Taskmaster The Podcast - Ep 143. Julian Clary - S16 Ep.4

Episode Date: October 12, 2023

Julian Clary is this week's guest and he spills the tea on his time on Taskmaster. What did he think of the team tasks and did all of his prize tasks come from his house? Julian tells Ed which comedian (and previous contestant) told him to do the show and why he couldn't remember Josh Widdicombe's name. 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.

You can get anything you need with Uber Eats. Well, almost almost anything. So no, you can't get snowballs on Uber Eats. But meatballs and mozzarella balls, yes, we can deliver that. Uber Eats. Get almost almost anything. Order now. Product availability may vary by region. See app for details. Hello there everyone, it's Ed Gamble here, the host of the Taskmaster podcast, and welcome to the Taskmaster podcast. What a coincidence.

We of course are in the thick of series 16 now, breaking down each episode, task by task, with a special guest, and we are very excited that our special guest this week is the national treasure, the living legend, Julian Clary. So excited to speak to Julian about episode four. Never met Julian before, so quite intrigued to see how this conversation goes. He is an extremely funny man. He is a brilliant Taskmaster contestant, and I cannot wait mainly just to discuss all the stuff he's clearly got in his house because he's bringing most of it in for prize tasks. So let's get cracking. Remember Taskmaster is on at nine o'clock on Channel 4 on Thursday. You don't need me to tell you that. Come on, this is the like sister podcast.

You know all about the big mummy show. Very excited to talk to Julian. So this is episode four of series 16 of Taskmaster as discussed by Julian Clary. Welcome Julian to the Taskmaster podcast. Oh, hello, Ed. How are you? I'm very well, thank you. How are you? Thanks so much for coming on the pod. Do you think we're wearing the same top, both of us? I think yeah, it's the sort of maroon colour, would you say that?

Sort of. Yes, I would. All Saints. Well, no, I mean, this is a gym top, which I've just come back from a workout, so I wouldn't work out in a lovely All Saints top. How impressive. Thank you. All I wanted to do was impress you, so I went to the gym first, Julian.

Good. Pumped up. Pumped up indeed. Very pumped to talk to you. Very exciting to have you on the podcast and that you have done Taskmaster. Did you enjoy the experience overall? I did. You sort of immerse yourself in it and it takes over your life a bit like i did big brother once it's a similar kind of experience where you're totally focused on pleasing the master so what tell me this way

were you focused on pleasing the master certainly i don't feel like you're focused on pleasing alex a lot of the time well what happened with alex it's a sort of comedic device, isn't it? And I've always done this, whether I've got a dog on stage with me or a pianist or a lesbian in the wings or a man in the front row. I have to have someone, I'm afraid, to put down, as it were, and be rude to. And it just Alex was the only one there apart from a cameraman. So he got the job and it took us a while to kind of work out the dynamics of that but um once he understood his place then uh yeah played along i i think he's the he's the perfect foil for that sort of stuff because he gets it

in the studio from greg and then yes he does a similar thing with greg doesn't he although it's more complicated because he's actually the clever one um in the studio but yes he's used to that role I feel so you could almost see him when he was in the house with you because I think sometimes being in the house with the contestants is a nice holiday from uh that relationship with Greg but you absolutely gave him very short shrift and we loved it he's got a twinkle in his eye as well so much like fanny the wonder dog used to have you know he understands it's only my fun absolutely had you seen much taskmaster before before they asked you to do it i know i i said somehow it

passed me by and uh when it came along i watched a few episodes and I phoned up Jo Brand and said this is the sort of thing that I would enjoy and uh she'd enjoyed it and she said it's because it's fun and it's thinking on your feet and uh so it's all Jo's fault that I'm doing it well I I did uh Taskmaster with with Jo uh and she was absolutely fantastic and she was yeah she was right to recommend it to you i think both of you definitely the right personality types for it in that you're there to have fun and also not not too competitive is that fair to say julian no i'm not very competitive and i didn't understand it was such a thing you know and people are obsessed aren't they yeah and watch all the

episodes from all around the world i had some tweets saying after the first episode saying that score in series five episode six would have been enough to win and sort of meaningless statistics are fired at me from these devotees yeah there's big devotees there's stats people uh I know multiple people who make spreadsheets of all the series to sort of compare and contrast. They're very, very invested in it. So now you are part of this world and get ready to have those tweets for the rest of your life, Julian. Fair enough. People do the same with Just a Minute, a Radio 4 show that I've done. And yes, I suppose it's a sort of hobby if you've got nothing better to do. Absolutely. There's loads of stuff we want to talk to you about.

We'll talk about the episode, certainly, but there's a few things that I wanted to bring up from a past episode, from the first three. I mean, I didn't need to ask you whether you'd seen much Taskmaster before because the sword in the stone task I think highlighted that where you had to try and guess the code word and the code word was Widdicombe and you were the only one who found the picture of Josh Widdicombe

and even that wasn't enough of a clue for quite a long time. Not for me no I'm not very good with names to begin with I'm not very good with other comics because I don't really watch them but i'd sort of vaguely seen him on panel shows i did get it in the end didn't i yes you did get in there and you won you won that task but it amazing yes it was that awkward moment where

you were trying to remember his name and everyone was just sort of gripping the arms of their chair going if if he can't come up with it it's going to be absolutely well incredible i would have loved excruciating yes it was in my brain it was in my brain somewhere and also that man with the teeth whose name i still can't remember who's he it's rob beckett is the yeah it's blokes you see i'm not very good with blokey blokes yeah if you'd had um larry grayson up there a renowned homosexual of some sort. I'd have been in like Flynn. But these blokes, I tend to glaze over. Marvellous though they are. No, that's fair enough.

And there was a picture of me in there as well, Julian, because I won Series 9, so you didn't even try and guess mine. No, I thought you were some sort of runner. We should also briefly talk about uh your nicknames you went with the nickname butch and then broke the table um but the the the initial suggestion was that uh your nickname in the past has been fuck pig yeah that's right it was it's a terrible story and it's hard to explain to people without it seeming like something it wasn't. But back in the 70s, I was a cockswain for Kingston Rowing Club.

So I was only about 12. And there were all these lads, you know. And it was quite character building for me to be in. Because the cockswain's in charge of them all. Yeah. Shouts orders and all that. Their joke was to call me fuck pig. I didn't really understand it at the time um but um what can i say it was true so that's why i put it in

good i'm glad we got the exclusive on uh on where fuck pig comes from um yes if you said it in the studio you'll be surprised to hear that they lost it from the edit julian they just left they just left in fuck pig as a reference i know i think i might have half said it in the studio, you'd be surprised to hear that they lost it from the edit, Julian. They just left in fuck pig as a reference. I know. I think I might have half said it well aware that this was never going to see the light of day. I didn't know on podcast one could talk about such things. Absolutely. I have to say it was all fun at the Roan Club and I wasn't actually a fuck pig. Good. I'm glad we can draw a line under it finally.

Good. I'm glad we can draw a line under it finally. You're also, you're in a team with Sam and Lucy. Talking of assuming people were runners, what was your first reaction when the rest of your team arrived? Because it was, I think goes down as possibly one he'd walked onto the set in the garden by mistake he just i was in the middle of doing something and there he was and i if they'd said now meet you know one of your fellow contestants i might have been a bit more smiley um and he looked awkward as well and it was the same with lucy um i did I know who they all are. I knew who... I'd worked with Sam on... We did Friday Night Live a few months before. Oh, of course, yeah, yeah. So that was all fine.

No, but it was... It was awkward. And also, we're so used to being on your own doing these tasks. That was the first time we had to sort of cohabit them and yeah that takes some adjusting to but you're a great team straight away the uh the suggestion of putting all your your hair together which you i'd say begrudgingly let someone cut a chunk of your hair out even though it was a nice cut uh but it was great well i, I think I really admired, the more the series went on,

that Sam has this extraordinary brain, doesn't he, and this way of thinking. Who'd have thought of that in the whole nation? Nobody except him. Yeah, absolutely. That's clever. But I didn't know. No, I didn't. I was just vanity really, worried about my hair.

I should have shut up. It is a lovely cut though, Julian. You can't be messing around with that sort of stuff. No, thank you very much. Let's talk about the prize task from this episode uh the prize task was of course the best thing for a grown-up that is meant for a child and you're very strong at the prize task julian i think you came out of the uh you came out of the blocks all guns blazing with the bum table um we've also had the the penis mural as well um oh yes it's really building up a lovely sort of blueprint

or image of what your house is like and what's in your house because pretty much everything's come from your abode i think yes i thought that was the again it was only when we were in the studio and i saw how imaginative and um bizarre other people's um gifts were for that task but i know i just when i got the list the email through i would wandered around my lovely home and thought oh that is wooden and large that will do and um so yeah no they're all just plucked from various rooms in the house but that's great that you've got a house that you can do that it sounds like you live in an absolutely amazing place with a lot of incredible memories and bum tables um well you know i'm of an age so you collect these things as you go through life and the the what you call the penis thing um collage yes someone gave me that and she, there's a lot of work gone into that penis.

And I bet you don't quite know what to do with it when you get it home because it's large and not to everyone's taste. So I was very happy to pass that on and send it to a good home. You see the prize task also as an opportunity to get rid of some of the pieces in your house that you don't necessarily want anymore. Well, we do. I think I said there's a lot of things like the, you haven't had some of these yet. Let's just say things that I don't actually like. My husband and I have a habit of buying really hideous things for each other as a joke because, you know, we've been together a long time and we don't want anything really so yeah birthdays and christmas you've got to go through the motions so he has been known to go into shops and say what's the most hideous thing you have in this store and i'll buy it and they say one moment sir and they come back with some awful thing which i'm

then given it is fantastic that you stuck to that that you went and got things from your house rather than like with some people invented some wild things but um let's let's talk about this one uh it was yes the best thing for a grown-up that is meant for a child um you brought in uh the book uh Biggles Takes It Rough um was that was that something that you earned did you have a copy of Biggles Takes It Rough. Was that something that you owned? Did you have a copy of Biggles Takes It Rough knocking around the house? Yes, I've had that. I found that in a bookshop when I was a teenager, I think, or at university, and I thought, well, that's amusing.

And so I've had it all these years. I thought it perfectly fulfilled the brief, you know, something for a child that amuses an adult. Absolutely, absolutely. And it got a good laugh. It did. Have you read it? Have you read Biggles takes it rough?

I think I might have read it. They're all kind of the same, the Biggles stories. He's very intrepid and has a bit of trouble and then triumphs in the end in a manly sort of way. Yeah, even if it is rough now and again. I mean, yeah, I agree. I think it was an absolutely perfect thing for the task itself, a perfect thing for you to present as well.

I thought it was great. And let Alex do a bit of research into the other Biggles titles, including Biggles Gets His Men and Biggles and the Dark Intruder. Yes, I've been looking for those now for my collection and you got four points for that one which always very strong in the prize tasks um now let's talk about sam's sam brought in his birth certificate which i thought was really clever i thought he he'd absolutely nailed that but greg didn't seem to be in a clever mood that day. And I'm surprised because I don't think Greg got it right. You know, I thought that that was absolutely in keeping with the brief.

But that's the thing with Greg. And that's what makes you very insecure as a contestant, because you think, oh, he's going to like this. Surely he's going to smile at me. And but he's unpredictable, isn't he? And you get the stern look which is devastating it's like being spurned by a lover do you feel like you did you get on with greg in the studio do you think there was a mutual respect there or were you were you fearful of him

um well the no i did i hoped i'd like to think i got on with him, but he is a superior in that setting, isn't he? So it's not quite a normal, cheery, chatty relationship. You wait till you're spoken to. Yeah, absolutely. He emanates this charismatic power, doesn't he? Yeah. And I don't know, he's like a deity or something he will absolutely love to hear that that he emanates a power that makes him feel like a

deity he will he will be over the moon with that and that will that will if anything make his personality uh that's the welsh for you isn't it? They all emanate that. Yeah, I thought the birth certificate was fantastic. It's a really interesting way of thinking about the category. You use it as a grown-up, and it is meant for a child. You do need one as a child. So I don't know what Chris's point was. But you can't win them all.

I could see the pain on Sam's face as well, and it didn't go as he'd planned. I felt yeah felt for him. Because with Sam he's surprised me and I've said this a lot on the podcast because he he's absolutely hilarious and he is uh he thinks of things in an odd way but I wasn't expecting him to be competitive and I think he is very competitive he's really trying on this show. These young bucks you see they are they're like that were you competitive when you did it very but in a more obvious way than sam ah yes no i i was i like to get laughs get a few laughs and then i'm happy and yeah but no he was yeah you're right he was he was competitive and and also bold enough to argue his point after being dismissed.

He would come back, please, sir, I beg you to rethink. I wouldn't dare do that. No, of course not. Sam was ignoring the power emanating from the deity, unfortunately. He's a godless man. Susan brought in a lava lamp that doubles as a sad lamp. This is another... I really like Susan's prizes

because they're so genuine and earnest. She's really just tried to fulfil the brief. She's not thought around it at all. She's just bringing it in and going, here we go, I've brought this. But does she think they're going to win, I wonder? I don't know. Does she sort of know deep down in

her heart I think she might have realized episode one that the things that she'd picked for the upcoming episodes weren't going to win but she wasn't going to change them I think she starts out well enthused but by the time she's got to the end of the sentence there's fear in her eyes yeah absolutely um I mean I did I could see why greg didn't like it i was surprised it meant i i thought this was going to be the the one point um and also i understand why lava lamps aren't suitable for children no i think i had one when i was when i was a kid yeah so did i and you did kind of watch it in that dreamy childish way yeah um so i'd have thought they're highly

suitable for children but what do i know maybe it's for the you have to stop children having them for the children who might sort of unscrew the bottom and try and drink it and drink it yes of course like i probably would have thought about that as a child because it does look quite it's quite an alluring thing the lava lamp isn't it you you sort of and it's probably poison is it or something oh i'm sure it's poison it can't it can't be healthy yeah well you see greg knows everything he was right about yeah of course he knows everything and it doubles as a sad lump uh sad lump the seasonal affective disorder which i've never i've never suffered from seasonal affective disorder personally so never needed a lamp no i don't think it does see those lamps are sort of bright white light aren't they yeah i think she made that up

i think she panicked halfway through realized she brought in another bad improvised yeah just improvised she's been to rada you know i didn't know that she should have mentioned it at some point during the series take it from me uh sue brought in i mean this sue's lived a real life uh sue brought in an adult nappy and that story about her ex eating a whole wheel of cheese and then wearing an adult nappy to bed i know you got the edited version in the studio we had the full horrible awful story i mean what a business who did that do you remember any details from the full story that you can reveal to the podcast well it was just bizarre and i spoke to her afterwards and it was all true yeah um well i don't know what goes on you know that side of things

but then i can't remember any i might you see I might say something that is inappropriate to reveal but um yes did you how many points did she get I can't remember she got she got three points for that for the for the adult mappy but I feel like that was she got three points by virtue of the two below her um yes rather than anything else but so yeah some of Sue's stories Sue uh came on my other podcast, Off Menu, and told a story about being in a hot tub with a shaman and the shaman blowing raspberry vodka up her bottom. Oh, I wondered what you were going to say then.

Hang on, he blew raspberry vodka up her snatch? No, up her anus. Oh. Was that for a spiritual experience? Yeah, for cleansing, spiritual cleansing. Well, hold my drink. So you can imagine, this is the sort of life that Sue's led, so revealing the story about the adult nappy and the wheel of cheese

is nothing to her at this point. So that got more points than the birth certificate? It got two more points than the birth certificate. Oh, well, there'll be letters about that. There will be, there will be. You, of course, got the four points, but it was the five points for Lucy's bib lunchbox situation, which she struggles to say for a long time.

Bib pack, I think we settled on. Lucy is a very individual lady. What a mind, what an extraordinary, she's sort of, it's like a walking rabbit hole, isn't she? Where things disappear, or you disappear down it with her and jaws drop. Yeah. Where is this going?

But it's not, I don't think it's an act, it's how she is. Yeah, absolutely. And I'm so glad of it because, yeah, she's a great Taskmaster contestant and anything she's asked, she says something that you're not expecting. Yeah, it's amazing to be in her company and absorb all this. Yeah, sure. What did you think about the bib pack, the picnic bib? What did you think about the bib pack, the picnic bib? Well, it was just so funny. I think it deserved the points for being funny and ingenious and said with such sincerity as if it was a real thing,

eating your droppings. Yeah, that's what I couldn't work out because I don't think it was that clear whether this was something that she invented or whether she'd bought it from somewhere. No know I think she invented it surely yeah surely surely no one else has invented that it didn't look that professional as if it was bought from you know Argos or anything did it yeah I've not seen one before I also that would definitely be the sort of thing I'd use but I wouldn't like anyone else to see me using it.

Scooping up all the crusts and stuff at the end of the day. Yes. But it was five points. It was five points for the bid pack. Very inventive prize task. Four points for your Biggles Takes It Rough. Three points for Sue's Adult Nappy. Two points for Susan's Lava Lamp.

takes it rough. Three points for Sue's adult nappy, two points for Susan's lava lamp and, as we agreed, a disgraceful one point for Sam's birth certificate. Hello, Lucy. It's a... A burp. A burp?

Burp. Burp. Burp. Burp. A burp. I feel like something's happened to me. OK, well, this is what Lucy's brought in. It's a bib attached to a packed lunchbox.

Have you created a bib pack? Is that what you want to say? Yeah. A bib pack? Yeah. That'd be more straightforward than a bag pack. It's hockey season and you can get anything you need delivered with Uber Eats. We'll be right back. Chicken tenders, yes, because those are groceries, and we deliver those too, 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. Product availability varies by region.

See app for details. Task one, make a sausage. You can only use seven ingredients, each beginning with the letters of the word sausage. You have five minutes to order your ingredients and 20 minutes to prepare your sausage most surprisingly pleasant sausage wins you may not order sausages your time starts now um are you are you much of a chef julian no i don't i'm a terrible cook but when i asked for edible knickers i was thinking of those you know that sort of paper thin like rice paper yes and what they brought me was the team you know brought me this it's like sort of pressed fruit yeah I

don't know what it was but it sort of ruined everything I had in mind for that recipe and it overpowered the taste was overpowering it was very thick they were very thick weren't they very thick and fruity and if i'd got what i had in mind i mean it's too late now and i won't let it keep me awake but um yes that's my comment on that yeah i mean i i i don't know what i was expecting when you asked for edible underwear, but the ones that I've seen before in shops and stuff, the novelty ones, are often made of, like, sweets. They're just, like, sweets on elastic. But I'd certainly never seen those thick pants

that you could wear during the day and then eat them afterwards. No, I think that would be nonsense to wear. Yeah. Fruity pants. I was thinking of paper, but, you know. And my other thing about that round was Sue won, didn't she? She did. She made the fish sausage.

But that was just a fish cake. Thank you, Julian. I've written that down when I watched it. Have you? Everyone was reacting like she'd invented a brand new thing, but it was just a long fish cake. It was. That's what I was seething, sitting there in the studio,

thinking, well, surely someone's going to say it. And I thought, shall I say it then? I thought, well, that looks bad, doesn't it? It looks a bit mean, but no. I'm happy to get that off my chest now. Yeah. It's a bloody fish cake. I completely agree with you.

And Alex started saying, oh, these should be on sale. They are on sale. I know, if it's some sort of revelation fish sausage otherwise known as fish cake but to be fair to sue it was edible and it was sausage shaped which is more than you can say for a lot of the other sausages yours yours was sausage shaped and it was edible you know sticky toffee sauce you had the thick pants uh vegan vegan streaky bacon uh grated apple granola edamame beans quite an eclectic range of ingredients for a sausage yes all things that are should be quite nice you know if we'd have the right skin for it um, it's all very challenging for all of us that task and yes, but quite fun to

watch Alex eating revolting things. He loves it though, he will just, he'll eat anything. I know, he doesn't just gingerly nibble does he? No. He opens that little mouth of his and in it goes. It is quite a little mouth isn't it a little mouth little eyes big face but yeah i've got to say yours yours sounded quite an interesting sausage but you know edible at least lucy's she got three points for this it didn't look like a sausage it looked absolutely disgusting it was just sort of mashed up carrots and apple and banana and more carrots. It looked absolutely disgusting. Well, what can we say? I mean, from the beginning, she didn't...

She just went out of the room, didn't she, and came back with some apples. Yeah, she... Before she'd written down her requirements. Very odd. She was operating on a different level in this task as as she is in many of the tasks but it wasn't sausage shaped she'd done a sort of smiley face situation with it but it somehow somehow got three points and i think it got three points again by virtue of susan and sam let's talk about sam's he's not scoring well in this episode so far he asked for skin apple cider vinegar ugly

raisins spinach artisanal seeds grain uh an egg um i mean that seems to really upset alex and he's eaten some disgusting things before he reminds me of spike milligan um sam yeah who would think of ugly raisins as a thing it's very surreal um yes but he said he was so sort of eager to please with it wasn't he he's like a little puppy isn't he yeah but he just picked all the wrong things i think asking sausage skins i could understand the problem with me julian is i would take this one far too seriously i'd be asking for like a mincing machine one of those sausage skin fillers how would you i'd be trying to do a proper sausage and there wasn't enough time for that really i'd be doing flavor flavor combinations and pairing and testing and all of that but yeah there was a there was a time pressure i did i did have to think about it's usually the first thing that

comes into my head that i would have written down on those you know for the ingredients yeah and the clock is ticking and then you know they do kind of hold you to the time yes they really do say give me an extra half an hour please no one need no it doesn't work like that is that something that you felt in the time did you feel the time pressure because from our perspective as a viewer it didn't feel like that you felt in the talk did you feel the time pressure because from our perspective as a viewer it didn't feel like that you were ever panicked or rushed at any point during the tasks um i usually was quite quick um i usually got things over quickly i didn't realize you could well i should have done but you know that whole um lateral thinking and some people did like a little film to um illustrate a task I don't know I never thought of that you know

um so I live and learn and um if I had my time again I'd have I'd have stopped myself and maybe been a bit cleverer. But then also, sometimes you just got to get it over with, right? Some tasks rely on the fact that you've just got to do your first thought and do it quickly. And I think you were very good at that. I think so. Good. Yeah. Let's talk about Susan's because I think this is the one that's going to stick in everyone's memory. She did not order edible undies.

She ordered actual knickers and strawberries, salt, avocado, green leaves and edible glitter and put whatever she'd made that was certainly not a sausage on top of just a bed of ladies' underwear. Which, as an image, it looked like a crime scene it was that it was absolutely horrific and then she made him lick the knickers which i mean thank goodness i had my curtains drawn at the time what the neighbors would have thought yes well i don't know what to say about that he seemed to enjoy it though i don't know what to say about that. He seemed to enjoy it, though. I don't know. I mean, he went for it, didn't he? Licking the knickers. Yes, he did.

He certainly did. He enjoyed himself. But yeah, Susan's mind, again, I think quite often she is overshadowed in the weirdness stakes by Lucy and Sam. But there's some weird stuff going on in Susan's mind as well, think just goes to show I mean it was we all found that a difficult task apart from the person who made a fish cake we don't know much do we about what goes into this humble sausage and well yeah how it works and so we live and learn yeah absolutely well that's you know that's what people say about sausages right you don't want to know how the sausage is made. And in this case, I certainly didn't want to know how Susan's sausages were made.

No, gristle and eyeballs, I think. All the bits that no one wants. So Sam's sausage got one point, another one point for Sam, two points for Susan, three points for Lucy, four points for your edible underwear-based sausage, Julian, and five points for Suey four points for your edible underwear based sausage julian and five points for sue's long fish cake it was a long fish cake guys have you never had a fish cake before i did rather well there to get four points because um because the others were such slop yeah

not on the merit of my own offering but you know you know, on the fact that theirs were so awful. I think that's the other thing about Taskmaster, that you only really learn when you get into the studio. You've got to just throw yourself into it and try your best, because sometimes everyone else is going to be worse, no matter what you did. Yeah. Which is a good lesson to learn about life, I think.

Sometimes people are worse. It needs to ostensibly look like it's going to be grotesque, but dazzle. Can skin be one? Let's see. You know, like edible underwear. Everyone likes a pear. Anchovy. I wouldn't recommend that. Some carrot.

A banana. Let's see. Are you OK? Unalive cod. Some's eat. Are you OK? Unalive cod. Some prawns. Artisanal fish. A decorative plate. I look like I eat, right? I eat all the time.

Why can't I think of things? OK. Some carrots. Some carrots. Apple. Ugh, banana. Some carrots. Right, again. Oh, ugly. Some carrots. Apple. Eww, banana. Mmm. Some carrots. Right, again.

Apple. Eggplant. Raisins. All the herbs. Is that exploitable? Yeah. An edible what? Task two.

Complete all the tasks, then put the tubs back on your heads. One person must be looking at a teammate at all times during the tasks. Also, one person must be shaking their head and smiling at all times during the tasks then put the tubs back on your heads one person must be looking at a teammate at all times during the tasks also one person must be shaking their head and smiling at all times during the tasks and one person must only shout fastest wins your time starts when Alex blows his whistle did you we talked briefly about the team meeting uh but did you enjoy working as a team yes i think we did that was not that was not one of my favorite tasks no and i thought it was i felt my age doing that you know it just felt like i felt like i felt a bit studenty in what in what sense you can imagine students doing that in their halls of residence couldn't you after they've had too much cheap cider oh let's put baskets on our head and eat cereal um but no I went along with it um did I not you did absolutely and luckily when when you're

working on the team uh with Sam who's just going to run around like a little puppy as I say and you know he was the first one out there to get the cereal he's shaking his head and smiling throughout he looks absolutely insane. Lucy just tried her hardest as well. So I think you had a chance to sort of take stock, relax into it a little bit, and very much sort of marshal those two. I chose the easy option just to stare. I think that was my job.

But Lucy was going off talking about foxes, wasn't she? So I was worried about losing points for us. I thought, I better nip this in the bud. She doesn't understand. Yeah, she thought you had to shout all of the time. Because she said she was going to get the inspiration from the fox that shits in her garden. But then she genuinely started shouting about the fox. I know. I think she just thought you had to shout. You had to shout what was written about the fox. I know, I think she just thought you had to shout, not, you had to shout what was written on the cards.

Yeah, anything you said you had to shout, but you didn't have to say anything really. But that's, did you find that's the role that you took in that team that, you know, on occasion you had to tell them just to calm down and have a think about what they were doing? Well, no, sometimes you want them not to calm down and have a think about what they were doing? Well, no, sometimes you want them not to calm down. Yeah.

There's another task coming up, which I won't spoil, but where their lateral thinking and, how shall we put it, highly developed imaginations was an asset to the team. So it just depends on the particular task. We will look forward to that one. Sam suggests that you are the best person to do the staring because you're very watchful. I can be, yes.

I'm quite still and watchful. And shouting wouldn't have been for me and all the running around. So, no, it all worked out nicely. and shouting wouldn't have been for me, and all the running around. So, no, it all worked out nicely. It did. I've got a note here from Daisy, the producer of the podcast, when you had to do the squats, saying,

Julian is very good at squats, he must have a PT. Well, I do squats in the morning, and my husband keeps saying, that's not a squat. You're just bending your knees. And did watch that and I thought I wasn't going far enough down in my squats you just come from the gym you can tell me what you think of my squats hey look I'm very bad at squats I have I think very tight hips uh so I don't think I get down far enough, but it's interesting watching the video back. I thought you had good squats actually. Oh, it's an awful word squat isn't it? It is.

It's horrible. Do 10 squats. I think your husband is trying to get under your skin. I think he's jealous of your squats, Julian. I think that's what he is. Well, he doesn't do any squats in the morning. Off to his office jobs. They're there.

Yeah, exactly. That's what it is he's uh he's so jealous um yeah absolutely as greg said absolute insanity um talking about your everyone's saying their regrets um and lucy reveals that she was once in cavos did a poo and had to throw it off the balcony oh yes very much i heard the unexpurgated version of that as well that was all a true story these these people there's so there's so much backstory so all of this uh but yeah fantastic and it was it was like a mad art project you doing or doing all those things you remaining calm while sam shaking his head around and luc's screaming her head off. You're a great team. Let's talk about the Sous, or the Dynamite Chicks,

as they became known in this episode. They really gelled as a team immediately, didn't they, Julian? They did, right from the off. They were like, you know, schoolgirl pals in the dorm. Yeah. I think they're lifelong buddies there. It was rather charming it's lovely uh and you know even in this in this particular task there was a moment where i think

i think sue said oh well you don't want to look at me the whole time so you shouldn't do the looking and susan said no no don't don't be mean to my friend we're going to take that and we're going to put that in the bin i just thought this is so healthy what yes so bad i think maybe maybe if there's just two of you as opposed to three that's more likely to happen in a way do you know what i mean bound together in the face of um some adversity or some challenge um i don't know if it was if it was just you and sam or just lucy and sam or any other combination i can't i can't see that happening with you guys i think it's specifically them to be honest yes they have such an insane energy in this task as well they're running around they're doing everything sue goes

into her sergeant major character just barking everything at the top of her lungs um but the fact is susan had a task left on her leg leg so how do you feel about the fact that they got two points still Julian? I don't begrudge them that how many points did we get? You got the full five because you completed everything. Did we? Well you see they put so much more into it than we did than I did I'm quite low on energy myself. I'd like to preserve it for later. Yeah. No, I don't begrudge them their two points.

I think, good on you girls. Well, that's where we're different, I think. If I was in the studio and that happened, I would be raising my hand and complaining because they didn't complete the task. Yeah, they didn't complete the task. It should be nought points. Oh, is that how it works?

Yeah, well, I think so. But Greg gave them two points. It's the task it should be nought points oh is that how it works yeah well i think so but greg gave them two points it's the taskmaster decision two points for almost completing the task no well look it's fine it's the taskmaster's decision is final uh and he was in a good mood that day so that's absolutely fine um it was it was two points for them and the big five for team jls uh or i believe the natural friends, is what Greg called you after the first task. Go my garden, you bloody

fox! I can't believe it! You don't have to be shouting. You can shout the instructions. Eat one bowl of cereal in the lab. So I don't have to just continuously shout about anything? No. Sniff the front door!

You don't have to have eye contact, I'm just looking at you. Did you watch Lucy sniff the front door? I did watch her sniff the front door. What did it smell like, Lucy? It smelled like wood! I'm going to try sniffing the back door. I'll just shout if you're gonna comment. You're a mucky bugger! Shake hands!

Oh this is a great task this one. Task three. Recreate a well-known piece of art on these memo squares. You must draw on every memo square but you may only look at one memo square at a time. You have 20 minutes after which the memo squares will be arranged in a 10 by 10 square best memo square art wins your time starts now i thought you did a very clever thing here julian i did quite an easy thing well once i'd had the idea of the damien hirst i thought that's i couldn't believe how the others managed to or they did a sort of grid plan didn't they yeah before you started but even so that was just that was difficult and

and clever but aesthetically I was happy with my the result of mine it looked it looked fantastic and I think half the thing is if you see a thing's going to be difficult working out a simpler way of doing it so I think this was lateral thinking in this case because yeah you used you used a brilliant inspiration and you also and I very rarely see people manage this you just tell Alex what to do and he does it like a little lamb I thought I might get told off for that in that I didn't do all of it myself but I thought he's sitting there, you know, smouldering. He might as well do something helpful. But also it's even you saying, go and get me the pens before I start the task.

No one else I've ever seen get away with that. You don't say your time starts now until you send him off to get the equipment. Well, my friend Carolineoline before i started the filming wasn't allowed to tell anyone i was doing this but i did tell her in secret and she's a big taskmaster fan and she said the thing her tip was don't say your time starts now until you're absolutely ready and you've got everything so that was sort of why i was holding back on that and yeah no I'm not wasting some of my precious time while someone fiddles about getting my pens I need everything

ready beforehand it's true and I think yes holding off your time starts now is good because you can get in a couple of extra thoughts but I've never seen anyone demand Alex go and get them things to do the task in that gap so it was it was beautiful to watch well that's how I am in life don't do anything yourself you can get someone else to do it for you but it came out very well I thought it was a really it was a really good idea very well executed and I think Greg recognized it straight away as well which i think i think always helps yes good i'm glad uh susan does a similar a similar idea not quite as well executed i don't think of doing red by rothko but the red pen does run out about halfway through yes well that's almost um alex's fault isn't it do you know what

i mean you shouldn't you should have had another red pen. I quite liked the fading off of the colours there in the finished picture. I quite liked it. It looked nice and Alex's point was that it is different shades of red in Rothko's work but I don't think that's what Susan meant to do. I think it was a case of the pen running out and her running out of time. Well, isn't that often the way with art? I suppose, yeah.

It's not quite what I meant to do, but this is what you're getting. Well, she got the same as you. She got three points as well, because I guess you both went with a more modern, sort of stark approach, which makes it slightly easier, but it's a good workaround. Sam and Sue, let's talk about Sue first. Instantly recognisable as the Mona Lisa. Yes. Very good.

You know, very clever. And to do that on that grid system, it was 100, I think. Was it 100 different bits of paper? Yeah, it was, yeah. And for them all to join up more or less like that. No, it was amazing. And Sam's as well. I mean, Sam's really took me by surprise.

So he used the grid system, as you mentioned earlier, and it's just, he did the scream, and it looked absolutely fantastic. Yeah, that was such a, that was so instantly recognisable as well. Yeah. And a sort of, I don't know why I say this, like perfect picture for him yeah

yes amazing to do that and to also improve on the original as he did i think so yeah i think he really did improve in fact i think you all improved the originals to be honest apart from lucy um who i was lovely though lucy's didn't you think i i'm not sure lovely's the word it was very funny but she had a true a true breakdown when she realized she'd been trying to do poppies instead of sunflowers because she let her subconscious take over yeah but it didn't matter because she had no plan, so they didn't look like poppies either. It was a complete mess. Well, she always delivers in terms of laughs. So, you know, it was very funny. And I did think it was quite pleasing,

maybe because we'd laughed so much, but I didn't dislike it at all. Would you put that up in your house? I wouldn't go that far. You've got a bit of wall space now that the penis collage is gone. Yes, I have. Yes, I'm in sort of one of the dark recesses, maybe. There you go, Lucy.

If you're listening to this, I think you've got a buyer. So it was one point for Lucy, three points for Susan, three points for you, Julian, and five points for both Sam and Sue. If I was to separate them, I think Sam's was slightly more pleasing and Sue's did have the ET fingers on the Mona Lisa, but both of them, huge, huge achievements. Julian, that's the most content I've seen you this series, really. Yes, it was quite meditative.

And you've arranged a date to go and look at owls with Alex. He did seem to thaw out a little bit a lovely 20 minutes i was involved in julian's one he employed me yes which i was grateful for lucy you seem to have another existential crisis during this yeah you try to paint subconsciously that people do do. It's worth saying at this point some of the people made a plan except for Lucy who just went for it So was picturing in a mind as she did it. That's what you wanted me to do. Yeah And halfway through you had a sudden realization that you just remembered what sunflowers look like Poppies right. So you're doing Van Gogh's poppies Mixed oh, yes. Well, they're very similar bird Right, so you're doing Van Gogh's poppies. I was getting Gok Wan and Van Gogh mixed up.

Oh, yes. Well, they're very similar, bud. Let's talk about the live task now. Before we do that, did you enjoy doing the live tasks, Julian? Yes, I think... Well, one can't generalise. Some I enjoyed more than others. I was out straight away in this one wasn't I yes you were, this was a great live

task, it was write the name of a different animal on each face of your dice so you have 100 seconds and then once you've done that there's different rounds and categories and you went out on round one the most boring animal because I believe you had mouse I believe yes I did, of course you didn't know what the questions were going to be.

No. So in a parallel universe, a mouse could have kept me in. Yeah. And I think I felt slightly relieved. Why go and have a sit down? I remember thinking that. Yes. I thought that was unfair though. I think dog is more boring than mouse because dog is, if you asked everyone on the street to name an animal, they would, most people would say dog straight away, I think. Well, whether it's a boring animal or a boring

name to pick, do you know what I mean? Yeah. You probably have more fun with a dog than a mouse in terms of entertainment. So, no, I didn't feel hard done by. I think I wrote all, we didn't get to see anything else, but I think I wrote cat, dog, mouse, cow, horse. You know, I think I went for the first animals that came into my mind. So basically anywhere the dice landed, you would have been in danger of going out on that round. Yeah, whereas Sam had a human and... Mammoth.

Mammoth, you know. So as you'd expect, really, from him. Yeah. He was thinking, not laterally, but boldly. Yes. And in a different direction from most of us, shall we say. Yeah, absolutely. And he had a lucky roll on that last one because Susan was eliminated round two, Sue was eliminated round three, leaving Sam and Lucy. And the category was Animal Most Like Greg

is the winner. And it landed on a human. Yeah. But he needed some points because he hadn't done very well earlier, had he? No, he had a really stinking start to the episode. So he did need some points. But he's doing very well in the series. I would also say that out of all of the animals, I don't think human is the one that Greg is most like. I think something could have beaten human if it was like silverback gorilla, etc. Or mammoth. Or mammoth.

Or mammoth, exactly. Yeah, it's a fine line, isn't it? Sam gets the five points, Lucy on four, Sue on three, Susan on two, and you, sadly, Julian, on one point there. Meaning it's Sue and Lucy drawing at the end of the episode, but sue wins the tie break with the loudest tut um which did fantastic i mean the fact that lucy just says the word tut out loud and still can't get any louder louder than sue um do you think do you think if you were involved in this tie break that you might have won we said you're not very good shouter but are you a good tutter julian um well it was it was it was good to see a tie break

like that because I don't think we've seen one before have we in a series no I've been a bit like it's one of those things that you read in books you know he tutted people don't yeah it's a

that's a tut isn't it really it's a devilish thing to make loud. And I can understand the temptation just to say the word tut. Yeah. Very loudly. But no, I can't, I couldn't say that I would have been good at that. Although I remember we did, I did film my tuts in case.

Yeah. We all filmed all the tie breaks, didn't we? But I can't remember now how i did i don't remember what happened last week so sam and you uh drawing on 17 points just behind the leaders and susan on 11 points meaning series scores wise you may not be competitive but you're up there at the near the top of the table sam on 74 you on 71 big drop off to sue on 60 uh lucy on 58 and susan on 50 so it's all to play for that was only episode four we will see we will see can you and sam keep fighting it out at the top uh julian thank you so much for coming

on the taskmaster podcast we've loved having you on. Thank you. Thanks for having me. I've enjoyed talking to you as well, whoever you are. We always ask our guests on the Taskmaster podcast to rate their experience on the podcast between one and five points in the style of the Taskmaster. You can be honest with me. Give me a score between one and five. We hope you've enjoyed it, but what's the score?

Oh, I'm definitely giving you five. Thank you very much one and five we hope you've enjoyed it but what's the score oh I'm definitely giving you five thank you very much yes no I've enjoyed it and you came straight from the gym so that's worth two points otherwise it would have been four so um no you should be very pleased with your five big pumped up points thank you very much julian thank you so much to julian for coming on the show uh his insight to that episode and the series as a whole was invaluable what a lovely calm genuine man uh very very funny as well we will be back next week with another brilliant guest on the taskmaster podcast straight after the main show channel 4 9 p.m. We can wait for clean water solutions or we can engineer access to clean water. We can wait for clean water solutions.

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