Taskmaster The Podcast - Taskmaster The Podcast: Best of #3

Episode Date: June 8, 2023

Get ready to relive John Kearns' betrayal, Dara's 'wait what, what wait' moment and Mae's triumphant victory. All this and more on the latest Best Of episode. The podcast will return next week and Ed will be chatting to the TM himself, Greg Davies! 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 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We can wait for clean water solutions, or we can engineer access to clean water. We can acknowledge indigenous cultures, or we can learn from indigenous voices. We can demand more from the earth, or we can demand more from ourselves. At York University, we work together to create positive change for a better tomorrow. Join us at yorku.ca slash write the future. Hello, welcome to the Taskmaster podcast. It's Ed Gamble here, host of the Taskmaster podcast. And today is a very special episode.

It is not our normal sort of episode. Today is a best of the Taskmaster podcast. This is some of the fun, silly stuff that we talk about on the Taskmaster podcast. Not necessarily all the in-depth nerdy stuff. We will be back next week. There is no pause for us because we are still talking about Series 9 of Taskmaster. The best series, question mark question mark big tick definitely yes we will be talking next week about series nine of taskmaster episode five with a drum roll a greg davis greg davis a taskmaster any uh very excited to chat to greg uh about series nine episode five always nice to to get Greg's insight into some of my work.

He is a fair, firm Taskmaster. Come back here next week on Thursday to listen to me chat to Greg about Taskmaster Series 9, Episode 5. But for now, here is the Taskmaster Podcast. Welcome, Dara, to the Taskmaster Podcast. Can I say it's a pleasure to be here, but I'm doing it through gritted teeth. Yeah, it's nice to be here.

I mean, I noticed you didn't call me any of the previous five weeks. There was no contact made then, but suddenly you're in like a shot. So this is your conspiracy theory that you've mentioned to us, that you think we're only getting you on for this episode because it was not necessarily some of your finest moments. It was among my worst moments. I had a quick look through it, through my fingers. I seem to be sitting there gormlessly getting hit in the face with a fish repeatedly.

And I'm just making the same stupid face. I don't remember, because in the way these things are recorded, I'm not sure how we talk about how they're recorded, but I think this episode was an energy-lag episode anyway. And then wham, wham. And it was like, because

firstly, can I presume that the episode was called Wait What? It was not called Wait What. I didn't notice what the words were. They quite often go with something that you might not necessarily expect for the title. So Wait What would clearly be the episode title

if they were going for the thing that will last the longest, say, well into your career. I now move out of my Megabus phase into my wait what phase of p of what people people who have a casual acquaintance with who i am will now shout as i walk down oxford street that is some sort of and it's good to refresh these things every so often it is the one line people have to say at you when they panic in a similar that, you know, I was with David Byrne

of Talking Heads and I like all of the David Byrne information. But I just went nothing but flowers, which is a fairly obscure song on the later album by Talking Heads. But it was one of the popular flowers. They went, OK, and they walked off. So I don't have a body of work like like David Byrne has so the so it's just it's either Megabus or now wait what the end but it's where did the full the full quite though we will get to it all right the full quite of course is wait what

what wait wait what you need to he need to switch them for the middle verse. Okay, great. Let's run to this, knowing that Wait What is sitting down the line. It's always good to know why people are angry that they're on the podcast, though. And the fact that you've been booked for the Wait What episode was not deliberate, I've got to say. This is just scheduling, but it's worked out perfectly for my for my needs yes

I know I have listened to all the podcasts so I know what you've said about me hey look I think it's I think it's been broadly complimentary which is rare for me you know it has been broadly complimentary there's a couple of things that I was like oh wait till I get on that podcast. Oh, no. Do you want to run through the list of grievances straight away? Well, I think early on, everybody thought I was a bit boring. I got that impression.

And then later on, I liked that I was like this sort of reliable, kind of unflappable. I've never been described as unflappable. I've never been described as unflappable before. But then later it was like, oh, she sits on the sofa to burst balloons. She can't be bothered. To be fair, in that task, you did sit on the sofa to pop the balloons. I know! But you know what, I respected it. That's why I picked the living room.

That's why I picked the living room. So I didn't have to stand and bend over. I can't bend over for 99 or, as it turns out, 100 balloons. It was your reaction in the last episode to having to sit on the floor cross-legged for Munya's play that made me laugh the most. Oh, there was so much about that play. Oh, my God. I mean, play in the loosest sense of the word yeah not a play

i just i opened it and i just like my heart sank because like i wouldn't want to watch that i wouldn't pay or go for free on a comp um but to have to be in it so much worse it was like i'd made like i'd started off doing stand-up and i'd made some terrible decisions and now i'm in a play with ping pong balls alex had to copy me but luckily he you can see around ping pong balls so it didn't really have the sensory deprivation thing that he wanted and i just thought i looked at it and i thought it's not a play like a play to me is words yeah something happens yeah happens. Yeah, something happens. A plot.

And it was such, but it was the way he was like sitting on the floor cross-legged. I was like, oh my God, it's just assembly, isn't it? That's the last time I did that was assembly. And that is a long time ago. Your reaction,

even when the task came up in the studio, when Alex was doing the introduction to the task and there's a very quick shot of before they play the video in where everyone's like oh it's the play one now and you are just sat there like just gutted that it's made the edit I know there was always a chance that the one with the the golf clubs might have got in and this one didn't there was always a chance fingers crossed if everybody else's had been as bad yeah but it was so bad and I spent time on mine and I don't believe he spent time on his I think he was probably playing on his xbox and then he was like

oh no I've got two minutes to write a play I'll just write something about ping pong balls and it was such it can you imagine paying to say it okay everybody else has had merit everybody else's performance and writing you would think if i went to a night of new plays and these were all on i'd have a lovely time but i would demand my money back actually i don't even think they showed as much of how furious i was because as soon as I read it I was like oh you dick which is a shame because you guys got on so well on the team day I think I mean there's there's some fraying around the edges in this episode but that mainly got on quite well it was it was a good one to choose for the last episode because it was just when I was starting to get a bit,

oh no, I'm sick of babysitting. Can I have an adult partner now? With Munya, we had Greg Jenner on the podcast last week and the most accurate description of Munya I've ever heard is that Munya's personality is like Buzz Lightyear in the first Toy Story film. Before he becomes a bit more realistic and jaded exactly before he realizes that he's not the best at everything i think he knows he's not the best of everything but he thinks if he tells you yeah he's that young that if he tells you he's the best at something you'll go oh okay hey guys we found

the guy who's the best at everything rather than going oh really show me then yeah oh it's fun it's fantastic to watch though that that play was absolutely incredible and your your play was like proper it was so well written it was like a beautiful piece it was longer because i talk really fast so i yeah i read it in like went through it and i was like oh that's a minute um and I don't think it was explained what like the ending was you have to my writing when I've written plays in the past you always have to fill in bit yourself and I don't think it was that clear that the cats that were coming to visit uh were the reincarnation of all the people who died in the home right yeah I'm not

sure that I'm not sure I got that from it, but I got plenty of other stuff from it. Oh, good, good. I thought Fern did a great job. She did. I mean, I would never write Howay Man in a play. So just so you know, that was an ad lib. I think she did a great job, apart from, oh, Howay Man. Geordie people don't really say it that often.

No, especially just as a completely isolated sentence. But she was like, oh, I'll ad lib a bit. How are you, man? But I thought she did a great job. She did. She was great. It's wonderful to see you, John. And may I say, I'm absolutely loving you on Taskmaster so far. Thank you. Thank you.

Episode three, early days, Ed, early days. It's early days, but there's already patterns forming. Is that fair to say? Well, I don't think it'd be too harsh to say that yeah i mean you know you've had every you've had everyone come on and say this but it just blows your mind how bad you you cannot believe how bad it's going. Honestly, after recording, I think, episode one, I went back to the changing room and I shut the door, went over to the mirror and I was looking at myself

and I was just like, it can't be another 10 episodes of this. It can't be. They must of this. It can't be. They're clever. There's an arc happening here. Into the Woods, that book about how people write stories. Come on, they've got to have read that. They've got to be redemption. That's a bad moment if you're looking in the mirror

after episode one and praying for an arc. Well, episode two wasn't that good either. It's sort of an arc that starts quite flat, if it's an arc. I walked past, I went back in the room, and I was there in the mirror, he was waiting for me,

and I walked past, I walked past, I went, no, this can't be. This cannot be. I went, no, this can't be. This cannot be. So episode three comes along. And, well, what happened, happened, I suppose. But when you got the offer to be on Taskmaster, John, were you a fan of the show already?

Had you seen much of the show? When I was offered to take part in in taskmaster which is a fantastic phone calling yeah i was stood next to lou sanders actually oh nice and she weirdly knew what the phone call was before i picked up the phone but she just predicted it did she or did she tell you she predicted it after the phone call had happened? Yeah, after the phone call. Yeah, yeah. She didn't predict that, mate. She's made it up.

Yeah, she does that. That's classic Lou bullshit. Something to do with the crystal. She said she predicted it. Yeah, I got off the phone and she went, I better know what that was. And I probably should have said to her, well, then tell me. But I just told her. Then she went, I better know what that was. And I probably should have said to her, well, then tell me. But I just told her.

Then she went, yeah. Yeah, I knew it was that. Yeah, she didn't predict it at all. What's the lottery numbers for next Saturday? Well, let's wait till next Saturday to find out, shall we? Okay. Yeah, told you it'd be them. Yeah, yeah 8 14 yeah can you say it before the ball comes down no no no there it is there here it comes yeah it's definitely gonna be yeah that's

that's 21 yep yeah that's louo that's loo for you i i will let listeners know that I recently posted a video that someone had made of me getting quite angry and indignant throughout the Taskmaster process when I was on it, and you simply responded with the shaking hands emoji. Yes. Which kind of, I mean, sums up so far a little bit of what you're like on the show. I think more than any contestant i've

ever seen if you are given a low mark you seem absolutely perplexed and also very angry about it is that fair i i think that is exactly correct and also like there are some things i i think i mean there's a there's a clip in the trailer where I say I've smashed this, and that is my thought process every single time. And can you imagine the shock when I find out that I haven't? I sometimes cannot believe it. Yeah, there's a lot of rage in that. I mean, I've only seen a couple of episodes, but there's more rage than I've exhibited anywhere else ever before.

Yeah, you are a very relaxed man in normal life, I would say. But clearly when it comes to the tasks, now and again you seem quite shocked that you've been scored low. And look, we're going to be talking about episode two today, so I'm assuming you've only seen the first two episodes, so this is absolutely perfect. I've seen all of the rest of them, and let me tell you, that attitude from you does not stop. I spent a lot of my formative years arsing around and uh the whole taskmaster thing really took me

back to my childhood where you just asked around and did stupid things with balloons and water or what just stupid stuff yeah just play it's like yeah you're just you're just playing um and that's great that it really comes across and then you go in for your tea before before you um uh did the show and they told you who the lineup was were you excited did you did you know many of your fellow contestants before the show i i'd met may really briefly um in melbourne uh gosh how jet setting um when we'd both been doing the comedy festival and they were so young they were sort of fetal at the time may was so young back then um i can always tell how young I am by what size jeans I was wearing. I think I was in a 12 jean at that point. So I was youngish and I hadn't met Kyle, but Kyle is very, very easy. He's very, very, very, very friendly.

And Ivo, I, you know, I'm always slightly suspicious of posh white boys, but I also sort of really sympathise with them as well because you know everybody leaps to conclusions about them and i just thought oh he has such a sweetness he has such an absolute adorable side frankie i was nervous of because despite us having been around you know since the arc um neither of us had ever met or gigged together really that's really no being in the same room no i think that maybe people thought, oh, God, it's just too much having Boyle and Eclair in one small space. And, of course, you know, you sort of go in with these preconceived notions.

And he thought I was going to be a miserable cow. And I just thought he was just going to be a hard-faced Glaswegian, you know, and just kind of, I started to sort of snivel a bit at the thought of I'm quite cowardly about people who can create what I call an atmosphere in a room and I don't like it it makes me anxious so I was really relieved when he just didn't do that and what it what it happens with Frankie is occasionally you will really make him giggle and it is a giggle it's not a laugh he giggles like a child like a toddler and it's a very gratifying thing so i sort of you know if i did make him giggle i sort of i preened you know

when you preen i think i've done a good thing i've made boiled that's nice yeah uh i'm aware you don't like watching yourself back and that you brain dump everything after you've done it but i'm going to do my best to remind you throughout this of what you did and what other people did let's talk about the prize task well let's talk about prize tasks in general first of all did you enjoy doing the prize task and selecting the things for that? yeah my house is full of shit

like really strange shit and I was like oh great I'm going to ace this so like also I knew that i must have done horribly on the tasks so i thought i can make up points here a by bringing in some stuff but also b by carping it and and uh scoring points off everybody else's stuff which is my real skill you know taking apart everyone else's efforts. Yeah. Yeah. That probably had an evolutionary purpose to it. At one point, you know,

you'd have like, you needed people to build the dam and build the camp and stuff, but you also needed someone to go, Oh shit here, you know, let's move. And you know, I would have had a purpose once.

Yeah. Sort of village grump. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I really enjoyed them. I really enjoyed seeing what people had brought in. I think this is the, I mean, actually, actually i mean you bring in an art thing here but i think

the previous three episodes you've brought in pieces of art uh you know not necessarily from your house but the first episode you had the painting of uh you on the horse uh quite quite an imposing uh an imposing portrait of you which i'd imagine hangs above the fireplace or something like that yeah it's in uh it's in my yoga room mate oh of course it's in your yoga room i pull it above the fireplace in your yoga room then there was the uh weird medieval cats which i don't believe you have in your house i think that was more of a sort of research project that was a research project yeah yeah and then um last week uh we had well for us the viewer it was a heavily pixelated uh wolverine and captain america uh sort of slash fan fiction oh god i'd forgotten

about that yeah we spoke to jenny eclair about that and she uh she still seems quite quite shaken by the content of that they would be a good couple they would be a lovely couple why like i think you said you made the superman comparison of you know superman would would suck you inside out i believe is the phrase that you used but wolverine's wolverine's a tricky lover surely yeah i mean like you know so much easier for him. He's always going to recover. He's always going to recover, but the old clause, surely, if they come out in heightened moments of tension and excitement, then he's got to be careful where he's putting his hands.

Also, just generally, if you took the whole superhero thing out of it, a guy who was in special forces and had memory blocks inserted to make him forget that he'd murdered his own wife is not your ideal gay lover there's a lot of red flags there yeah for sure but you know I think

I'm not going to say what I was going to say but let's just move on from that unfortunately heavily pixelated by the time we reach the viewers but I'm sure people can find similar stuff online if they want to do a bit of research. I bet they will. So this is the wonderful thing about Taskmaster.

You get the experience of filming all the tasks, then you get the experience of the studio watching all the tasks back, and then it's all part of the experience as well when they go out and people start reacting to them. Yeah, and yet greedily, I still don't really think that I, you know, I think there should be more just in general. Well, you never know, Ivo.

Well, look, we don't know. It could well be that you get at least one more episode of it. You know, it's been up and down so far for you, I'd say. You know, there have been some victories, which I'll say it now. Look, we're good pals. So I feel confident that I can be this honest with you. I was not expecting you to win any episodes in this series. Right.

So the fact that you did. I pulled quite an early one out yes exactly i was very very proud of you the fact that the first thing that happened on the entirety of the taskmaster series was when you presented a prize task greg had to stop you and ask you if you're okay yeah that's that's very much starting as you need to go on yeah so, a prize task, a pretty basic response for a prize task, and one involving just a ludicrous miscalculation that I'm already dreading the broadcast of. Do you want to start with that? We can do. Why don't you take us through it?

Because people listening to this will have absolutely seen the first five episodes. So take us through, up until this point um what what are you most worried about having done uh i mean there's there's just so much like you know in many ways taskmaster is one great experience and in sorts of other ways it's about 50 regrets any of which you know would would be enough to keep things sort of ticking along um sort of self-laceration wise and like the prize tasks as a as a sort of general topic you know i think some very fun stuff comes out of them

obviously loads of fun from from the others and some from from my corner but you know those are the bits you've got a bit more time to prepare i am a prepper i do like to think of myself as an outside the box and yet you've got miscalculations like the weight of a loo roll that betray both a lack of practical skills and sort of you know-world instinctive measuring skills and a very slapdash approach to preparation, by which I mean literally one Google being like, oh, I'd have thought it'd be more than that, but there we go. On it goes. How much do you think a loo roll weighs?

Well, I certainly wouldn't have a guess at a loo roll weight or indeed just simply Google it. I think I would have to get the loo roll and weigh the loo roll or look on a packet, for example, and do the calculation rather than trusting Wikipedia. Because I think, I suppose, one thing I live in a pretty constant fear about

without really converting any of that into productive action or seeking help is that everything betrays a cosseted life of privilege. And, you know, it's like, you know, he's never even had to hold the loo roll while he has his bottom wiped from an eton. He's never. That's what I'm saying in my head. Yeah.

You know, or, of course the i dare say the loo roll at boarding school must be much heavier it's probably got its own tog rating where it's like i just i just in a slightly panicked moment i genuinely thought i know loo roll has been done before by believe david baddiel but i i thought a four pack of loo roll for a reliable thing you know that's we can have a longer conversation and i'd like to about whether you know price tasks should be like the truest answer to the question or the sort of most surreal and yeah i wish i'd taken the frankie boyle approach on a few more but you know i wouldn't say that answering a four pack of loo roll to the sort of the most, what was it, the most useful thing, the most dependable thing.

Dependable, yeah. I wouldn't say that's quite, no disrespect to her, but Daisy Mae Cooper saying a bottle of wine. You know, it's like, you know. No, you thought about it. I wipe my bum every day. Let's put it on Taskmaster. And I do believe the four- pack is the definitive side for you also when wicker wikipedia uh said like yep perfect that was all the thumbs up i needed and i could

move to the other price tasks which were still causing me a lot more stress including the one we're going to cover in this episode but to immediately within like i don't know a minute of the first studio record be be beating myself up over a basic error with wider implications. It was a terrible start. They go to me, John, can we just do this again where you go out of the caravan? We didn't quite catch it. So I'm like, oh yeah, sure. So I go sit in the caravan,

waiting for them to say action just so I can do a pickup shot. Yeah. Then Alex walks in, making me, you know, Judas. Did you suspect, what did you think when he walked in with that extra task? What was going through your mind? A complete shock.

I know that might sound silly because, you know, you should just, you know, as soon as you get out of the car and you're filming that show you should be suspicious of everything yeah but i genuinely just thought yeah they didn't get that why would they not get it they'd be doing full in series they get everything and i just also you know he's he's deadpan face very serious you're reminded as well you're on camera at that moment. All of a sudden a cameraman pops up in the window and you're like, shit. And then it's the betrayal.

Betrayal. And is that how it felt? Even though you'd only really met them an hour before, did it still feel like a true betrayal when you when you did this it really did because also it's not like it's not like maybe other tv where when they go and cut you can look at them and go yeah i was only mucking around there or I had to do that because of this. You've got to go back, sit and have a cup of tea. Dara's just kind of shaking his head. And like I said, I've only met him once before.

So he's thinking, like, this guy's thick. Like, that's crazy what he just did. He's thick. Fern, and Fern, you know, Fern's Fern, really blunt. Yeah. She's like, she's just kind of going do you know what the worst thing was actually this is the worst thing I think to them it looked like I was trying to be funny oh that is the worst thing by messing it up

they thought you were deliberately messing it up to try and be funny. Like I was on TV and I'm trying to be the funny one. And I could just say, yeah, yeah. Do you know what I mean though? Yeah. And that's, that's obviously the last thing you do on that show. Yeah. You go, oh, this will look fun. You don't do that.

You just have to do the task. And that was, and then the hardest thing as well is you feel, I don't know, we filmed that in January, I think. Five months I had to sit on that and Dara's touring around the world 2.3 million Twitter followers meeting lots of acts doing mock the week kind of you know everyone likes Dara and in the back of his mind maybe he's had conversations with Ed Byrne. There's this guy. Yeah he wears a wig. Yeah wig. He's doing Task Monster. Yeah. Really? Is he wearing the wig? He ain't wearing the wig. He's trying to be funny. Are you joking? Yeah. There's this one task

he tried to be funny. God what a twat. Yeah. So that's what was chewing me up. So, yeah. However, the hands on the hip thing. Yeah. Full disclosure. I had no idea. Even if they told me, sabotage it. I would have done that even if I wasn't sabotaging it.

I had no idea what was going on. Also, I'm touching Fern. i'm basically grabbing her ass i'm like this doesn't feel brilliant disinformation makes it harder to find information you can trust, especially on social media. And it could lead you to make choices that aren't good for you. Learn how to spot it at Canada.ca slash disinformation. A message from the Government of Canada. Very excited to have you here, Fern. You are, of course, one of the stars of Series 14. You're absolutely smashing it. We're loving watching you on it i saw one mildly negative thing the other day and it wasn't even

true i i was um looking at the reddit taskmaster thread which the two andys told me not to do yes that's the first thing you shouldn't do if you're on taskmaster is look at the reddit it's broadly a very positive place but there are some bad eggs. And that's the people that we'll focus on. Yeah, but even the bad stuff they were saying was really not that bad. They said that I was upsetting Alex and telling him that the tasks were boring. I think they said that Dana hated me and John. I think they said that Dara hated me and John.

Well, that's, I mean, look, it's very funny that the only negative thing they could think of was that you're upsetting Alex, because it's so funny when people get protective of Alex, as if when people are mean to him, it's not playing into his hands completely. Yeah. And also, I'd say that Dara doesn't hate you and John. He's just, I think, exasperated to the point

of dislike yeah and also I mean we didn't know how much I thought I went in there to win but I didn't know how much Dara was going to turn up and be obsessed with uh oh my god he's so competitive he is I mean he is but look I respect that 100 percent um he's also very he is, but look, I respect that 100%. He is very funny with it as well, but he has made no attempts to conceal his competitiveness more than any other contestant in Taskmaster history, I think. I heard that you went in it with a clear plan to win. Yeah, but I'm also a complete wally. So I did want to win, but when I try and win

and when I really throw myself into stuff it's so chaotic that it could go completely the opposite direction whereas Dara I think is like a terminator he's decided he's going to win and it's sort of laser focus and he's actually achieving his his aims whereas I'm just an absolute whirlwind of chaos well I'm telling you I went into the series with the plan of winning it. And when you watch a lot of my tasks, you wouldn't think that. I completely empathise with that. But a lot of them you are absolutely nailing. Dara's obviously got that lazy focus.

But I also think when you're next to John, anything you do seems deliberate and well thought out yeah I mean I didn't know John was going to be as bad as he was that's the other thing because John's really clever yeah he's a smart guy but now I watch it now and I go was I wrong about that we're on episode

four now so is this coming out after episode four has been broadcast? Yes, it'll be straight after. So everyone knows about the incident. I mean, which one? In episode three. Yeah, of course, yeah.

So we talked about that with John last week, the betrayal. Not that he had much choice, I think. He's never spoken. Obviously, he acknowledged it to me, but he never spoke to me about it. But he saved in my phone as John Traitor Cairns. I mean, that was a wonderful moment. I felt like you, I mean, you were annoyed with him,

but I think you took it better than Dara, would you say? Yeah, I was more just so shocked. I was so, so shocked shocked and i don't know if if this is in the edit but um i don't have any babies and i'm not much interest in babies but i was very proud of myself that i knew people who have a baby are very tired and i'd heard that the tiredness was like next level so i made sure to reassure dana who i think has children you don't know john is doing the task badly because he has a baby because john had been mentioned i think he'd mentioned that in the breaks and stuff so i was like yeah i just was

like yeah people with babies are dumb um and i really stuck with that one thing And I really stuck with that one thing. Munya, yeah. So Munya, I was aware of his work, but hadn't met him, the sweet guy. But it was, I mean, there is a point, I know it's done alphabetically. I know we're seated alphabetically in the show,

but it's very clearly dad on one side, mum on the other. And there was a photograph at one stage, a still of the two of us just, you know, me and Sarah just, you know, ready for the next thing and the three of them in in the chat like and i think i said it it's like you know it's like when you're driving somewhere yourself and your wife in the front seat and the kids are fighting arguing whatever in the back and they see and that's that is the dynamic that is the season yeah that we have oh it's so funny it's interesting that you'd met you'd met previously, but obviously not for long enough to truly have a sense of his true level of intelligence.

No, I didn't. And it has been remarkable. I mean, the fact that, you know, the betrayal, as it should be referred to, wasn't even his lowest point you know I think we all know Dara as you know the host of Mock the Week he loves to play he brings he brings people in he's a good team player and then when it comes to Taskmaster it felt like this was his opportunity to be like no eyes on the prize the most competitive man I've ever seen on that show and I'm including myself in that it He's so competitive and it's quite funny

because he wears his heart on his sleeve and he's so desperate to win, but has the capability. He's not like somebody who's like, I want to win and has no skills to back it up. He definitely has all of the skills, but he did describe me at one point. He said, I think he said to his wife

that Millican's snapping at my fucking heels. And I was like, yes, she is. She's making you work a little bit harder. You're welcome. And I think he must have found it frustrating as well, because you were doing it in such a calm way. I didn't try to my maximum capacity. I decided to enjoy myself.

Everything I do in my working life, re-stand up, I try for it to be as good as it can possibly be, the best I can do, everything. So actually, to do a TV programme where I'm like, I mean, I'll try, I'm not not trying, but I'm not going to bust a gut, I'm certainly not going to run anywhere, I'm not going to stand if I can sit.

You know, I'm going to enjoy myself. So I think it stand if i can sit you know i'm going to enjoy myself so i think it's quite in my head i'm thinking if i really applied myself i probably i probably would have won yeah oh that if he hears this that is going to send him over the edge banking on him here so that's look that's the elephant in the room you didn't win you came second but i feel like you escaped with a lot more dignity than dara did but dara doesn't care about dignity you don't get prizes for dignity now we're obviously talking about episode three today so we've had we've had a couple of episodes already i think we're going to have to talk to you about the barge task before we plow into this episode. Because, of course, it's the barge task is absolutely hilarious. It's on a big scale and yours goes so spectacularly sort of wrong, wrong. That you could always tell when something's been a big moment in the filming when it opens the title sequence and brace brace brace

which is the direct quote from you opens the entire title sequence was it stressful doing that or did you enjoy it really well the thing was I wasn't really concentrating because I had a car waiting for me to take me up to Manchester to do um countdown because Colin Murray had come down with Covid and they needed a sitting host so I sort of had one eye on my watch thinking well I've got to go in a bit so you know we've got to get on with this and of course you know I am very bull in a china shop I do sort of I think sometimes people like may possibly sit down for a couple of minutes before they do anything and think and I just didn't do I just sort of kind of steam ahead

and there's always a bit of optimism in me where I'm a very odd mix of sort of a sort of well of optimism that quickly runs out and and it underneath is this sort of dank swamp of reality and pessimism and sort of where my actual life is most of the time but at the beginning of things I always think that something magical and and it might happen a miracle might happen and then the sort of reality sets in I realize you've never done this before Jenny and you don't know what you're doing I'm not even very good driving a car I can't drive on a motorway I mean I do have a license and I do drive a lot but I only like drive in London and it's not like a car it's like upside down and backs to front and I you know I just I couldn't get it I just couldn't get it I mean it was it was amazing I

mean we didn't see you say this but I think what will stick in my head forever is Alex uh saying that one one of the things you'd shouted when you were driving the boat was spin, bitch, spin. Oh, yeah, spin, bitch, spin. I say that to everybody all the time. I say that phrase at least once a day. Spin, bitch, spin. You know, I don't know. Could be anybody.

And then the big crash at the end is perfect. I'm glad someone just did it gung-ho, to be honest, because watching five people go very slowly would have been disappointing. But I'm glad you just floored it and rammed into a wall. Yeah, well, I had to get in that car and go to Manchester and do countdown, didn't I? So, you know, the clock was against me. But there was a sound man down in the sort of depths of the barge

underneath, hiding, you know. And that poor bloke, he came out and honestly, and he'd had his headphones on, so he was like at the epicentre of the crash. And he came out and his teeth were still sort of shaking in his mouth from the reverberations and he was like quite upset yeah i had bruising on my breasts oh my god yeah from the steering wheel i woke up the next day and i thought, what have I been up to? Because I had all these sort of, I had bruising. So that was very exciting. Oh, goodness me.

First time anyone's woken up after Countdown with that. Let's talk about this prize task. The most fun thing to wear on your head that you aren't supposed to wear on your head. Now, this is a victory for you in this task um is this something you had in your house anyway it was the recreated scene from chitty chitty bang bang using a sylvanian family on top of a mortarboard was that kicking around no uh an art therapist made it for me um and she's a very creative lady uh but she's also obsessed with sylvanian families um so my idea was that we would do a crucifixion scene but channel four were understandably uneasy about a crucif crucified

sylvanian christ and instead we had this yeah i mean there was, I think Greg says he's looking for the darkness and I guess that's the sort of darkest Channel 4 would let you push it is the child catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. But I think what's wrong with the crucifixion scene with Sylvanian families? You know, surely it's more harrowing. The crucifixion has a happy ending. Yeah, exactly.

It comes back. And it's more harrowing when you see a bloke on there surely it's actually a softer way of doing it with sylvanian families yeah i mean anyone who argues that the story of christ is more downbeat than the child catcher uh from chitty bang bang i mean i don't agree uh well we would have loved to have seen the crucifixion but the uh the child catcher was great as well and i also think that it was it was imaginative you know it was it was fun and it was quite sweet we're seeing a a sweeter side of you already in this series frankie i'm a pretty sweet guy yeah you know i i know you're a sweet guy uh but you know the the

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

Yes. So you specifically said, well, you wanted the crucifixion, but are Sylvanian families her medium? I said, what about Chitty Chitty Bang Bang then? And I sort of imagined it would therefore be the car Chitty Chitty Bang Bang rather than a grim story like of child abduction. Yeah i mean that's awful you said chitty chitty bang bang she was like i assume he means the child catcher yeah yeah that's probably what he meant five points even though i could see ivo was annoyed that you got five points he got one

point it's very funny watching ivo get try and get angry but also remain extremely polite because he brought in a turkey and he's so earnest the way he presents it he really thinks he's got the points in the bag and is baffled when he gets one point for the turkey what did you think of the turkey as a prize? I thought it was very poor I thought you know I think wasn't it that something that would be the most fun. What was the actual thing? The most fun things to wear on your head that you aren't supposed to wear on your head. And he brought in a turkey and then gave us several stories about people who'd worn turkeys on their head

and had harrowing experiences. Yeah, because he said Courtney Cox hated it. And he said, well, we all know, Bean doesn't enjoy that, does he? He's not having a nice time when he's in the turkey. No. Well, Rowan Atkinson probably isn't having a nice time just filming Mr Bean.

He's so wretch. I mean, just any moment that's spent not in his golden house is probably agony to him. Never mind sticking a turkey over his head. Yeah, he's not going back to Bean now. That's why it's a cartoon now. He can just sit in his Aston Martin and count count the money yeah draw it if you want i don't care but whatever you like on his head i'm not doing it um let's talk about may's price test now may is a brilliant taskmaster contestant let's not beat around the bush but one of the one

of the greats one of the greats so good at the film's tasks i think occasionally they seem to have a bit of a problem selling their prize tasks so like i think this was may had uh an inflatable version uh of themselves on their head as a fun thing to wear on their head but even the way that may goes into it just seems they seem so downtrodden just like yeah and i guess put that on your head and already crumbling under the pressure i think may um may be staggered by the shitness of what everyone else has brought in sometimes under undersells their own stuff yeah not not thinking how much we will carp and you know point carve off what they have brought in but me in general just like incredibly sort of focused and

intelligent person i was thinking during the records my mind often wonders but how good may would be as a detective yeah you know a really good detective character with this you know a slight air of and i mean this in a good way a slight sartorial air of tin tin yeah and a very focused very very kind of clever and person i'd like i'd watch that show yeah i absolutely would as well um maybe not if the character wore a version of themselves on their own head because i i'm not sure that i mean they undersold it sure but i i don't think it was their best effort um in terms of uh prize tasks because i think it's not just for you to wear on your head right so would it be a fun say for example if you had to pick something fun to wear

on your head would it be fun for you to wear a version of May Martin on your head or would it have to be of you? I would love to wear a version of May Martin on my head. I'd loathe to wear a version of myself on my head. That would be so disgusting. But like wearing May it would feel like a kind of shamanistic

retro. Yeah it would feel like the end of a folk horror film wouldn't it? I would also enjoy you seeing you wearing a version of yourself on your head frankie i think i think this is this disassociation thing you have again you don't even want to watch yourself a blow-up version of your own self i think as you get older man it's like you know like when you're younger you're like you're watching stuff you do and you're like oh i could have done that better and blah blah blah you know but like when you hit 50 you feel kind of like an old

stick floating down a river and you're like you know death is at the end and i don't even know that i'm the stick anymore am i the stick am i the river am i the bank i don't know but you know there's there's no power of there's no part of it that's like I want to see a blown up version. I already look kind of blown up. Do you know what I mean? I don't want to accentuate that. Yeah, sure. Well, you can let it down a bit.

You can, you know, take some of the air out. It would be a lovely compliment to yourself. Even May, I think, used the phrase in an earlier episode, am I the meat, am I the viewer? I think that really captures what we're talking about right now. I think we were all essentially having some kind of mild breakdown during the filming. And I had tried to persuade everyone for the final episode

to take magic mushrooms. So this is going on behind the scenes. I'm urging everyone to have what would have presumably been quite an alarming psychedelic experience. Yeah. So we're all thinking along those lines. And I won't reveal too much because i feel like this might be a spoiler but um in the final episode you are dressed you are all dressed uh appropriately for that experience yes we had we had got the outfits

and everything but then yeah you know we just we decided at the end it it yeah it may have been really funny but it also might have been incredibly disturbing we should talk about this episode uh the episode that sealed your victory although i think it was probably sealed a few episodes ago uh let's talk about the prize, the episode that sealed your victory, although I think it was probably sealed a few episodes ago. Let's talk about the prize task, the best Greg Davis merchandise that isn't on the market but should be on the market now. Good prize task, solid prize task, I think.

Let's talk about Frankie's here. He's brought in artwork again, which is a euthanasia beanbag that turns into a body bag. And in the artwork, it's Greg on it, and it says Greg Davis on the side of the beanbag. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's had an idea, and he's gone, and I just put that in.

Yeah, and there's... Yeah, how does the beanbag euthanize you? It just suffocates you? Suffocates you, I think, and then turns into... I mean, it's very funny. It's very Frankie Boyle, but it has no relevance to this prize whatsoever. Not at all.

And the mechanism of the euthanasia is unclear and yeah but it it is funny but yeah there's a lot of death and euthanasia coming up with frankie and a lot of the tasks yeah a lot of darkness there yeah a lot of darkness which i think we knew about frankie right and he's very verbose and uh in his darkness and that's what we do like about him but also I think sometimes when he speaks to Greg he almost brings Greg down to his level like Greg almost seems more sort of like a bit a bit not depressed but just a bit more even in this he says oh we're on the verge of death and and Greg goes out every morning I wake up and think I cannot believe I'm seeing another son you're like greg you're a dark poet i know frankie's like it's almost like he's saying to greg like yeah

never forget that we're you and i are like mortality's just knocking at the door yeah you're right he brings him right down he's we um by the end of the you know we have like a whatsapp thread all of us and by the end for this episode in particular Frankie kept making this joke that we should all be on acid for the final recording and we all would laugh about it and then it got kind of he got more insistent and then he's like and then it was like and then it was like so who's got the acid like he was really he was like wouldn't that be funny if we didn't tell anyone and we were all on acid dressed like the Beatles and and then we couldn't figure out i still don't know if he was joking he was really i think disappointed that none of us took i mean maybe he

was on acid but maybe i mean it made no difference to his personality i would say no um what that's an amazing thing to do as well if he was serious about the acid thing that in the run-up he's going who's got the acid you're like well frankie if it's your idea i think it's definitely your responsibility to get the acid yeah You're like, well, Frankie, it's your idea. I think it's definitely your responsibility to get the acid. Yeah, 100%. Go and find it. Yeah. Task three, salvage the most spoons. You may not leave the lab

and all the spoons must be salvaged with a magnet. Your salvager must not remove their headwear. Most salvaged spoons brought to the lab wins. Also from now on, you must speak in a very high-pitched voice. You have 16 minutes. Your time starts now. Look, i think this is brilliant a brilliant task um the addition of the high voices was absolutely perfect i let's just talk about you and frankie because i've never

shouted at a television more than when you oh no with time left, decided to go into the kitchen. The kitchen dash. Yeah. Yeah. And that was... I don't need to tell you that the... I don't want to play up how invested

the live studio audience and taskmaster are, because like any live TV or record, I'm sure there are some people who have got itchy bottoms and just want to go home but there's it's so fun so they queue up man they they yeah you know what i don't know why i needed to include that caveat uh these fans are rabid and uh and they love the show and the people who are on the show myself included usually love the show so there's just such a collective enthusiasm for it and the jeopardy of all of it and i didn't remember this task as i'll tell you how i remember this task

frankie and i filmed tasks together all day and we'd had some i'd like to think it's real fun i think we'd had some very bonding chats in the dressing room and we'd had some tasks where i'd brought a couple of things to the table there was one task he slightly frustrated me yes in this one i had this idea about the spoons i was thinking a taskmaster hack is you just go to the kitchen and get the spoon absolutely a good idea it's a good idea and i um and i'd been of course it's you know all covered by the editor i think i'd been pushing for the spoons a little bit more than is conveyed and my memory of this task because i don't think you get told how close to the, you know,

how close you are to missing it, to missing the timing. I think I just had the sense that we probably had just not quite done everything we needed to do. But my memory was the task where Frankie didn't instruct me to the spoons in the kitchen that would have won us the task. That's how I remembered it. That the task where Frankie in delightful glaswegian squeak

uh was was was telling me to uh to go and get spoons from the garden when we could have just gone to the mother load and i was thinking with a taskmaster hat on as well as another ludicrous piece of headwear that no doubt jenny would have loved to have worn and and like frankie had just played it a bit too straight and you know that's a bit of a shame whereas in the room it really was brought clear to me from this sort of total sort of tectonic gasp of the studio audience that i'd fucked it colossally oh my goodness i mean it's it's sort of i mean if if just for the audience it's sort of how i imagine iva arriving at all gigs right just like you know you've got to be on stage at a certain

time oh it's okay well just i'll just nip in here before before i go you know it's that it's that having it's being a bit scatterbrained or having things that you want to do and then doing them regardless of the next thing you have to do. And fitting them in at the very last minute. I mean, I think you've already covered on this series with a podcast that I've recently, I think had some very enjoyable fun trying to buy a lot of cereal at short notice midway through a gig.

Yes, yeah. And then we did a gig where there was a little bit, a little bit of a tricky sort of train to get and we needed to make it to the station. And then I was waiting at stage door for quite a while while you went around and personally thanked all of the technical staff, which is a lovely thing to do. Yeah.

But they're... In my defence, they really had been very helpful in fixing a Freddo chocolate frog to a Frisbee. And I didn't think that could go uncommentable. Yeah, no, fair enough. But I loved this task. I thought it was great. And obviously the drama of you going to the kitchen

was baffling, but also extremely enjoyable. But Frankie's voice in this, also the fact that you joined in with the voice, I think you knew that you didn't have to do a high voice. I think you were just so in the spirit of it that you thought you'd do your own. And you turned into a wonderful high voice double act. My favourite thing that Frankie

said was at the beginning when you said you couldn't see. And he said, are you blind, Ivo? And you said, they've blinded me, Frankie. It just turned into this really odd play yeah there was quite a Samuel Beckett energy I'd say quite a lot of mine

in Frankie's shared tasks well look Jenny wins and Jenny wins episode uh on a tie break uh which i'd imagine by this point may you're not going to begrudge jenny winning that episode are you on the tie break no i i i no not at all i wish someone else had won the whole thing i mean i don't but like i of course you don't and then yeah no i mean of course not. You do, but you don't. And then, yeah. No, I mean, of course I was desperate to win, but I hated going up and receiving all the prizes

at the end of an episode. It's hard to make that funny. And yeah, no, I was happy Jenny won. And yeah, like absolutely fizzing in my blood with the knowledge that I'd won the series but like trying not to show on my face like the true glee and uh yeah so excited to tell a charlotte that i'd beaten kyle yeah because you must have known at the time scores wise you must have known by the end of this episode i mean probably by the end of the previous episode that you had it you had

it wrapped up right i thought so yeah yeah well but you never you never know but yeah but definitely halfway through this episode the final episode i was like okay yeah yeah so pumped and also my dad genuinely is such a fan of the show that that was nice he's he loves it they've been watching it every week oh great in canada and sending me but yeah and it's it really explains like where I get my approach from because they're not at all interested in anyone being funny they want the tasks completed like to their utmost correct capability yeah correctly so that's they get that feedback from my parents yeah I'm really pumped for a champion of champions that's gonna be wicked so who's so who would I be against then? Cause this is the,

well, let's, let's work it out. Let's Sarah Kendall, Sarah Kendall, Dara O'Briain, Morgana Robinson, and Sophie Duker,

Sophie Duker. Iconic. Yeah. Did you get in your head about like having watched your season? Were you like, I'm going to write the wrongs of my past and go in with a different attitude or did you once you got there you just went full i went full i panicked i went all in yeah i dressed up as a dog i don't know why i did that yeah i went mad basically and one day is it's impossible to know how well you've done or what you're doing really

yeah what a great show what a great show i was like the best the most fun i've ever had the definitely the best job i've ever done i loved i was so sad to not i just wish my life was just tasks and like it's so calming and clear to be like this is what i have to achieve and not waking up in the morning being like i could do anything yeah i. I loved it. Well, look, let's do an escape room together soon. And then we can make our lives Taskmaster. We always ask our guests on the Taskmaster podcast to rate their experience on the Taskmaster podcast between one and five.

We all know that your experience on Taskmaster in general is five out of five. But specifically this podcast, please, in the style of the Taskmaster, give me a point score. Definitely five. Yeah, yeah. This is great great this is great we we meandered we always came back to our focus and i loved it it's an honor that's a very may martin way of describing it going yeah look we had we did have some fun but yes we got done what we needed to get done. We didn't stray too far from our objective.

And we did make sure that we checked off all the boxes. Kill me. Well, that's the perfect way to end. Thank you so much, May. Thanks, Ed. um we always ask our guests to rate their experience between one and five points in the style of the taskmaster feel free to give me a point rating for your experience on the series in general and also your experience recording this podcast today my experience on the series in general is a five because you can't you it's it's one of those things you think i hope i get to do that at some point and to say i've been

able to do it and to have experienced it and and to have just you know done i don't do silly things ed i'm not a silly person and to be able to be able to do silly things and have a laugh while you're doing it it was so much fun i love the tasks i love the studio records i loved it so five and i'm going to give you for this i'm going to give you three ah okay because i want you to always feel a bit annoyed at me. And I want you to not know why it was a three. All right. Okay, perfect.

Well, you'll be happy to hear that's worked. Sarah, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Oh, it's been an absolute treat. It really has. Thank you. Every single person has hope in their heart at some point in a series and this is probably where mine peaks yes because i'm not gonna lie to you the episode finishes the audience applaud you go home and in the car I'm thinking well maybe maybe they got me wrong just maybe don't just count me out just yet you know just you know yeah you had your fun at the beginning yeah we all

laughed all of a sudden I want a prize to ask but you're the idiot who brings in books aren't you no I've designed a business card oh yeah John you're thick you just taught you just turned the sand upside down you're thick yeah I am thick Dora roll VT OVT. Ha ha ha! Or we can engineer access to clean water. We can acknowledge indigenous cultures. Or we can learn from indigenous voices. We can demand more from the earth. Or we can demand more from ourselves. At York University, we work together to create positive change for a better tomorrow.

Join us at yorku.ca slash write the future.