Taskmaster The Podcast - Ep 75. Dave Gorman - S6 Ep.8

Episode Date: April 7, 2022

On the podcast this week Ed is joined by a returning guest (and previous contestant) Dave Gorman. Dave and Ed chat about Series 6 and share their favourite moments. They discuss footwear, hidden tasks and clock faces. There is also an extra special treat from Little Alex Horne! Watch all of Taskmaster on All 4www.channel4.com/programmes/taskmaster Visit the Taskmaster Store for all your TM goodies!taskmasterstore.com Visit the Taskmaster YouTube Channelyoutube.com/taskmaster Get in touch with Ed and future guests:[e-mail] Taskmaster the Podcast is Produced by Daisy Knight for AvalonTelevision Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated

category, and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative. Hello and welcome to the Taskmaster podcast. It's me, Ed Gamble, the host of the Taskmaster podcast. Very excited today. We will be chatting about Series 6, Episode 8 with the wonderful Dave Gorman. Dave Gorman, of course, the villain of the piece, the cheating bastard Dave Gorman uh Dave Gorman of course uh the villain of the piece

the cheat the cheating bastard Dave Gorman uh although I probably won't bring that up uh this much uh on the episode um because uh we covered it the last time he was on uh and also um he's a lovely man really it's episode eight of series six which is not the end of series 6 but it will be a little break in us talking about series 6 because of course the new series of Taskmaster starts next week if you're listening to this the day it comes out it starts on the 14th of April 9pm channel 4 and then it is every Thursday at 9pm for 10 weeks a brilliant new series of taskmaster you should be very excited it's an incredible lineup and we of course will be covering every moment of it here on the taskmaster podcast the show goes out at nine on channel four every

thursday every thursday at 10 p.m we will release the podcast chatting to special guests about the experience of watching that episode. And we're hopefully going to get everyone taking part in this series. We'll be chatting to them. We'll be chatting to other people from across the Taskmaster Cinematic Universe. I'm very excited. So this will be the last episode about Series 6 for a while, but it is a very good episode.

I enjoy chatting to Dave Gorman a lot. Without further ado, this is a lovely chat about Series 6, Episode 8 with Dave Gorman. Welcome back, Dave Gorman, to the Taskmaster podcast. Hello. It's very lovely to have you back on the Taskmaster podcast and I feel like this episode is going to be less confrontational. I feel like we've buried a lot of the cheating hatchets. This episode is going to be less confrontational. I feel like we've buried a lot of the cheating hatchets. Well, I thought we had.

And then yesterday you tweeted something raising it again. And I'm so disappointed in you. I refer to you as the cheater, Dave Gorman. Yeah, fair enough. But, you know, this is your legacy on the show. And if I didn't mention it, there would be a lot of responses to the tweet being like, are you going to ask him about his cheating? And we're not really going to go into it because i feel like we've covered it yeah i think so yeah yeah but i think we established that i didn't cheat didn't we

okay well if you're going to do that dave then we're going to have to go back over it again um and also because i was asking for emails for questions and i wanted to sort of you know a lot of them are about cheating but we're not going to ask any of those questions because we we have covered it. And I don't think that's the conclusion we came to, but if you want to live in that space in your mind. Let the record show. Definitely didn't cheat.

Because of course, we're here to talk about Series 6, this time Series 6, Episode 8. Had you seen any of Series 6 up until you did your homework for this podcast? Yes, I've seen every episode of every series perfect uh i don't always watch it um as it's going out and i sometimes have to hide myself from who has won the series because i like to find out as i watch yeah but within a month of a series being on i've always consumed all of it perfect so this was a second viewing

uh of this episode. What are your thoughts about this lineup in particular? Are there any highlights, any standouts for you? I really like this lineup. I find Tim fascinating because he's so written as a comic, so much work and detail in the writing that I didn't know how he would perform on a show like Taskmaster. I didn't know how his persona would come across.

I don't, he's, he's such a genuine oddball. He's absolute true eccentric. He's not, that's not performative with Tim. That's who he is. And I,

so he was the one where I was like, I wonder how that's going to play. I wonder how this really quirky person whose, whose work we're used to being so crafted and written, how he's going to be just being his oddball self. And I really enjoy him on it. It is, it is amazing. I think you're right because, because of Tim's craft and what he does

and how much he pours into what he does, you don't always get a sense of his real life from what he does because he's obviously just writing those jokes and you don't get a glimpse into quite how sort of like genuinely eccentric he is, which is why things like the prize tasks are amazing because you get a sort of little peek into his home life. You do. And I found there's something fascinating as I watch this again. And he gets such a great reaction for the big toe bubble hat.

Yeah. And I was watching that thinking a lot of this is about persona that I feel like if, if on a different series, if, if Victoria Corrin Mitchell had offered on a different series, if, if Victoria, Corin Mitchell had offered up a big toe bobble hat, Greg would have been withering. Greg would have been like, Oh,

an egg cup cozy. Yeah. Is that what you do? Is that all you're doing? And it would have been dismissed as lazy and not trying, but there's something in Tim, the innocence and the childlike joy in tim makes that lovely yeah and exactly the same object would have been treated with

complete disdain from totally somebody else and the way he presents it is with such purity as well and such joy that you're going to have to let the big big toe bobble hat does so well because he's so excited to present it yeah Yeah. And there's no, um, to me, I would have thought you did. Nobody knitted that. That's an egg cozy.

Yeah. But there's absolutely no, no inquiry into that. It's assumed Greg is like, Oh, you knitted that. And he goes, no,

it's my mum. And everyone believes that is absolutely true. They wouldn't have believed that was true from somebody else. No, I completely agree with you. How do you think you would have done against this line-up? If you were dropped into this line-up, how do you think you would have fared? Oh, I'd have blitzed it, mate. It's always impossible to know, isn't it?

And even when you watch, you you watch you go oh i know what i do in that task i know what i do in that one but but you think that when you watch your own tasks back and it's not how you did it doesn't work like that but you're on the spot in the moment your brain does different things i would have blitzed the prize task though yeah on this one because this particular one. Well, the prize task on this one. Most interesting footwear. Most interesting footwear, yeah.

And I don't think enough attention was paid to the word interesting. I agree with you. So it's not the oddest footwear. It's not the most quirky. It's interesting. And do you remember 2008? George Bush, the outgoing president shortly before he was still president, but Obama had been elected and he was doing a press conference and an Iraqi journalist threw his shoes at him. Yes. I own one of those shoes.

Now, Dave, I'm not saying you've got a history of lying on the show, but what do you mean you own one of those shoes? I own one of those shoes. That's not true. So the first shoe goes across in George Bush ducks, and a second shoe goes and it hits the American flag. And then the journalist who threw it was sort of rushed out of the room. A friend of mine was a reporter, like a camera guy at that press conference the shoe that hit the american flag was sort of scooped up by american agents and and was taken out as well to be sure the first shoe that didn't hit the flag was picked up by my mate after the event and i now own that show so i would have had i mean i thought it's got to be the most interesting footwear. Yeah, if it was true, I think that would be really interesting. Well, it is true.

I just don't believe a word you say. It's true. There's no way of verifying that either, is there? It's a size 10. That doesn't verify it. Well, you could get in touch with the journalist and ask him what size his shoes are.

But anyway. In Series 7, James Acaster brought in what he claimed to be Mahatma Gandhi's glasses. And this absolutely stinks of that. Well, I can't, I don't know. I don't know how to verify it to you right now. But I'm sure there is a paper trail I could provide. Yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure. Well, look, I could provide. Yeah, I'm sure.

Well, look, I would have loved to have seen you bring that in and try and argue your way around that. I think that would have been great. I mean, my only thought with interesting, focusing on the interesting thing, is to sort of custom make a pair of shoes with interesting facts sort of stitched into them. Yeah.

So things Greg didn't know that you could then read out to him that's stitched onto these pair this pair of shoes i think is a good way around the interesting thing yeah or um you make it about the the things that greg's really interested in and there are two things um and one is greg yeah and the other is when where greg is from from and I think maybe making it a very themed WEM shoe I'm not sure, I think every single fact about WEM, you couldn't stretch that

across a pair Well the main fact about WEM is it's where Greg's from It's a very circular Just that written over and over again on a pair of shoes Yeah Well let's talk about what they actually did on the show. We've mentioned the big toe bobble hat briefly.

Yeah, I mean, you think Egg Cozy. You know, they used to put them on tops of innocent smoothies as well. Yes, they did. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that was my first thought. But again, I agree with you. I completely believe that Tim's mum knitted that and then he popped it onto his toe. There is no other contestant where you believe their mum knitted it yeah it's just not it's the only one yeah um i love that his long toe he's got a long toenail

and i think it was and a shy little toe and a shy little toe but the long toenail is pointed out in a way that seemingly someone was suggesting that he snorts coke with his toenail or something. I'm pretty sure that Tim is not a drugsman, but if he was, he'd do it with his toes, wouldn't he? There is no one less likely to be involved in anything untoward than Tim Vine. I mean, he is as innocent as the smoothies that produced the hats that that wasn't an example of. It was four points for that, which is pretty good. I mean, Tim has done historically very well on the prize tasks

and not very well in anything else. He's so good at the prize tasks because not very well in anything else. Yes. He's so good at the prize tasks because he's just got a whole, like, I mean, he must have a warehouse full of weird props. Exactly. I think he collects, in real life, ephemera of all sorts.

And so, like, in his head, there's a Rolodex and you tell him what the subject is and he goes, oh, yeah, I know what I and oh yeah i know what i'm doing i know what i'm doing there and he'll just go there and get it um i thought i i was very surprised by the um the five points for ass him on that because to me i well i i'm i'm an old man i have no idea who post malone is but yeah I mean that doesn't feel interesting to me Post Malone now is massive

but like he was less so then I think but like he's absolutely huge now I guess yeah I mean I guess it's probably Greg trying to be like down with the kids and be like oh that is interesting actually Post Malone really but one trainer and one cowboy boot I guess that's

an interesting way of formatting your footwear and at least he had video evidence of him of him wearing it in public as well well yeah but so um video evidence of him wearing them for 10 seconds like that you could have taken them to an event put them on film yeah take them off like it's not proof of him really wearing them in i think now we're at episode eight and asim's track record in the competition i think occasionally where they can give us some points they are giving us some points yeah i suspect that was it feels to me like that was a part of what was going on but then I'm I'm blinded maybe by my ignorance of music and just Post Malone means absolutely nothing to me so it's a name dropping exercise yeah so that

the interesting thing is sort of washed away for you because you don't know who Post Malone is I mean he's an interesting looking chap Post Malone a lot he's got a big friendly face but they're covered in tattoos right a lot of tattoos on the old face weirdly never heard of him before but i i feel like i knew that yes he's a modern rapper of course assumption i made yeah um all the same um yeah i thought felt felt a lot for that it did feel a lot yeah i thought alice was slightly hard done by I think a Veruca sock was is interesting it's a bit yeah I mean it's pretty gross but that's what we've come to

expect from Alice in the past prize toss she's brought in a vial of blood and also some old ham that's been left out in the sun she tends to go for the disgusting angle and it's not working for her at all no no no but I thought that was to me that's more

interesting than than post malone's well you've heard you've heard of verrucas haven't you which are just shoes yeah you know yeah there is what's interesting about a verruca sock is that they don't seem to exist anymore but verrucas do still exist i just think when you go to the swim pool these days you don't walk through that weird iodine football like what's happened in the world to change our attitude to verrucas is all there in that artifact that one rubber sock yeah that everyone of a certain generation had to wear at some point in their childhood reminds you of of this weird change in life and i think that's a genuinely interesting topic of conversation

Russell brought in a football boot signed by Philippe Coutinho making the ultimate mistake on Taskmaster of bringing in a football based prize, they never do well, Greg is simply not interested, like a little bit of research you find out that football things always come

towards the bottom points wise I'm a Liverpool fan like Russell and like Alex. And I'm not bothered by Philippe Coutinho's boot. And I'm a fan. So it's not that interesting. He really tried to sell it as a big thing to get that guy's boot. I mean, I don't know anything about football, but he's not a big player, I guess.

No, he is. He's a very big player. He was sold by Liverpool to Barcelona for something like 140 million. Yeah. So he was huge at that moment in time. He's then declined. He never quite made it at Barcelona.

But at the time, he was like the bright young thing of world football. So he was absolutely huge for a time. But if that boot had been thrown at George Bush. Exactly. Five points. Yeah, and it could have done some damage as well. So it's two points for Russell's boot.

I'm surprised it didn't get one. Yeah. I think the Veruca sock is more interesting. Lisa brought in shoes for dogs. It's a very funny prize. I would have liked to have seen a real dog in them.

I guess they couldn't do that. If we've seen a real dog in them, absolutely. It raises the game. The water boatman is a is a beautiful reference um and i don't know if maybe seeing a real dog in them would have killed that reference because because you look at them and you do think nothing no dogs are able to walk nicely in those and maybe if you'd seen a dog looking quite happy wearing them it would have sort of taken away something from that

image yeah uh that she's painted. But tippity tapping, tippity tapping like a water boatman. Yeah, it was lovely. I mean, I just, she's so great and she sells things so beautifully, but also just in her eyes,

you can tell she just doesn't care. So it's just, it's just the perfect balance. Yes. I think one of my highlights from the entire episode is when Greg challenges her to swear on her life. I was like, what difference would that make?

It's just the most pointless of inquiries. Yeah. I'm not entertaining that notion. So it was one point for the Veruca socks, two points for the football boots, three points for the shoes for dogs, four points for big toe bubble hats. And the five points to ask him for the shoes for dogs, four points for big toe bobble hats,

and the five points to Aston for his one trainer and one cowboy belonging to Post Malone. Yeah, and I would have swapped the Post Malone shoes and the Veruca sock, personally. Oh, you plummet that straight to the bottom? Well, no, maybe Coutinho's boot at the very bottom. Coutinho's boot, Post Malone's shoes, Veruca socks at three points, four points for shoes for dogs,

five points for Tim Vine. Yeah, maybe. Yeah. Something like that. That seems fair. Is that your foot, Tim? That is my foot. That's a nice foot.

I would say second toenail from the end, little long, but apart from that, I'm really enjoying it. And how shy is your little toe? Yeah, look at that. He lets the big toe do the glamour work. I really like big toe, and I really like saying big toe bobble hat. Yeah, me too. Big toe bobble hat.

It'd be a good exclamation. Instead of saying, fucking hell, you're like, big toe bobble hat. Why don't we fight the urge to swear in this show? Every time we want to swear. Why doesn't everyone not swear, but I will swear? I'd love to hear you drop the C-bomb while I was big toe bobble. Strikey.

Task one. Put something genuinely surprising in this chocolate egg. You have one hour, after which Alex will open your chocolate egg. Your time starts now. I feel like you would have been good at this one, Dave. I know what I would have tried to do. Go on.

But I don't know whether I would have been able to achieve it. I would have had a backup option in my head. So I would want some kind of jack-in-the-box outcome. I would like something to come out of it you can see what they've used is is a kinder egg yeah and kinder eggs have declined in my opinion because the beauty of a kinder egg used to be that the toy inside it when constructed was bigger than a kinder egg right okay yeah and then they decided that meant there were really small parts of people

could swallow. So they stopped putting those in. So now you construct a toy or you just get a little Smurf or whatever. Yeah. And it's smaller than a kinder egg. And that to me has, has killed. There's less surprise there,

isn't there? Yeah. Yeah. But I think something that jumps up and out and, and moves would have been the been the thing for me. So what I would have tried to do is rig up, I don't know if you'd be able to do it, some sort of container within it with some fizzy pop in it

and a mento that when you open the chocolate, it trips something that makes the mentos spill into the liquid and then fizz up and explode. That's what I would have gone for. I like it. There's also those magic wallets that you can get where you open them and a big flame comes out of them. Whether you could get the mechanism

from inside that and put it in the egg so when Alex opened the egg, there was a huge flame. It would have been dangerous which is surprising or just any kind of spring any kind of spring that if you could you know squish it in and and get the chocolate back around it yes and weld it shut yeah it's a good thing you know here's what i realistically would have done uh in an attempt to be amusing and ridiculous before I'd even read the task,

I would have smashed that entire egg to pieces with my fist and then opened the task and realised that I have to put something surprising in that chocolate egg and I have absolutely no chance because I've completely decimated the egg. Yeah, I think there's a high chance I would have eaten the egg before I read it. No one ate the egg.

That's weird, right? I would have eaten the egg before I read it. No one ate the egg. That's weird, right? I would have thought, yeah. Or I would have panicked and put in, my genuine first thought was just the contents of a real egg. So opening a Kinder Egg and finding a yolk and white in there would be surprising, I think. That would be gorgeous. Yeah, I like that a lot. But no one did any of those things uh we let's i mean let's start with alice who got the five points who managed to get it's absolutely outstanding work

i think it's so good yeah i really like that because you can see that the look on alex's face is genuine surprise it's like how alex would be surprised like quietly and quite perturbed by the whole thing yeah and and it's it's it's a bit of a magic trick because yeah you shouldn't be able to find his pin number like i mean realistically his wife shouldn't know his pin number yeah so it ought to be completely unfathomable it's a sort of derren brown moment yeah yeah of course real surprise obviously because it's so it's a number that's so familiar to him but should never be known by anyone else that you see him almost sort of take it in see it and then quietly say that that's that's my opinion yeah yeah it must be so unsettling it would have been sort of okay if she'd just made up a number yeah and he starts reading it

as if it's going to be that yeah and then realizes that's my that's my fucking pin like you he has genuine surprise yeah which is lovely absolutely fantastic yeah it definitely deserved the four points asim and tim sort of had the same idea which i guess makes it feel like it's a route one idea but i don't think i would have done this um to get a living creature in there um tim's initial plan is a b to get a b in there so he goes straight up a tree um and he had to settle with the fly i mean it's wonderful to watch the fly actually come out and it's Tim's reaction which is just perfect isn't it it is and there's always something

some people choose a costume and some people choose some clothes from their wardrobe that are the sort of thing they would wear to do all the tasks and Tim's costume just comes alive when he's suddenly in a tree looking for a

bee it just suddenly becomes well of course yeah of course that's what he's doing oh it's brilliant it's so good there is something about in the series I did we did have a task where we had to surprise Alex yeah and and hidden within that riddle is the fact that alex knows people are trying to surprise him yes yeah and so like he's opening those the fact that two people thought i'm going to go and get a living creature suggests that maybe that's one of the things that alex is thinking well you know maybe they've put a living creature in there like so you've got to battle his expectations as well. Yeah, of course.

Of course. I mean, I always thought with that one where you had to surprise him, the only thing to do really is just go home. Just not do the rest of the day. I think I did. I think I did surprise him. What did you do again, Dave, remind us? I had him in the garden.

There's a big metal tower. Yes. Because there's a golf course on the other side. I think it's sort of got a big net strung around it as a kind of protection from golf balls flying in. So we had the table set up. I think this is what I did. Basically he had to go to a table and open something and read something

himself. And I think, I think what I was trying to do was create a world where he thinks, oh, this is going to be my surprise. Yeah. And it's not his surprise. Yeah.

And then I, I was above him. He didn't know I was there and I jumped down. Yeah. And that was a genuine surprise. I was just trying to do two stages. So he has a moment where he thinks, well, here's my surprise. What's it going to be?

Oh, that's not it. And then. And then bang. A boom kind of moment. And he was definitely surprised. But it is really hard. It's really. Of course, yeah.

Because he knows it. If it was, I'm going to give this egg to someone later and they don't know anything's up, what's the best surprise you can create for stranger? For this person, yeah. Whoever, then it's a different game. But Alex coming into a room going, right, they've put something in here to try and surprise me.

Yeah. Means I think Alice played it about as well as it's possible to play it. Yeah, I think she smashed it. You're there was no yeah he was never expecting that but yeah the living creatures yeah possibly um i thought that um did did tim and uh asim but they both got joint third or not tim got four i guess it's more it's certainly more of a show when the fly sort of buzzes out turned around and looked at alex apparently and then flew off rather than just the worms out there wiggling around i think that's fair enough i think so too yeah yeah i think um i thought

liza's was all right because there is in that way that i was trying to go oh here's just oh no that's not the surprise here's yeah something else there's sort of two stages to that so yes yeah i thought it deserved more i mean it was i think it was surprising to have initially have all the electronics outside it as well and then you open it up and there's a voice and the voice says jeremy irons lives in your garage it's such it's such a distillation of her sense of humor as well so i thought it is and there is it is a genuine surprise because once he opens it, he knows something's going on. But even though you know you're going to hear a sound, it's a surprise.

Yeah, exactly. Because you definitely can go through everything you can think in your head she might put. You're not arriving at the correct answer. And there's something in the human brain. Like I remember years ago at a club watching a friend of mine perform and he was doing a routine i've not heard before and i got to the punch line in my own head before he had got to the punch line yeah and i knew that the routine was gonna be it was sort of about him getting his car fixed at a garage and and how he was trying to like be a

blokey bloke and not get ripped off and i knew it was going to be a blokey bloke and not get ripped off. And I knew it was going to be, oh, he's been charged an exorbitant amount for some spark plugs in my own head. I was like, oh, it's going to be 90 quid for some spark plugs. I know this. I know where it's going. And then he got to the punchline and he said 120 quid for some spark plugs. And I started laughing, really laughing, because it surprised me. And literally the only detail it surprised me and literally the only detail

it surprised me with was the amount not the one I'd imagined and that was enough in my own brain to trigger that surprise reaction yeah I liked it, I mean she got three points which I mean no one got less than three

I would have separated those three yeah, I mean so we've not even talked about Russell's. He went football again. Yeah. Which again was a mistake. Yeah. But for Alex,

I guess it would have been would have been a surprise or a nice treat. It would have been a delight. Yes. Yeah. It's a bit of an Al Murray throwing money at the problem.

Yeah, it is. For me. The things he adds on, I guess, are surprising surprising so the book how green were the nazis and a single grain of rice signed by chris rock um which do you believe that grain of rice was signed by chris rock this smacks of the shoes thrown at george bush um no that's you've misunderstood my question do you believe that piece of rice was signed by Chris Rock. No, I do not. Thank you. Do not believe that.

Single grain of rice was signed by Chris Rock. And I will be violently confronting Chris Rock about that. Well, this is the thing. You can buy your name on a grain of rice. Yes. There are people who, over the internet, will somehow put something on a grain of rice. There are people who, over the internet, will somehow put something on a grain of rice and send it. Chris Rock is not one of those people. No, he's not signing it, is he?

He does not have the ability to write his own name on a grain of rice. That's not how that works. Yeah, it would have been more believable to say a single grain of rice with Chris Rock written on it. Yeah. but he's not one of the guys with a massive magnifying glass painting a single grain that's not a thing he does no he's busy um yeah but three it was three points for russell maybe that uh yeah i feel like maybe that should have got a little bit less than leasers and yeah i my instinct uh generally is to to push people down if they're throwing money and it might not be money. It might be influence. It might be that Russell is connected and he's able to blag those tickets and that day out on whatever.

But that's that's the same as throwing money at it emotionally to me. And my instinct is to um is to push back on that yeah well bearing in mind russell starts the whole series by um finding his way back to the taskmaster house by getting his manager to call him a cab so this is actually this is actually pretty self-sufficient for russell yeah okay um so it was three points for Lisa, three points for Russell, three points for Asim, four points for Tim and a well-deserved five points for Alice. Jeremy Lyons lives in your garage.

I'm surprised. I wasn't expecting that at all. How do you feel about that? I haven't got a garage. Have you? I did, but I converted it into the spare room for my wife's parents. I mean, we do still call it the garage. That's where he is. When have you been there?

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Product availability may vary by region. See app for details. Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer

becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category, and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative. Task two, find out what you have in common with this person. You must look the person in the eye throughout the task. You must shake hands every time you discover something in common. Most remarkable things in common wins. You have a maximum of 10 minutes your time starts now tricky tricky task that i don't think anyone actually managed to find anything ridiculous in common from what i could work out no and most of them seem to go on the

idea that finding the most things in common yeah was desirable rather than the most things in common was desirable rather than the most interesting. Because that's not part of the task at all. I could see they were trying to maybe get somewhere with it and obviously along the way you start light and you start gentle and then you have to drill down more specific but I think Tim was sort of the only one who went

specific straight away he went straight for bedding and board games for some reason. And he looked sort of again he's so honest that when he says what color is your duvet and she says sort of dusky pink or something he looks crestfallen because it's not the color of his duvet instead of saying, yes, shaking your hand. He can't stop himself. He's so honest, which is delightful.

I thought Russell actually, the earwax thing is genuinely, that's an interesting thing they genuinely have in common. That is actually the most interesting thing that was revealed. I agree.

And also she didn't know what it was to start with. So they realised so they realized that they had that in common for the first time at that moment because he had the show of the video yeah yeah yeah and i think that was sort of a nice effort to go there i have a weird sort of interest in in psychics and shysters and and people and cold reading. And so I would have tried to work out. There's a thing with cold reading where there are surprising things that are true for a lot of people.

Yes. So a lot of people have a grandparent who has lost a finger. Really? Because back in the day, losing fingers was not that unusual yeah so if you have a certain generation that's really common but no one thinks it's that common it sounds like a really peculiar thing so i would have been trying to find those things with her using the techniques of cold reading psychics and mediums is that the first question how many fingers did your granddad have yeah yeah because my granddad uh was missing two or three fingers.

I can't remember which. Wow. And apparently that's just really common in that generation. Oh, that's good. In his case, it's because we have that, it's a family disease. I haven't yet got it, but my mum's got it, my uncle's got it, my brother's got it, my granddad had it. Margaret Thatcher had it where your your hand starts turning into a claw your fingers yeah the tendons in the palm i've i've i mean i've got sort of apparently the start of it

jupiter's contracture that's the one exactly that bill nowadays nowadays quite easy to treat yeah nowadays they they do an operation on it and things but in the olden days when your little finger was basically touching your palm the only way of giving you a hand that worked was to cut that finger off oh wow so that's what we've we've already we've we've got that in common dave yeah you see how weird that is yeah yeah so i that's where i would have been going not in this kind of are you a person have you got hair do you have a bed yeah because that's about collecting as many things in common as possible which was not the task not the task yeah and um i mean alice didn't alice was just going so vague and general i don't think she was interesting interested in finding out anything

specific really yeah yeah i think yeah she was going for a mount as well i think tim was trying to be specific but didn't really hit on anything. Yeah. But I think we're both in agreement that Russell probably deserved a full five, although Asim got the five, but loved him crowbarring in the BAFTA. That was the moment of the whole task for me.

It does, but I love that, and it's a great Taskmaster moment, but at what point does that tip into Greg giving him all five points? That's weird isn't it? Yeah it was a bit odd. I don't think they found anything particular in common that even winning an award she was

like nope. Never won an award for anything. Nope. Couldn't think of anything. I have, I have, I have. I think Russell should have got the five. Yes, agreed. For the earwax. Is there something that I have missed?

Because they open the task, which is in front of them. Yeah. And while they're talking to her, on the mantle of the fireplace and on the wall behind them, there are other tasks on the wall yeah i wonder i mean we could perhaps get alex's uh thought on this i wonder whether there was an extra element to the task that for some reason didn't work out that they yeah then edited out so yeah it's really weird, isn't it? Whether it was finding out all this stuff in common

and then later on you get the task where you have to remember loads of stuff about Carol or something like that. Yeah, I wondered if you'd open those, there would have been interesting facts about Carol or something there. I watched it going. I didn't notice it until they were showing us in.

I rewound and checked that it was on the others and it was on all the others. But when I was watching us in do it, I was thinking, Oh, this is one of those things where there's another level for one person. Yeah. That's only there for him. Yeah.

And at the end, he's going to walk away and then we're going to discover at the end that the best possible result was just sitting there on the fireplace, waiting for him to notice it. And he never noticed it. And what a doofus he is. Yeah. And it never came up. Really?

Yeah. Really odd. I noticed that as well. And then completely forgot to mention it. In fact, there's a couple of things I wanted to mention dave before we before we move on because when i said you were coming on on the podcast um andy devonshire got in contact of course uh the super director of taskmaster yeah um and you you might know you might know one of these things uh but it's we should let the listener know um andy let me know that he sets all the clocks on set um to 1008

as an homage dave to an observation in your stand-up that all clocks on sale are set to that time so they look like their smiley faces yes which is what i mean what a lovely tribute that is i i had forgotten it and then when i was watching this episode again it was during the dot-to-dot task There are two clocks behind them. Yeah. And I noticed it and I'm aware, I know Andy well, and I know that he had done this as a tribute.

And I know, I think there's a, a new clock going in the house for the next series. And he sent me a photo of it, of it set to 10 Oh eight. Oh, amazing. So I know that that happens.

It was in the first series of modern life is goodish um and it's not just on uh the crux of the material was it's a thing that they do because they look like a happy face yeah but then a particular mobile phone manufacturer was also setting all their phones to 1008 even though it's digital and no longer looks like a happy face now it's just an industry standard for no reason so it's like some somebody somewhere's gone oh no if it's a clock it's got to say 1008 yeah and then they've done it in digital not realizing that it is now completely detached from yeah why that was the rule um the other the other piece of information which is great um is uh it it is it bears uh relevance to your task where you had to spread all your clothes out yes across a distance

and andy said last summer i i buried the remnants of the sock that he left in the scaffold as part of the task so this the sock had been was there until. Wow. And he says he buried it, and it was completely threadbare, and there were three snails fucking in it. So there you go. And now it's time to hear from our BFF bonus fact finder, Alex Horne. Hello, it's me, little Alex Horne, your old BFF. Bonus fact finder. And apologies for not finding many facts recently, but here I am with some facts about a task in series six,

in which the contestants had to find out what they had in common with the person in a pub. That person was Carol. And I can tell you that Carol is a great friend of mine here in Chesham, where I live, but I can't tell you specifically where. It might not even be in England. Anyway, Carol's a wonderful person. And in the task, the contestants had to look Carol in the eye throughout the task and shake hands with her every time she discovered or they discovered something in common with Carol. Now, behind them, in the fireplace, there were some tasks displayed.

And I can tell you now, and this is big news, what was in the tasks? Hmm, interesting, because they couldn't look at them. They had to look at Carol. But if they'd asked Carol to read a task out loud, this is what they would have said. In one of them, the one nearest her, it said, if Carol reads this task out loud,

your points this episode will be doubled. No one found it. In the next one along, it said, if Carol reads this task out loud, you've been greedy and your points will be halved. And in another one they would have found the directions to a silver version of the taskmaster's head Greg's head and that is the prize the treasure in the latest taskmaster book and none of that is true. They were all just set dressing. Or were they?

Well, the pub is still there. It's the Black Horse. The fireplace is still there. And yes, the tasks are still there. So why not go down there, buy yourself a pint and a meal, have a look at the tasks. All right.

That may also not be true, but it might be true goodbye all the information is in the podcast task three wearing these high heels create the best dot-to-dot picture on this polystyrene canvas you have 10 minutes your time starts now okay i've done dot-to-dot pictures before as a kid. I didn't know. Alex says to Alice that dot-to-dots are supposed to be a mystery as to what they are until you've connected all of the dots. Is that true? I don't think so.

No. And again, we did material about dot-to-dots in series four or five of Modern Life is Good-ish, because the vast majority of them are so pointless, because they're really for very young children. They are not. Like, I've got a six-year-old. He is beyond dot-to-dots. He's not got a six-year-old he is beyond dot to dots he's not interested in doctor yeah they're for two or three year old children and most of them do have basically a lion drawn on there yeah with a bit of his mane missing yeah or whatever like most of them are so blindingly obvious as to be pointless in their existence. I don't think that real dot-to-dots are a work out what it is

by drawing in the lines. I think they're all transparently obvious from the get-go. Because the more complicated the picture anyway, the more dots you need to make sure you draw it right. And the more dots there are, the more obvious to what it is, right? Yeah, and you need um you know you need to either put so many dots in to create a curve yeah or allow artistic interpretation for people to create their own curves or to only do shapes which have very very

straight lines on them yes it was a tricky a tricky task, is what I'd say. Yeah. I don't know what I would have done. I mean, obviously my first thought is just what Lisa did, and I respected that she just went for the cock and balls and just got on with it. I think it's amazing there was only one cock and balls out of the five.

I mean, we can take Tim Vine out of that equation, but I think any of the others, others absolutely will have at least considered it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's a first thought, isn't it? And I almost, I respect Lisa more for just going, oh, come on, just do a cock and balls. Just get it out of the way.

There wasn't, there was, there was more detail than necessary. Sure. For cock and balls. You know, there was... She hadn't done the very, very most basic cock and balls. She'd added a little interpretation to... She didn't do... There was not a dotted line emanating from the crown,

if I can call it Alan Partridge. No, there wasn't. But how do you do that with a dot-to-dot? It's hard, isn't it? When we saw them joined up, there was one of them, it was Tim's, the Titanic, where Alex has allowed the pen to leave the page

and then join the page for one bit and then leave the page and join again for one bit. Whereas on the others, it was treated as if once the pen is on the page, it is not one bit whereas on the others it was treated as if once the pen is on the page yeah it is not leaving until it has joined up all the dots well yeah how do you it's unfair it does seem unfair and how do you even on a so on a classic doctor dot i've not done one in years uh five or six years um how how do you signify on that that it's time to take the pen off the page and do a new thing i'm not sure that they do

yeah i think you are in a classic dot to dot once the pen has started the pen does not leave the page yeah so i think i think tim was given some leeway there that was not afforded the other contestants it's very funny when he explains what his is because it's the most complicated explanation of what it is is a bird's eye view of the the wreck of the titanic and the debris and everyone applauds and greg says i don't i don't know what they're applauding i don't know whether tim drew the titanic and that was the honest answer. Yeah. Or drew something else. And when asked what it was, I thought, I'll say this.

I can't tell. Yeah. I think there was a lot of bullshitting going on, but he was so invested in it when he was doing it. I think he sold it very well, which is why he ended up with the five points. Yeah. Because I think people imagine the gap between doing the tasks and being in the studio

being quite short yeah it's really not and it's really really not and sometimes it can be months later and I don't know that's what makes me think I don't know if Tim knows what he drew I have no idea I think Tim's just guessing yeah there's there's definitely an element of that the only thing that makes me think maybe that's not the case is that, as you say, they know. So Alex would know. And there's nothing to stop Alex when Tim does that Titanic monologue saying, oh, actually, Tim, you told us it was a beetle or something.

You do hear at one point, in the bits of VT we see, you hear Alex saying to one of the the contestants i can't remember which one he points out there are the numbered stickers yeah and i i want to go back like a lawyer going did he say that to russell yes or did he not say that to russell yeah because his are not his are not numbered and i mean it's very funny because the stickers were on the side and no one pointed out or is it because and is that fair did that happen to everyone or not i don't know like i want to get forensic on that sort of thing yeah um it's very funny that his alex's kids have to do russells and see and see what happens and the younger one just can't work it out at all there is no way that alex's kids did tim's though yeah that's not on not at all no

tim definitely gets a bit of an easy ride in this one um alice goes with just the letters tm which is a very sensible thing to do for the doctor dot if you want it done properly um and also i think she gets a bit hamstrung by this whole thing of alex thinking they need to be a mystery uh before before you do them because i think it's simple and it's not that good, but it's at least a clear dot. It's achieved what it set out to achieve, which not everyone did, at least. Yeah, I think the time limit is quite a constraint on this task

because, again, my head would be, what does Greg like? I know, I'll do a picture of Greg, because that's what Greg likes. But 10 minutes is quite hard. Because if you had an hour, there'd be ways of strategizing and creating a template to work from or doing something to give you a guide and sketching out some kind of version of Greg. But in 10 minutes, it's going to be pretty haphazard well i thought what what asim decided to do was quite a sensible thing to do to do an emoji to do a recognizable sort of icon yeah yeah but obviously he just

doesn't carry it off in any way whatsoever it's a bit of a nightmare attempt it looks horrible there is also there is no inquiry in the breakdown of it as to whether using them on your hands is wearing them or not yeah some people have put them on their feet and some people have used them as a tool and and i feel like there would have been debate about that yeah i think so yeah if you said to someone if you were on the way out the house and you said are you wearing your shoes? And they said yes, and then they came down and they were on their hands,

you wouldn't go, well, technically, I suppose you are. Yeah, but at the same time, you might say, well, I'm wearing them as a glove. Yeah, yeah. And it might well have been allowed. But again, I want to see that conversation happen. Yeah, for sure. Well, Asim did very badly, one point.

It was two points for Alice's TM, three points for Russell's unnumbered picture of Alex, four points for Lisa's cock and balls, respect, and five points for Tim's apparent drawing of the wreck of the Titanic in debris on the seabed as viewed from above. Which is a great example of being able to swing the jury with your testimony.

APPLAUSE Do you want to start with Asim's? Yes. OK, I'll show you the dots. From the picture, you get a rough idea of what you're trying to do. This is the picture before I've drawn the dots. LAUGHTER That is Asim's favourite emoji. Yeah. Which is, of course, the little man sticking his tongue out.

Yeah, with a little wink. You know that one, that? out. Yeah with a little wink Yeah, yeah Okay, this is emoji. No, that's not the exact one because the way he has the wink You think the problem is that it's not wink. That's the problem I will now join a Sims dots as for the numbers It's a little bit Picasso kind of esque

yeah that's what Picasso did he took an image and then he made it unrecognisable the live task stick a plaster to the correct

body part Alex will say the names of three body parts you must stick a plaster to the body part that comes second in

the dictionary out of the three body parts slowest person to stick a plaster to the correct body part is eliminated last player standing wins i would have panicked my way through this dave i really would have i would have fallen apart i when i heard the task i was thinking they're going to be obscure body parts yeah they're going to be do i know where my whatever it is is there's gonna be something

that's spelled with a pt at the beginning that sounds like it begins with t to fool you it's gonna be i thought it was gonna be that sort of game and then it's basically ears and nose and mouth yeah it doesn't need to be the complicated stuff because it turns out people panic so much yeah yeah i was so relieved when it wasn't a real challenge of spelling and and it's it's actually a fairly simple task yeah and tim went out straight away tim proves that you know it even it's just remembering the alphabet under pressure is increasingly difficult it was was great. It was so funny. It is a nice task that feels so achievable. Yeah. But yeah, panic,

doing it against the clock, trying to wait. Like, Tim looks so confused when he's told he's out. Yeah. He literally has... Because most of the others who go out, they're racing and they know what the right one is,

but they're not quite getting it right or whatever. Or they... I think Alice is just getting confused about which one was second Tim just didn't know it was meant to be second he just he's just failed to take in the very basic premise of the task

I don't know if you had to do this one we didn't have to do like a pilot, mini pilot sort of thing but the first thing we did when we arrived in the house on our first day was do a warm-up task which i think they've used for other series as well which is literally sitting in front of the camera in the lab and alex says the task is name as many animals as you can in alphabetical order

and you've got you know two minutes or whatever so then you sit there and you have to do them in alphabetical order you can't jump back and forth yeah yeah so once you've said yeah goat you can't go back yeah exactly and i just fell apart like i fell apart like i think i you start off an a and b and then you i panicked i think i skipped straight to s because that's the only thing i could think of i could only think of snake and you've got to you've work. I mean, you don't need to go one animal per letter, do you? No. You can do aardvark and aardwolf. Yes, yeah, yeah.

Before you even get into... I was obviously not doing that, Dave. Dwell in your A's for as long as you can before you... But I had no A's in the head. I had nothing up until S in the head, really. And I completely fell apart. And I was really looking forward to doing the series and after that I was like oh no I'm the thick

I'm going to be the thick one which is everyone's biggest fear that you're going to be the thick one look at you now baby yeah right you know little did I know David Baddiel had that sewn up from the moment he walked into the house so it was five points for Russell four points for Lisa points to alice two points to asim

and one point for tim lisa and russell uh taking the uh 17 points each joint first asim and tim 16 points joint second and alice at the bottom with 13 um so there was a tie break task yeah receive a text message the quickest. Your time starts now. I think I would have done this better than both of them put together. I think I would have done, but I don't know. Now, you can send yourself a text message, can't you? Can you?

Yeah. I didn't know that. I'm pretty sure you can. I didn't try it when it was happening. But, yeah. I can send Ed Gamble, hello. There you go, delivered. So you can send a text message to your own number and do it in two seconds or whatever.

And that's, I think I would have thought of that at the time. I think I would have, because there are those, I don't know if they still exist, but those sort of all questions answered services that race to reply to you. Because they work by having lots of unemployed actors monitoring a computer and if they reply, they earn a tiny amount of money or something. So they kind of, they want to reply quickly because if they don't, one of the other unemployed actors is going to earn the 20p for answering your question. So I think I would have maybe tried one of those.

Yeah. Or I would have texted one of the crew. Yeah, that's good. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Well, if they were then willing to answer back, I guess it all hinges on yeah i don't see any reason why they wouldn't they're not unless you unless you texted a member

of the crew to say could you pass hello on to dave and then you are still receiving that text message just through someone else's phone right yeah i would have been able to get a a quicker reply there's a very funny moment in uh in the new zealand version of taskmaster in the first series of that where they have a they have a task where they have to text someone they know and get a reply and who's going to come back with the quickest yeah i think it's something like that uh but anyway there's a contestant called guy williams and he sat there for ages trying to work out who he knows, who he can text and the Taskmaster's assistant is his own brother and they're just

sat there in silence as Paul Williams is just sat there going... That's lovely. Yeah, it's great. So it was Russell's victory and he takes the episode. 3 minutes 51, he did it in. Lisa took... She's in no rush to do anything.

She took 57 seconds to send the text because she wanted to get it in. Lisa took... She's in no rush to do anything. She took 57 seconds to send the text. Because she wanted to get it right. Bless her. Yeah, which I loved. So we've got a few emails. Like I say, we've got a lot of cheat emails but we've cut them out. We've moved on, Dave.

If you want to ask questions, ask questions, Ed. No, no, no. This is from Joe Bateson. Joe Bateson says, Hi, Ed. Dave appeared relatively early in Taskmaster, just before it became the juggernaut it currently is. Does Dave think he'd be a different contestant if he was on now?

Would he change his approach or not? contestant if he was on now would he change his approach or not um the thing i would change um would be uh having my phone with me like there were people on my series who did and i i sort of treated it like going on stage before i left the room to go and discover whatever the next task was yeah turn my phone off and put it down and take money out of my pocket and go out and be ready. And then half the time you go, oh, when I see other people going, I'll just Google that. Oh, you idiot.

Why did that not occur to you that you don't have to only have what's already in your brain? You're allowed to also inquire of the world but it's not as entertaining i think the right the right way of doing it is to not default to google yeah i just you know it would have been useful yeah as i think you've spent i think you spend enough time on google in your career dave not me but i wouldn't you know that would have been useful i think maybe also um uh going on now i would i would not have a costume so much but i'd have a utility belt yeah i would bring a utility belt with me with tools on it yeah so because you know at what

point are they going to say well you can't have that yeah you can use yeah what tools what tools would you put on it what do you think would come in useful um well i have a swiss army knife um which is most tools um maybe a little uh collapse you know that you see those um silicon rubber bowls you get them a lot people have like as a dog bowl it's like yeah it folds flat goes in your pocket but yeah you get to a cafe you can fill it with water and put it on the floor for your dog i'd have one of those with me because like being able to carry stuff scoop stuff that's always a useful yeah facet in in task this is great i think we need to get you on the show again with the utility well

unfortunately they have this crazy idea of having like champion of champions, not champion of second places. What I think they should have done in a right and just world. I'm sure they will do one day. I think there's no way they're going to exhaust the available contestants before that. A couple more questions. This is from Peter in in devon uh hi ed and dave if dave had a powerpoint battle with alex who would win me yes i agree i agree with that alex is sort of uh he's not kept his powerpoint skills sharp has he no i in in a

tour show i normally have around 800 900 slides in an hour and a half. That's my instrument. That's what I play. Yeah. So I'm backing myself on that one. How would you see a PowerPoint battle playing out? I can't quite imagine what it would be. I don't know, but it does give new life to the phrase death by PowerPoint.

Yeah. If you were actually able to slay your competitor. I mean, I don't know how you could measure PowerPoint. I mean, if Greg was judging, maybe Alex is taking it. I think he has a, despite all the bullying,

I think he has a soft spot for him. Yeah. But I think in a right and just world, I think I'm winning that one. I'd watch it. And one more question from Kieran Golding. Kieran asked, how comfortable is a Yorkshire pudding hat?

This, of course, is referencing Aisling's prize task in Series 5 of hippest item of headwear, which was a Yorkshire pudding hat, which was modelled by you, Dave. Yes. Do you remember that coming about? How did that come about i i do uh that came about because um ashling is a very old friend of uh mrs gorman yes uh and mrs gorman makes a damn fine sunday roast um and ashling thought about a a Yorkshire pudding hat and knew that it was not within her own culinary repertoire

and so texted Mrs Gorman saying, is it possible for you to make a Yorkshire pudding hat? Yeah. And my wife was gleeful at doing so and I don't think Aisling asked me to model it but we decided in the gorman household that the best way of demonstrating that it was hat sized was to send a picture of it on her head perfect so that's what we did so ashling delegated the auction pudding hat essentially yeah yeah Dave thank you so much for coming back on the Taskmaster podcast

loved having you on of course as you can tell it is a thing I could talk about with joy most of the time oh great well of course you can come back on any time we just need you to rate your experience on uh the taskmaster podcast between one and five points in the style of the taskmaster um well uh i think a little bit more um uh faith could have been put in me

uh when it comes to the shoe it is about the the shoe. Yeah, I thought it would be. I thought this might come back to bite me. So I'm afraid that is lowering it from a solid five to a three. Oh, it's two points off for the shoe. Yeah, I'm afraid if you just... I don't know where your cynicism has come from, Ed Gamble. I don't know why. I don't get it. I don't know where it's come from, but it besmirches you.

You let yourself down. Yeah, I feel like I have. And so I'm afraid that has lowered my impression of the whole time. Well, I'm not budging. I want those two points desperately, but I'm not budging on my opinion of the show. I'm sorry.

But thank you very much for coming on again, Dave. Thank you. My pleasure. Thank you very much to Dave Gorman for coming on the Taskmaster podcast welcome back anytime of course you cheating bastard we'll be back next week but we will not be talking about series 6 episode 9 we're hitting pause on series 6 because next week we'll be chatting about series 13 episode one because taskmaster series 13 starts on the 14th of april that's thursday 14th of april at 9 p.m on channel 4 this podcast will be released at 10 p.m and of course you can catch up if you missed an episode on all four but try and tune in live you don't want to miss a thing uh we will see you next week to chat about

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