British series:
Series: One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six | Seven | Eight | Nine | Ten | Eleven | Twelve | Thirteen | Fourteen | Fifteen | Sixteen
Specials: New Year Treat | New Year Treat II | New Year Treat III | New Year Treat IV
New Zealand series:
Seasons: One | Two | Three | Four
Australian Series:
Seasons: One
Greg: I was hoping you would all insult each other.
Desiree: No...we adore Guz!
Alex: He has only got a one-in-five chance of taking it home though.
Morgana: If I win it I’ll give it to you.
Greg: STOP BEING NICE!
Alan: Me too Guz, you’re totally having it.
Guz: We have defeated the format of your show!
pAlan Davies
"I've just eaten two creme eggs and I'm not really up for this."
"I will point out that everybody agonised over the height of their canvas above their head, apart from Alan who, when he said, 'I think I'll go six feet', may as well have said, 'what does it matter, I'll be dead soon'."
— The Taskmaster
A comedian and actor who is best known as the regular panellist on QI, and for playing the titular role in Jonathan Creek.
- The Bus Came Back: For the second New Year's Treat, he filled in for Jonnie Peacock in the studio.
- Cutting the Knot: When confronted with the balloon-popping task, he opted to go straight for the scissors — the simplest solution — to finish the task the fastest while accruing the smallest time penalty.
- Imperturbable Englishman: Seems, at most, amused at even the strangest of tasks, barely ever bothering to question the rules or the Insane Troll Logic inherent to some tasks.
- Not Distracted by the Sexy: Was completely immune to Victoria's attempts to flash him some cleavage - seemingly to her surprise/chagrin.
- Shout-Out: The picture on the hoodie of Alan's pre-recorded outfit is a reference to The Simpsons episode "A Milhouse Divided". He even has the picture on the t-shirt he wears underneath the hoodie.
- Unfazed Everyman: He seems mostly bemused by the tasks presented to him and takes them on at his own leisurely pace whether or not he's being timed.
Desiree Burch
"And this shit is like, oatmeal and... I don't know, death."
"Why would a grown woman enter a room and immediately eat some sand?"
— The Taskmaster
An American comedian and television host who has guested on many panel shows, and she is the host of the Netflix series Flinch. She also has a recurring role in Welcome to Night Vale.
- Epic Fail: After throwing darts, pebbles, and a bucketful of forks to try and pop a balloon, she finally relents and uses the scissors being offered to snip a string that would drop a spiked portcullis onto the balloon...only for the pulley mechanism on the portcullis to get stuck and she ended up with a time of two hours and 57 minutes.Greg: Listen, I'm going to call it. In 12 series, that was the worst attempt we've ever seen in any task!
- Lady Swears-a-Lot: She uses plenty of creative profanity and obscenity once her frustration levels hit a certain point with the tasks and Alex.
- Older Than They Look: She's grouped together with Guz and Morgana as the younger team. However, she's actually a Gen X-er like Alan and Victoria while Guz and Morgana are Millennials.
- Rule of Funny: Invoked in the aforementioned Epic Fail task. Desiree, seeing that she had already lost any chance of scoring well at the task, opted for more expensive and difficult options rather than simply buying the scissors.
- Running Gag: Whenever she reads out a task for the first time, Desiree will usually take a moment to laugh out loud in disbelief and then say "You guys are so stupid" to her own amusement. Greg's observation is that she always seems baffled by the absurdity of the tasks no matter how many tasks she has already completed.
- You Say Tomato: Being an American and unfamiliar with snooker, Desiree gets some ribbing from Greg in "The Integrity of the Product" when she pronounces the word "snooker" in a variety of ways.note
Guz Khan
"There's been a revelation in the lab."
"If anyone can talk this up the rankings, it’s you."
—The Taskmaster
A comedian and actor who writes and stars in Man Like Mobeen.
- Absurd Phobia: Despite his bold persona, he has an established fear of ghosts. He's increasingly ill-at-ease in the former church buildings used for location shoots, and spends much of one task worrying that the old convent is haunted by "ghost nuns".
- Bad Liar: In his prize tasks, Guz often makes quite bold or unbelievable claims. It doesn't take long for him to fold when pushed.
- Consistent Clothing Style: In the studio, Guz is always seen wearing a long coat. He has even submitted his long coats in two different prize tasks.
- Cool Teacher: At one point, to convince Greg he was "cool", he tells a story about when he was working as a teacher, his students would greet him with cool kid handshakes while greeting his colleagues by calling them "dickheads". Though Greg is quick to point out the unfortunate implications of a teacher making "friends" with children...
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: Guz slaps the bottom of his space hopper in a suggestive way, and jokes that Alex told him to spit on his hand and do it repeatedly.
- "Good Luck" Gesture: Whenever he does well in tasks, Guz can be often seen giving a thumbs up in the studio.
- Keet: One of the more high-energy contestants.
- Motor Mouth: He talks quickly by default and his mouth accelerates whenever he starts stating his case in front of Greg.
- Nice Guy: When dealing with Alex, Guz affectionately calls him "brother" or "bruv" while making sure to say "Please" unlike most other contestants — who usually regard Alex's assistance as a given while a few treat him like a dogsbody.
- Pride: A running joke of sorts in the prize tasks - two of his prize tasks were portraits of himself, and two more were his distinctive jackets.
- A Taste of Their Own Medicine: In "A Couple of Ethels", the first part of the team task was to participate in a socially distanced sport for one minute. Guz immediately suggests a sport where Morgana and Desiree are armed with boxing gloves attached to the end of golf clubs, and the two of them fight each other while Guz acts as referee. Morgana and Desiree quickly turn it around so that they end up playing Guz Ball, a sport where they throw balls at Guz and try to aim for his arms and legs.Desiree and Morgana: (while excitedly bouncing around) Guz Ball! Guz Ball! Guz Ball!
Guz: I just want to say that this is very ironic considering that I initially came [up] with a game that involved me not getting hit.
Desiree: That's karma, boo. - Wrong Genre Savvy: Mentions on one occasion that he thought that the show would "have more class". Some internet commenters pointed out that that ship has sailed since the watermelon task in series 1.
Morgana Robinson
"I’ve just seen him, the little fucker!"
"I did make a note that during [the task], you often look like a furtive garden bird."
—The Taskmaster
Click to see Morgana in “Spider in My Pocket” Spoilers!
A comedian, writer, and impressionist who is best known for appearing in Morgana Robinson's The Agency, House of Fools, and The Windsors.
- Big First Choice: Morgana was given a bonus point for referring to Alex as a "little fucker" while trying to find him and hit him with a ball. She ended up winning the series by a single point.
- Broke the Rating Scale: Greg decided to give her a bonus point right off the bat for the find-Alex task, which she also won, giving her six points out of five.Alex: Morgana — I mean this is unprecedented — gets six points! I don't have a six function on this!note
- Buxom Beauty Standard: Speaking out in favor of Desiree's chicken cutlet bra inserts for the series' first prize task, she talks about how having a bigger chest helps women pick up men.
- Comedic Sociopathy: Morgana outright laughs in glee when she makes Alex eat the disgusting blended sludge in episode 2. The slurry (containing Nutella, cabbage, Marmite, caramel, etc.) has come the closest to making Alex vomit during a task.
- Cutting the Knot: Has the clever idea to deflate her space-hopper when tasked to paint it, to reduce the mess.
- Establishing Character Moment: Sets the tone for her sense of humour by joking about sitting on Santa Claus' face, supporting Desiree's attempt to emulate boobs as the "nicest thing to touch", and submitting a washing machine as a prize for something nice to sit on - all before the Taskmaster awards the first point of the series.Victoria: You can’t sit on Father Christmas’ face...Morgana: Oh, yes you can!
- Genre Savvy: In "The End of the Franchise", one task involves building a bridge out of sand on a table, and the bridge must be able to support an egg. Morgana wordlessly reveals that she has watched the show before, as the first thing she does is check the lab for any hidden building supplies. She is the only contestant to discover that there are items hidden inside the table.
- Rule 34: The close-up shot of her backside slowly lowering onto a cake which Greg noted there is probably a market for. And from her obviously awkward reaction, it seems likely that she was thinking the exact same thing.
Victoria "Ol' Goosebump Arm" Coren Mitchell
"I don't fear death. In fact, the longer this series goes on, the more I yearn for it."
"This is some more of your very, very eloquent bullshit."
—The Taskmaster
A writer, television host, and professional poker player who hosts Only Connect. She is a regular guest on QI and Have I Got News for You.
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Adorkable: Victoria happily reveals that her idea of cool is customising inhalers or owning different pairs of glasses for different occasions, bought Alan a voucher for a season ticket to see Manchester United believing he'd want to see the best team note , and on two occasions presents the same homemade Mr. Greedy toy note as her entry for prize tasks. - Blind Without 'Em: She's short-sighted but doesn't wear corrective lenses (only pulling out glasses to see tasks on the big screen in the studio), meaning she can miss clues and items that are placed too far away from her.
- Broke the Rating Scale: In "A Couple Of Ethels", she incurred a five-point penalty in the first recorded task, briefly making her the first contestant to have a cumulative negative score total.
- Butt-Monkey: The designated butt monkey for the season. Much humour is made from Victoria's often subpar efforts, as well as the disparity between her intelligence and performance in tasks. She takes it with good humour, however.
- Crazy-Prepared: Completes the “sit on a cake” task in 25 seconds, as she always carries flapjacks around with her.
- Ditzy Genius: On the one hand, she can do extended sums quickly in her head and was able to solve a riddle with only half the key. On the other hand, she didn’t think Alex could score a goal past her barricade by simply kicking the ball over it. Made worse by her not even realising there was nothing stopping her from standing in the goal to block the ball.Greg: Now, Victoria...if ever there was a sentence that showed us we should never judge people on our previous impressions of their intelligence, I believe it's the sentence: "There can't be a chair within that sweet!"
- Endearingly Dorky: Greg and the rest of the cast are affectionately amused that Victoria customised her inhaler when she was a child.
- Failed a Spot Check: Because she's short-sighted and doesn't wear glasses or contact lenses, she can completely miss items and clues that are left out in the open.
- Fish out of Water: As Greg noted in episode 8, the longer the series goes on, the more she seems like a robot who has suddenly been thrust into the human world due to her seeming inability to understand what are otherwise very simple concepts to everyone else.
- In a more literal example, Victoria is likely one of the most intelligent contestants the show has ever had, a frequent guest on QI, host of the cerebral game show Only Connect, an extremely talented poker player note , and once helped take down a gang of funeral crashers. None of these skills translate to Taskmaster, and she ends up losing the series by a margin of forty points from her nearest competition - the largest deficit in the show's history - as well as coming last or joint last in seven out of ten episodes - more than any other contestant.
- Good with Numbers: When Greg is trying to work out the complicated scoring for the paint-the-space-hopper tasknote , Victoria quickly does the calculations in her head and lets him know how the contestants need to be ordered.
- Happily Married: Discussed in "Caring Uncle Minpict". For the proposal task, Victoria was the only contestant to propose to Alex on the spot, without doing anything fancy. In the studio, she revealed that she was so besotted with her husband that she panicked at the idea of creating a fake proposal to another man.
- Innocently Insensitive: When asked in a prize task to get a personalized gift for Alan Davies, she buys him a voucher to contribute towards buying a Manchester United season ticket, because she wanted to give him the experience of watching "the best team", which, from looking at statistics, she assumed was Manchester United. Alan is famously a committed Arsenal fan, and calls it the most personalised passive-aggressive attack he's ever suffered.
- Literal-Minded: Alan tried to explain to her that surprise is a key element to sport in the sense that an athlete might demonstrate unexpected speed, strength, or skill. Victoria, instead, took a more literal interpretation of the word and tried throwing unexpected twists into the rules of their MultiSport game.
- Rules Lawyer: Victoria is prone to dissecting the wording of a task and arguing her case, with varying levels of success. For the "Give Yourself Goosebumps" task she argues that since figurative examples of goosebumps note her solution note should be accepted, with the Taskmaster stating he would retroactively award her additional points if he saw evidence on the internet that the nickname "Ol' Goosebump Arm" had taken off.
- In the prize task for "Croissants is Croissants" note she presents a homemade Mr Greedy toy, Greedy Esq., and is ridiculed for it, earning her fourth place. She presents the same toy for the prize task in "The Integrity of the Product" note , successfully arguing that since Greg had ridiculed it in the prior episode, it must be a contender for first place in that category. The Taskmaster praises her entry, awarding it first place.
- Shipper on Deck: For Greg and Alex.Victoria: I was just thinking I'm starting to find your relationship quite erotic.
- The Smart Guy:
- She confounds Greg through logic and also demonstrates the ability to quickly work out multiple averages in her head.
- When presented with a riddle that is written in code, she manages to decipher most of it with only half the key and then immediately figures out the answer to the decrypted riddle.
- Too Clever by Half: While undoubtedly very smart, Victoria keeps pushing her luck with her intellect and persuasive abilities, whether it’s trying to convince Greg her prize task entries are actually good, or making rash bets with Alex about whether or not he could score a goal past her barricade.Greg: This is some more of your very, very eloquent bullshit.
- Wrong Genre Savvy: She admits in "Caring Uncle Minpict" that when she was picking her submissions for the prize tasks, she had expected Greg to have more appreciation for wordplay and humor, rather than making straightforward decisions based on which prize was most desirable. Ed Gamble has noted on the podcast though that Greg can and has been swayed by clever prize tasks in the past; the key is how you sell it. Victoria just does not have the right type of charisma to pull it off.
