys on their head and had harrowing experiences. Yeah, because he said Courtney Cox hated it. And he said, well, we all know Bean doesn't enjoy that, does he? He's not having a nice time when he's in the turkey.

No. Well, Rowan Atkinson probably isn't having a nice time just filming Mr Bean. He's so wretch. I mean, just any moment that's spent not in his golden house is probably agony to him. Well, Rowan Atkinson probably isn't having a nice time just filming Mr. Bean. He's so wretch. I mean, just any moment that's spent not in his golden house is probably agony to him. Never mind sticking a turkey over his head. Yeah, he's not going back to Bean now.

That's why it's a cartoon now. He can just sit in his Aston Martin and count the money. Yeah, draw it if you want. I don't care. Put whatever you like on his head i'm not doing it um let's talk about may's price test now may is a brilliant taskmaster contestant let's not beat around the bush but one of the one of the greats one of the greats so good at the filmed tasks i think occasionally they seem to have a bit of a problem selling their prize tasks so like i think this was may had an inflatable version uh of themselves on their head as a fun thing to wear on their head but

even the way that may goes into it just seems they seem so downtrodden just like yeah and i guess you put that on your head and already crumbling under the pressure I think may um may be staggered by the shitness of what everyone else has brought in sometimes under undersells their own stuff yeah not not thinking how much we will carp and you know point carve off what they have brought in but may in general just like incredibly sort of focused and intelligent person i was thinking during the records my mind often wonders but how good may would be as a detective yeah you know a really good detective character with this you know a slight air of and i mean this in a good way a slight sartorial air of 10 10

yeah and a very focused very very kind of clever uh person i'd like i'd watch that show yeah i absolutely would as well um maybe not if the character wore a version of themselves on their own head because i i'm not sure that i mean theyold it, sure, but I don't think it was their best effort in terms of prize tasks because I think it's not just for you to wear on your head, right? So would it be a fun, say, for example, if you had to pick something fun to wear on your head, would it be fun for you to wear a version of May Martin on your head or would it have to be of you?

I would love to wear a version of May Martin on my head. I'd loathe to wear a version of myself on my head. That would be so disgusting. But like wearing May, it would feel like a kind of shamanistic ritual. Yeah, it would feel like the end of a folk horror film, wouldn't it? But I would also enjoy you seeing you wearing

a version of yourself on your head, Frankie. I think this is this disassociation thing you have again. You don't even want to watch yourself, a blow-up version of your own self. I think as you get older, man, it's like, you know, like when you're younger, you're like, you're watching stuff you do and you're like, oh, I could have done that better and blah, blah, blah. You know, but like when you hit 50, you feel kind of like an old stick floating down a river. And you're like, like you know death is at

the end and i don't even know that i'm the stick anymore am i the stick am i the river am i the bank i don't know but you know there's there's no power there's no part of it that's like i want to see a blown up there i already look kind of blown up do you know what i mean i don't want to accentuate that yeah sure well you can let it down a bit you can you know what i mean i don't want to accentuate that yeah sure well you can let it down a bit you can you know take some of the air out it'd be a lovely lovely compliment to yourself even may i think uh use the phrase in an earlier episode am i the meat am i the viewer i think that really uh captures what we're talking about right now i think we were all essentially having some kind of mild breakdown during the filming and i had tried to

persuade everyone for the final episode to take magic mushrooms. So this is going on behind the scenes. I'm urging everyone to have what would have presumably been quite an alarming psychedelic experience. Yeah. So we're all thinking along those lines. And I won't reveal too much because I feel like this might be a spoiler,

but in the final episode, you are all dressed appropriately for that experience. Yes, we had got the outfits and everything, but then we decided at the end. It might have been really funny, but it also might have been incredibly disturbing. So you didn't take the idea to Channel 4? You weren't suggesting it to them?

No, I think people knew it was in the air, but it just didn't happen. Kyle brought in a goldfish bowl. I think this prize is bad, but also I just love the way Kyle sells stuff when he just says things like imagine having that on your head and just makes a stupid noise I think he's so funny yeah

and he's an actor so he can sell stuff yeah he had charm you know had you met Kyle before no I hadn't no well you all seem to get on well pretty quickly to be honest i think there's always a worry about when you know there's a cast who

haven't all hung out before or met each other too often that there's going to be chemistry issues but it seemed to click quite quickly did you find that oh yeah they all seemed they all seemed great from the off i was like the only way i'd known jenny and claire i told her this but like um i'd only really knew her through Grumpy Old Women and her initial stand-up. And you know how you just kind of respond to what you see people do, don't you? So I'd imagined she would be a bit grumpy.

And I'd said to this friend of mine who'd met, I went, well, that's the only one I can worry about. Maybe she'll be a bit kind of downbeat. And they were like, oh no, she's a riot, man. She's absolutely bananas and sure enough she was great you know well that's really interesting as jenny said to us last week that yeah it was the first time you two were meeting which is mad to me that you wouldn't have crossed paths at some point and that you were you were worried that she was going to be

grumpy and she was a bit nervous about what you were going to be like and then immediately just got on like a house on fire yeah yeah no she was great she's a real live wire well let's talk about her prize briefly she um she said this was an interesting sort of comedy equation she did she said it would be hack to bring in a tea cozy and hack to bring in a traffic cone so what she did was combine the two into a knitted traffic traffic cone as if putting both of those things together, it cancels out any notion of it being boring, which it kind of did. I thought it was good.

You know, she had someone knit it for her. I thought it was a nice effort. Or had it squared the idea of how boring it was? I don't know. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Just thinking of the stand-up equivalent, it's like doing, you know,

airline food and mother-in-law jokes. You do a joke about your mother-in-law cooking on an airline. Yeah. How dogs react to airline food as opposed to how cats react to it. You know what? I'd watch you do it, Frankie.

I'd watch you do that routine. So it was five points for you, four points for Jenny, three points to Kyle, two points to May, and one point to Ivo. Ivo, can you beat the child catcher? In a word, no. But I do think this fits the brief, because it's been used as a joke

in two of the most popular comedy shows of all time. It's a... Turkey. It's a turkey. We've all had a good old laugh at Mr Bean or Courtney Cox's Monica in Friends wearing a turkey on their head. Did Monica from Friends wear a turkey that was quite that moist? In an interview about the experience, she described it as disgusting.

I don't want to be too pedantic here, but in a task where it's the most fun thing to wear on your head and you've described how women was deeply traumatised. That's undeniably incisive stuff, Frankie. You can rest assured, Frankie, it's going to score very badly. It's going to score badly? Oh, God, yeah. Worse than the Sylvanian family. Yes, much worse. Every veteran has a story.

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 ourselves. At York University, we work together to create positive change for a better tomorrow. Join us at yorku.ca slash write the future. Let's talk about task one. Join us at yorku.ca slash write the future. this one i wish i'd sort of you know one of the things when you do them is you're like i don't particularly care if i do this really well or whatever i just like to do something that everybody else hasn't done so that you know because i know they've got a show to make and then if we all of us do what seems to me to be the obvious thing then you know so sometimes you're just trying to think of different ways so i thought afterwards you know immediately afterwards you think of it i thought afterwards that i should have like got the symbols on my hand yeah and then just bounce the ball with my

symbols so there would have only been one throw yeah i would have been able to kind of play it by bouncing it but that's that's always the way, isn't it? Just after you finish. Absolutely. But I think what you did do was unique in itself and a very good way of doing it, lining them all up in height order and then having a sort of step system all the way down. And it did very well for you.

And also, you know, it got played back in the studio, the sort of excited giggle that you let out every time you did it. That was very... The giggle of pride. Who's not going to enjoy throwing a bouncy ball down a set of drums you know yeah you can't enjoy that it's so this is almost a very uh this is a task i play people to to show them how differently people think and why taskmaster works because i bet as you were doing that you were thinking i'm sure someone else has

thought of this it's but more the worry is everyone else is doing this you know i mean they're going to have a whole bunch of these and nothing to kind of make the show with um but then they don't do other things no you never would have thought that someone would for example just throw one ball at one drum repeatedly over and over again and then lose their mind lose their mind when alex says you're just doing the same thing over and over again and just chuck the ball and start screaming um as jenny as jenny did coincidentally um that was fantastic to watch as well because she's so excited about tasks sometimes and then she just loses patience with them completely comics are i mean i don't mean anyone on this print in particular but comics in general are quite ADHD, aren't they?

Apparently so. Lots of comics get ADHD diagnoses. And I think people who, even the people who aren't, they have traits that kind of mirror some of those kind of things. So you can see that sometimes. And I can feel it myself sometimes when you're like, okay, I've got this idea. And then five minutes in, you want to do something else, don't you?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, let's talk about Ivo, because he started doing this quite a lot in Taskmaster. He adds extraneous details or things to the task that he absolutely doesn't need to do. So he's done it. He had to compose a song and he said, well, the only notes I'm going to use have to be in Ivo Graham Taskmaster.

And that hampered him immeasurably and the same here he goes i think it'll be nice if greg plays the drums and spends about five minutes moving the entire drum kit over the statue of greg which adds absolutely nothing to the task it's pure hindrance yes in the fight one he what he really wanted to introduce flower to the task and he said for some flour to be thrown during the fight and everyone said but once we throw it once for continuity we won't be able to do anything else ever again yeah and so all the discussions just kept coming around to flour and then as he was thoroughly rebuffed he came out of the caravan and just started walking around

with a bag of flour throwing some of it into the air as if to suggest flour question mark you know so he clearly had things that he he would like to have happened that were impractical yeah totally there weren't always people there to hold him back no and but i love the dynamic between you two uh just to go back to your team dynamic when you were building the bridge for the potato and you had decided you wanted to go from the top of the thing. And then you can hear him very politely in a very sort of public school way,

gently trying to nudge you towards what he thought, but in a sort of passive aggressive, but very eaten way. Yes. But I mean mean decided that i wanted to as a strong word i mean i'm just trying to think of anything to do like i mean you you underrate panic as a factor in these things oh god let's do something and get get through this terrible task with this you weren't picking you weren't picking uh from a selection of options in your head where you just you literally just did it to be fair i had sent eyeball i've walked

to the blackboard to come up with some options and he had done nothing he rubbed the drawing board off the chalkboard and that's why we were starting from the top of the we don't off the chalkboard. That's why we were starting from the top of the wee dome. But this was an awful effort from Ivo with the drums. He said he got three bounces or a murky four, I believe was his phrase. The great thing about Ivo, he does tasks terribly,

but he can really commentate and describe them in the most florid way. Yes, he's very emotionally engaged. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, you did the step thing, which is great. Now let's get to it. This is the sticky part of the conversation, Frankie. May ties a piece of string to the ball and then bounces it on the drums.

Now we see maybe three to four minutes of debate in the studio about whether May threw was a much it was a much longer debate yes this is what i was going to ask um how do you feel about how do you feel about it now now you've had time to time to sit on this the idea that may threw the ball initially or didn't throw the ball initially and then bounced with their string onto the cymbals and drums. How are you feeling about that now? I feel that that was profoundly illegitimate. And was it a single throw?

It was a single throw. And, you know, that wasn't throwing. And it was casting. you cast something on a line and then i don't know if this happens in edit but alex looks up cast and says um you know this is to throw something but that is a different and more specific type of throw i think i think if we'd got some if we'd got some linguists and some etymologists into the studio i think that may wouldn't have got those points yes well here's here's what because i agree i do agree with you i think it is illegitimate but not because of the initial throw i think there was an initial throw

but it says a single throw and then by the definition that alex gives of throw which is causing momentum using your arm or hand may is doing that over and over again that would have been a good point yeah but by the time that came up we'd been arguing about it for about 15 minutes sure sure um i also think what what may may have done i think done, I think they have seen Taskmaster before. In Series 8, Lou Sanders had a task where she had to bounce a ball as many times as possible and tied it to a piece of string

and bounced it on the piece of string. So she could get as many bounces in as possible and did it about 200 times, I think. But that is bouncing, and that counts as bouncing. It is also throwing, and you're only allowed a single throw at this so i do feel that may's effort was was illegitimate here but greg doesn't care and sometimes he gives the points based on how angry it's going to make everyone else well i feel they should have that they should have a panel of linguistic experts and taskmaster historians that you can throw to during these arguments. Or cast to.

Yes, or cast to. And, you know, start to really get into, you know, build a whole sort of Talmud of Taskmaster. I believe that I think in an early series, maybe a series two, they did have to consult Susie Dent on something. And Alex had a message from from suzy dent saying whether i think it was one of richard osmond's tasks was was legitimate or not so it's a shame they couldn't do it i guess you'd need dent on on speed dial for these things as

they come up in the studio yeah or or you know philosophers or slides of zizek or whoever you could have a guest one every week like dictionary corner i guess philosopher every week yeah why not well they would answer that question why not i guess some weeks it would feel unnecessary for the philosopher to be there yeah you know you'd be you'd be throwing to a philosopher saying is this a fun thing to wear on your head and it wouldn't it would feel like a waste of their time. Yeah, you've just got Jimmy Carr in there who's had to peel 100 bananas in 20 minutes and Slasov Zizek would just be shrugging on boards.

I guess that would really make them think, what's the meaning of life at that point? They'd really have to interrogate themselves. So, however controversial, it was five points to May. It was four points to you, Frankie, three points to Jenny, two points to Kyle and one point to Ivo. I thought it was meant to be just percussion, not strings and percussion.

Ooh! It's kicking off! I felt for you there, May, because you expected, Oh! Hoo-hoo-hoo! It's kicking off! I felt for you there, May, because you expected, I think rightly, everybody to cheer you from the rafters, but the whole audience sat there like this. Yeah, like, they're just like... Because they don't like clever people. Am I coming across smug? What's going on?

I think people were confused, is it a single throw? It left my hand only one time. Yeah. And the momentum continued and it was travelling. Can I just say, purely for the sake of argument? Yeah. If you went to a fairground and they said, you've got a single throw to knock over this coconut... Yeah. ..and you went, thanks very much, mate, tied a string to the ball... LAUGHTER

..threw it once and then started swinging the string around until you knocked the coconut over, you might get a beating. Task two, make the fastest egg boat. Your egg boat must look like a boat and transport an egg. If your egg boat sinks or loses its egg, you are disqualified. You have three minutes to order five materials, then 15 minutes to make your egg boat. Also, all your materials must start with the same letter and you can't order anything boaty. Your time starts now. Now, this was pretty heartbreaking for you, Frankie.

I don't know if you found it heartbreaking. It was heartbreaking to watch. Your egg, of course, goes overboard and then the boat wins the race. I should explain. I thought that we were putting that egg in that goldfish bowl. Right, okay. So I hadn't really read

the thing properly at all and that's why i ordered p a plant because i was going to put the plant into the goldfish bowl lovely balance the thing on top of it so in the end i just made a little bit of paper and wrapped it in some cellophane and i got what i deserved you know it's it was sad because it looked like i'd done well briefly but then also i don't want to do so well that i win the episode do you know what i mean i don't want to be up there kind of pointing out all the prizes and whatnot i would feel like a bit of an arse so in a way this is very interesting yeah so this completely recontextualizes your entire time on taskmaster i think that every time you wanted to do well, but not so well that you had to stand on the stage and point out all the prizes.

Exactly. And, you know, that's a fine line to walk. Yeah. And so when this went against me, this task, I wasn't heartbroken because I'd already done, like, dangerously well in the first two tasks. If you'd found yourself on the stage, though, after this episode and you'd won, what would you have done? Because they do ask you to do something like interact with the prizes.

What are you doing in that situation? I'd have made the most of it, man. I'd have had May Martin over my head. I'd have had to havein over my head you know i'd have had to i'd have had to have gone for it you know but inside i would have hated it um well it was very sad to see i go overboard um no one else's eggs went overboard uh and they look i was very surprised that may's lost because may seems to be flying down the course. May picked the plastic inflatable water wings. That's a slight bending of what they actually are.

Paperclip, polystyrene, paper, precious tape. But it's flying down the course, that boat. And then comes last, Ivo. Go on. I often felt with May's stuff, you like charlie brown and linus did you ever read like a penis yeah yeah um uh oh i also found out like i dated this girl who i found was like a subsection of people who felt that charlie brown was terminally ill right because he was bald and i couldn't believe that she thought that but then i looked it up and

that's just a thing that a certain percentage of the population think right anyway i always felt with may that it was a bit like charlie brown and linus remember charlie brown and we're going i'm going to build a little snow fort and you're getting some little snowballs together and yeah a little kid would and then he'd go over to linus and linus would have built like a big castle with turrets and stuff and that's always what may's stuff was like to me what so may may is linus in this situation yeah may's yeah may's linus and i'm the dying charlie brown well i'm interested in this subsection of people who think that charlie brown's terminally ill is it that they that they always assumed since they read it as a kid that charlie brown's ill

or is it like a conspiracy theory oh no the first the first one yeah because he's bald yeah they just they just think he's really ill rather than you know a kid with a really weird head so unfortunately Mays Mays comes in you know pretty pretty much last and only gets two points because of course you get disqualified Ivo's Ivo's boat he's very nice I think he spends a lot of time you know putting the boat together thinking about what he's gonna do with the boat he has a banana for a snack and but you can tell he's downhearted already when you know everyone says it's going to come last and he says first in fun which is just heartbreaking poor guy um jenny asks for bras because of the uh the foamy tit cup um would give

it some ballast i will will watch Jenny do anything. She throws herself into everything at full pace, just screaming excitement. She'd be a great children's TV presenter. Yeah, I think she would. All the stuff she'd make wouldn't be very practical or work or whatever, but it would be fun to watch.

It's a good lesson for kids, that, though, isn't it? That not everything you make is going to work. That could be the title of the show not everything works a reality show for children um and it does well though hms boat that's jenny's boat um does very well indeed uh but kyle i'm so glad when kyle wins a task because when he comes bottom he's the most indignant, angry man. And look, I was like that on Taskmaster as well, but it is like everything's personal with Kyle. He decided to take it personally quite early.

And why not? You might as well get whatever better fuel you can together. He did well, you know. He did very well. And he gets a ball, bacon, basket, blue hat and a balloon, gets a little hat for the egg, which I really liked, and then asks the question, which is the title of this episode, how heavy is the water?

Which feels like something we could throw to one of the philosophers at this point. A pint of water weighs a pound, doesn't it? Does it? Yeah, pretty much. I guess I've never known that because you wouldn't really need to know that because water's the same weight generally, I guess.

It'd be pretty strange if that was a vital piece of information at any point. But, yeah. It was a great job by KL. He's very excited to win and also he makes at any point. But, yeah. It was a great job by KL. He's very excited to win and also he makes his lovely cheeky face when he's building the boat

because he has the face of a four-year-old. It was five points for KL, four points for Jenny, three points for Ivo, two points for May and a big fat zero for you, Frankie, very sadly, and the death of your aunt.

Certainly people make paper things, don't they? Paper. Polystyrene. Plasticine. But now I have to think about other P's. Yes. A ball, like a tiny ball, like a golf ball. Ball for golf.

Yep. Balls. Brackets. Ping pong. Plastic, by which I mean like cling film. Plastic inflatable water wings arm and living in with Peter they plastic inflatable water wings, okay Gaffer tape gaffer to buffer buffer tape. Could you get us a buffer tape? I don't know what buffer tape

It's like gaffer tape, but it's better. I don't think I can get you back the tape balloons a balloon bras Umpteen bra, I'll get you umpteen bras. Banana. Bread. Pea. Plant. Bacon. Task three.

This is the bingo task. First to complete a line or four corners wins. Your time starts when somebody shouts bingo. Now, I want to talk to you, Frankie, specifically about two things here firstly controversy in this episode again when you went out to get the banana you brought back the sign that said banana and then claimed that that should be accepted as the banana what was the actual wording did it say the banana it did it said get the banana down from the tree

so a depiction of a banana would be much more likely to be referred to as the banana than a banana which you would call a banana you know now i really think we should get these philosophers in yeah they really need to be in for this bit this went on in the studio for about half an hour and we all kind of lost our minds and you know that thing when you're on every chord as well where you're just like if i keep talking about this we might hit funny and we never quite did but like we kept digging for a really long time and it got very heated and you know i think there is something in there a depiction of a thing can be referred to as the thing and in some ways a depiction of a thing can be referred to

as the thing more easily than a thing itself you know because because there are multiples of bananas but there is only one depiction as far as we yeah the banana yeah and the arrow with banana on presumably there's not many of those kicking around exactly yeah i mean i would say the arrow the arrow format would probably give me a clue that that's not what they wanted you to bring in because it's pointing somewhere oh was that a sign that they meant pointing somewhere oh was that a sign that they meant to that was directing me towards a banana it was directing you towards a banana which i believe they were referring to as the banana whereas you brought in the banana sign that that was the banana that was directing me towards a banana because there are many bananas in the world but there is only this banana saying so that would be the banana

well i mean this was your argument i don't know if jenny was jenny hopping on the back of this argument or was she just saying i brought the wrong thing um i don't think anyone agreed with me on any level you know um and i don't know at times i didn't agree with myself but the longer I pursued it the more convinced I became yeah well it didn't work unfortunately you got a point taken off for bringing in the banana sign but also you uh to pop the bubbles on the bubble wrap you started a small fire and uh and melted the melted the sheet um did that did that come to you straight away? I popped a few bubbles and I thought this is incredibly dull. Let's set fire to them.

I also, they didn't show this, but I threw the box of matches into the fire and it went up an absolute treat. Like it was like a small explosion really. But I guess they didn't want children to think about that or whatever but it was fun it was a lot of fun to do yeah i bet weirdly i think so in quite an early they didn't do it in the uk one i think they might have tried it they did have a task of it was a huge role of bubble wrap of pop all the bubbles as quickly as possible

i believe they did it in a european version of taskmaster where they had the big uh and someone someone set fire to it but the fumes were so noxious like they basically had to evacuate the crew i think great but that's what's great about taskmaster right you you are open to doing those sorts of things uh and certainly i think you had a similar energy in this task as i had when i did it which is when you were asked to get rid of the bin rather than wheel the bin out or you know try and get the bin out in any other sort of quieter way you thought fuck it what a great opportunity to chuck a wheelie bin over a gate yeah and i hadn't really checked or thought about it but outside of there it's pretty much just a main road yeah i'd hurled

this bin into endangering um people but uh also i hurt my foot really badly doing that because i hadn't thought you know they go throw your shoes onto the roof you could just throw them up and then get them back again and wear your shoes couldn't oh yeah i hadn't really thought of that um so i was doing it my bare feet and i kind of went over my ankle and like gashed my foot oh shit that's part of it i wish i'd approached more of the tasks with fire looking back there's probably a bunch of stuff you could have set fire to that could have been your thing yeah the fight the fire contestant is there any other tasks that spring to mind now that you could have you could have solved with fire um most of the um team tasks Is there any other tasks that spring to mind now that you could have solved with fire?

Most of the team tasks. Yeah, that would have been your costume, just like a big kind of fireman's outfit. Yeah. Well, look, Ivo would have thanked you while you were doing that, I'd imagine. So your efforts here were great, I think. The banana thing, a little bit controversial. Jenny also removes her shoes and just ends up walking around outside for ages

trying to find someone called John and then just screaming she doesn't have any shoes on. Same with Kyle, constantly talking about the fact he doesn't have any shoes on. Same with Kyle, constantly talking about the fact that he doesn't have any shoes on. I mean, it's quite a devious task, this one, in terms of the amount of things you had to do. Did you enjoy it or after a couple were you like, I can't believe this, this is taking too long? I enjoyed it because I was like, well, I'm doing these,

like they're actually happening. Because part of your panic in the thing is, you you know you're presented with a task and you go i've absolutely no idea like i've absolutely no idea what the hell do they want me to do here yeah like is anything going to happen because these were all ones where you're like oh i just gotta throw my shoes onto a riff okay one down you know and it felt it felt like i was getting somewhere even though i wasn't yeah i see what you mean they're like quantifiable things that can't really be judged by greg in any subjective way like if you've done them you've done them right looking back i should have set fire to the tree with the banana in it and the taskmaster house

would have set in the tree what would you have brought back just the ashes of everything and and the taskmaster house. Would have set in the tree, what would you have brought back? Just the ashes of everything and then said, well, I assume the banana's in there. Well, in many senses, the banana would be in there, the same. Yeah. But our banana probably wouldn't burn as well, you know?

Oh, yeah. So if you just bring back what's left and you probably would have got the right banana if someone said like someone pointed at a tree and said to you there's a sign painted a painted banana there i wouldn't say and uh some bananas right yeah what would you bring back if they said bring me back the banana well okay well just to go back to what you said there, that it's a painted, you said the sign was a painted banana. Yeah.

It wasn't. It was an arrow with banana written on it. Was it? Wasn't it a banana? Was it banana shift? No, it wasn't banana shift. You're lying to yourself. Oh no, that's even clearer then.

Because if it's just the word banana, that's the banana. Because the word banana is banana. You know? It's much clearer than if it was just a symbol. If it's just the word banana, that's clearly the banana. Yeah. If there were many bananas in the tree and they said bring back the banana,

I would then be confused as to what they wanted me to bring back. Because there would be multiple bananas. But as far as I'm aware, there was only one banana in the tree that you were supposed to be getting. So the banana, I would have brought back the fruit. You would have brought back a banana. Because there are many more bananas in the world. If you wanted to bring back the banana,

you would have brought back the word banana. But there may be many more bananas in the world. don't think anyone's disputing that frankie but i i think there's only one banana in that tree and it said get the banana down from the tree here's another thing do you think there's a single other sign in the world that simply says banana why would it there will be many many that say bananas bananas for sale but there's probably only that one that says banana that is the banana yeah but would a chimp eat that sign that's that's the the last philosophical point i'm gonna make would a chimp eat that sign well you know i i feel you know and not many viewers will support me on the the um banana thing but i'm going to

betterly maintain i'm right please and we wouldn't have it any other way um may surprisingly not not great at this really i think sometimes sometimes they overthink being exacting about things so when it comes to the bubble wrap they really spend a lot of time making sure every single bubble is popped to make sure that they don't fail the task but that's 20 minutes on the bubble wrap alone whereas you're dispatching with a bubble wrap in two to three seconds with a big fire exactly me and underestimate the benefits of fire throughout the series i feel yeah as far as i know i don't think may sets anything on fire for the entire series not great is it um let's talk about ivo then because this is a i mean this is this is how i think ivo does his stand-up gig diary just total disorganized chaos opens all of the tasks before he decides

which is going to do first and then to top it all off i mean there's loads of things top it off it's the it's when he has to he's like fine i'll go and sit in the shed for three minutes and he goes and sits in the caravan for three minutes yeah it is yeah i'd forgotten about that it's baffling it's baffling and we we had alex horn on the podcast a few weeks ago and he actually foreshadowed this because it happens in a previous series where people get a bit mixed up between the caravan and the shed and he said yeah that has happened and that that will happen in the next series and it's not like he remembers halfway through he literally goes into the caravan

sits there for three minutes comes back and says right i'm done i've sat in the shed and alex said have you sat in the shed and you just see it dawn on him it takes far too long that all the cogs were and then he's like oh no i've sat in the caravan by accident um incredible what taskmaster can do to your brain it's exhausting to watch that was that was like more exhausting than having a 15 minute argument about bananas. Semiotics thereof was just watching Ivo's highlights. Yeah. I mean, and then he finally finishes by speaking to a man called John on the phone,

a family friend. This is how lovely Ivo is. The conversation goes on for so long. He has to say line to finish the task, but he just gets stuck in this protracted conversation so he's saying things like love to the boys uh lovely to hear your voice as well i hope to catch up with you soon it just goes on for ages i think doesn't he offer to play in a charity cricket match or that's where you need to look from or something i phoned up a guy called john there There wasn't a John there, was there? In the area.

No, no, no. I phoned up this bloke called John who lives next door and I occasionally dog sit for him. Yeah. But his dogs are quite traumatised. And it's a lot of fun. But he was baffled to hear from me I think but at least the conversation was short

it was just hello John how are you and then pretty much done that's Scottish people they're quite glad that you hang up they'd rather have an air of mystery than a two minute conversation yeah every phone conversation with a Scottish person is like they're doing a task for taskmaster

yeah pretty much but then people don't phone people don't phone anymore do they Every phone conversation with a Scottish person is like they're doing a task for Taskmaster. Yeah, pretty much. But then people don't phone anymore, do they? No, I would struggle with phoning someone because you just feel weird. Who phones anyone? Yeah. Yeah. No, thanks.

Ivo, two points. Beating May somehow still, even though he does every single task and does a lot of them quite badly. It was one point for May, three points for you, Frankie, after the banana discussion,

three points for Kyle and four points for Jenny. Nobody gets five points because of the great banana paradox which will be written about for centuries to come. So 63 will complete a line. So 63 will complete a line.

Every number will complete a line. I'll sit in the shed. It's gone terribly. I think that was three minutes, but I didn't have a way of measuring it. So you sat in the shed for three minutes? Yeah. You're sure? Oh, my God.

I sat in a caravan. I'm calling my dad's friend and my former doctor. Oh, hello, Jonathan. I'm so sorry. I've rung you by accident. I do apologise. It was lovely to hear you too. I'd, um... Oh, terrific. Oh, right. You must shout line when you've finished.

Have a lovely weekend. Give my best to the boys. Bye. Line! Let's talk about the live tasks. did you enjoy the live tasks in general yeah it was good to have something at the end do you know what I mean that you felt you could get out your chair

and be degraded in some way this one was pretty degrading all round it was pour your sand into the other bottle slow It was pour your sand into the other bottle. Slowest to pour their sand into the other bottle wins. You must pour your sand from at least a foot above your other bottle. If there is a break in your sand stream, you are disqualified. Not many notes for this one because everyone gets disqualified.

So difficult to care, isn't it? I don't know if you've ever if you've ever poured sand from one object to another and had people monitor it frame by frame but you'd imagine at some point uh you you know you might stop pouring the old sand um is that what happened then do you think your hand just stopped being interested and that's why you stopped pouring the sand i think my mind just shut down i did pour the sand into the thing but not at the required rate but also if you're going to have it frame by frame yeah you're going to find what it should be is like an observer yes you know some person and perhaps we should be able to distract them in some way you know as you say a chimp chimp or something that would be trained to attack us

if we broke the stream or something. But this frame-by-frame thing is a high standard. So you'd want a sort of violent punishment for people who broke their stream, like an angry chimp or something? An angry chimp, an Alsatian, just members of the public who don't enjoy the show, you know? I don't think they exist, Frankie, so we'd have a hard time finding them.

At some point, I think, was it in this episode or a previous episode where you just said to Greg, oh, maybe you're just jaded by the entire concept of the show. It's got to get to you after a while, hasn't it? It's rarely a viewpoint they have on Taskmaster where someone will just cut through and say something like that, but it's so needed, I think. And Greg doesn't burst with joie de vivre, does he? Sometimes he does.

Sometimes he does. If people do something really well, you can see that excitement in him for sure. But otherwise, yeah, he's the taskmaster. He's got to roll the nine fists. I think it would be a different show if Greg was allowed a few drinks before the record, you know? You should have a different, you know, maybe at Christmas you have a three drinks taskmaster. And i think he would be a much more joyful um there'd be a lot more points flying

about or angrier you never know yeah it could go it could go the other way really violent and sad i when i did it because obviously it's two episodes a night night, you'd go and have dinner after the first episode and then I'd always have a little glass of red and then maybe a glass of red during the record. So you can really see in the episodes in my series when I'm doing the second episode of the day. Ah, I would have some Haribo, which is my version of the same thing.

So can you tell when you watch these episodes that, oh yeah, I've had a few Haribo then which is my version of the same thing. So can you tell when you watch these episodes that, oh yeah, I've had a few Haribo then? Yeah. That must be nice if you can. I remember like when I used to do panel shows way back in the day, they give you a Red Bull. Yeah. Like it goes beyond your desk.

That's not the best thing for being funny, is it? No, not at all. I'm anxious and I'm worried my heart might stop. I don't know if that makes me funnier.'s it on mock the week was that what was in your mug yeah there was always one under the desk when you came on there was always a banana and a red bull and that was what was in your mug yeah red bull oh they stopped that by the time i got there it was uh yeah they'd offer you they'd offer you that but i'd always have water and um hugh's always got some sort of ale in his mug good for you i mean they used to say

that like used to say it was like really competitive and stuff but i would argue that the person who made the show competitive is whoever came up with the idea of six people running a microphone to try to be the first to tell a joke and giving everyone a red bull yeah and i've given everyone a red bull that they hadn't i wonder if that tallies up when when they said oh the atmosphere changed a bit it used to be more competitive but do you think it's just the time they stopped putting a red bull under everyone's desk yes i think that would be a big factor but also i get as after like a bunch of like at first people are always like oh is this going to get recommissioned and they're all trying really hard and often yeah trying very hard isn't very funny is it you know and sort of not trying is

often funnier yeah so probably they just chilled out a bit yeah i'm sure that's it thank you very much frankie for coming on to the taskmaster podcast thank you this episode obviously ended with a win for jenny uh third place for you 12 points a serviceable performance some excellent tasks from you and no need to get up on the stage and point at all the prizes serviceable it's what we aim for i think that's you shoot for that and then you don't have to get up you don't have to get up at the end I think in now we know your your system in Taskmaster I feel like this was truly a victory for you in this episode yeah I had fun man um of course we always ask our guests on the Taskmaster podcast to rate their experience on the Taskmaster podcast between one and five points in the style of the Taskmaster.

We've loved having you here, Frankie, but please, an honest points appraisal for your recording today, please. Which is the highest? Five points is the highest in the style of the Taskmaster. You really weren't concentrating when you... Five

points! Excellent. Thank you very much. Appreciate that. And thank you very much appreciate that and thank you so much for coming on the Taskmaster podcast Frankie thanks for having me man great to speak to you you too cheers have a good day thank you so much to Frankie for coming on that was an absolute joy and absolute

delight I think we can all agree Frankie is absolutely fantastic on this series and we can't wait Frankie is absolutely fantastic on this series we can't wait to see more of him which you can do next week tune into channel 4 9pm for Taskmaster Series 15 episode 5 and then straight after listen to the podcast about

that episode where the guest will be Ivo Graham that's right we are rattling through current contestants Ivo is absolutely fantastic on this series. A lot of ups and downs for that boy, as I expected. He's a dear friend of mine. I cannot wait to catch up with him.

It's going to be an absolute belter of an episode. So tune back in at 10pm to your podcast apps to listen to us discuss Series 15, Episode 5 with Ivo Graham. But for now, thank you very much to Frankie Boyle and thank you very much to Frankie Boyle and thank you very much to you we'll 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.