Funny / Taskmaster S1-S5

Taskmaster Funny Index
British Series:
Series: One to Five | Six to Ten | Eleven to Fifteen | Sixteen to Twenty
Other Series: New Zealand Series | Australian Series

Series 1

In General

• Tim and Romesh constantly fighting each other in the live tasks.

Melon Buffet

• The first prize task is 'most unusual item'.
  Greg: Tim Key, what did you bring in?
  Tim: Reindeer skull.
  Greg: And that, my friends, is how to play this game.
• The watermelon task.
  • It starts off calmly with Josh and Frank gently eating watermelon, and Roisin panicking because she didn't realise she had to cut the melon open ... and then Tim and Romesh just bash the melon open and stuff as much in their mouths as possible. Romesh actually throws his on the floor and spends the entire minute on his hands and knees devouring floor melon.
  • Tim's "winking" at the camera when he eats another piece of melon after the task ended.
    Tim: I love melon.
• Paint a portrait of a horse whilst riding a horse:
  • The reveal of everyone's portraits. Most of them are quite bad, but Tim's is by far the worst - despite spending the most time riding the horse, his portrait of Baz ended up looking more like a mouse or anteater.
  • Romesh embellishing his method of painting Baz the horse:
    Romesh: Have you seen the film The Matrix? You know when Neo suddenly sees everything in code, I suddenly saw everything in auras and I saw Baz's spirit and I basically tried to capture that on the canvas.
    Josh: Oh, stop being such a wanker!
  • Roisin opts not to ride the horse, so Alex and the production team provide her with a mechanical horse to ride on. The VT of her painting is set to the theme from Rawhide.
• Tim going nuts while trying to get all the water out of the bath.

The Pie Whisperer

• The entire "High Five a 55-Year-Old" task:
  • First, Frank makes it 10 minutes before deciding that finding a 55-year-old would be too hard and instead decides to high-five several people whose ages add up to 55. This leads to him high-fiving two 27-year-olds and threatening to withhold ice cream from a baby until it high-fives him.
  • Romesh utterly fails the task. Several of his attempts don't work, including standing in place with a sign, and he eventually settles for high-fiving a 50-year-old. Greg already acts disappointed in him, and then it's revealed Romesh took an hour before giving up. Greg is horrified to realize Romesh stood in place with a sign for close to an hour.
  • Tim awkwardly walks around the mall for several minutes, and then in a stroke of luck, the first person he talks to is 55. However, Tim tells the man they're filming for Comic Relief, a very well-respected charity in the UK. The other contestants promptly lambast Tim for using charity as a strategy.
  • When the results come in, Josh is first... and Tim is second. With criticism from the other contestants, Greg agrees that Tim violated some sort of ethics code, and offers him a deal: he can keep the second place, but only if he pledges to donate £185 to Comic Relief. Tim decides to turn this in his favor and asks how much it would cost to get moved up to first place, which Josh angrily objects to. Frank then decides to get in on this as well and tries to outbid Tim for first place.
• Roisin forcing Alex to eat a pie filled with hot mint toothpaste. Her method is absolutely absurd. Tim just asks Alex to break open the pies because the rules only say the contestant cannot do it. Roisin thinks of the same idea but instead of just looking at what is in the pie, she turns her back and has Alex eat the pie and then tries to judge what is in it based on his facial expression. Greg points out that she basically broke the game and then for no reason created her own hurdles to make the challenge almost impossible.
• There's Romesh's short film, Tree Wizard.

The Poet and the Egg

• During the 'throw a teabag into a mug' task:
  • Romesh's frustration at discovering the other contestants used boxes to help guide their teabag into the mug.
    Romesh: There was no box, mate!
  • The contestants were provided dry tea bags for the task. Most of them figured out almost immediately to wet them. Romesh on the other hand...
    Frank: Someone will take the first 45 minutes realising it's better if they're wet.
    (immediate cut to Romesh who is already well into the task)
    Romesh: Just realised I should probably wet them.
• The 'buy a gift for the Taskmaster' task is particularly good, including such highlights as Tim getting Greg some book tokens, and Josh getting Greg's name tattooed onto his foot (which wins him the task).
• During the live task, Greg comments that Romesh appeared nervous and asks Alex to bring something to comfort him. Alex puts a box in Romesh's lap.

Down an Octave

• Tim brought in an airline ticket for a day trip to Cologne in Romesh's name^note the ticketholder could be changed but has to be booked initially under someone's name. for the prize task. Roisin comments that she would want to keep that prize if she won the episode, and then Greg suggests that she would have to disguise herself as Romesh, with Roisin being a woman and second-generation Irish and Romesh being a man and second-generation Sri Lankan.
  Roisin: (looking briefly to Romesh) Easy, mate! I'll just rant everywhere. RAARGH!
  Romesh: That's not the biggest difference.
• The "make this block of ice disappear" task:
  • Roisin asks Alex to aid her at every step of her task, such as moving the block of ice under the bathroom window and pulling a strand of her hair away from her mouth. She also posits that melting the ice with the shower head is what must have been like on the set of Frozen (2013).
    Greg: You do realize that Frozen is a cartoon?
  • Tim and Alex arguing over whether or not Tim throwing a block of ice into the river has made it 'disappear'.
• In the "collect the most tears in this eggcup" task:
  • Roisin watches Steel Magnolias but she becomes so wrapped up in the movie that she forgets the task at hand.
  • Tim asks Alex to search for powerful art. The image that Alex procures is a museum installation of a farting bull sculpture charging into a half-demon man, which prompts Tim to laugh profusely, but unfortunately does not produce any tears.
  • Frank singing sweetly as he collects the tears from various cameramen.
• The episode has Josh being made to count how many baked beans there are in a can, followed by the number of spaghetti hoops, and finally grains of rice in a bag. This wasn't actually a task, it was just something done to make him the Butt-Monkey.
  Josh: You feel like a loser, but then you realise you're not the one that's having to watch this five times, so I don't know who's the bigger loser out of me and you on this one.

Little Denim Shorts

• The challenge is to move a boulder as far as they can in 60 minutes:
  • Roisin calls a courier and asks how long it would take to get the boulder to Camber Sands, which would take more than the hour. She decides against it, and goes back inside the house. Meanwhile, the boulder is still in the garage. Roisin ends up rolling the boulder out towards the end of her hour.
  • Tim must have just seen Up because he ties a bunch of helium balloons to it to try and make it float away. Then he just puts it on Alex's van and drives it away.
  • Not to mention Romesh's attempt, in which he gives the boulder to a man with a van, and then accidentally tells him to drive in the wrong direction, meaning the boulder never really gets that far from the house at all.
  • Frank describes a short conversation he had with someone on the platform while waiting for a train:
    The Man: What's that?
    Frank: It's a boulder.
    The Man: What's a boulder? Is it like a big rock?
    Frank: (nods)
• Everyone attempting to make Fred the Swede blush
  • Frank tries to make Fred blush by describing his own genitals and doing a version of ASMR.
  • Roisin first tries to make Fred blush by describing the plot of Total Recall (1990). Even after she discovers the hack of asking Fred to stand with his head between his legs, she still continues with that line of thinking.
    Roisin: So where would you have the third [breast], in the middle or around the back?

The Last Supper

• While discussing how the egg-golf task will be scored:
  Alex: That's something you're going to have to ask yourself.
  Greg: Ok, I will. 'Greg...'
  Roisin: YEEAAAAASSSSS?
• The team task is to create a convincing home video blooper film:
  • Josh, Roisin, and Romesh's video left much to be desired. Roisin is holding the camera and goads Josh to push Alex into a cake, after which Alex slips and falls into a kiddie pool. Unfortunately, her camerawork is so shaky that she hardly captured the actual bloopers. The best part is the three attempting to justify the quality of the film, with Roisin claiming that she went "too method" and was attempting to "Blair Witch" it.
  • Frank and Tim's fake blooper, which contains an actual blooper.
• The alphabet meals:
  • Romesh playing the xylophone while Alex eats his alphabet meal.
  • Tim included ingredients like dog food and added grapefruit halves into every course (calling it "citric faeces").
    Alex: If somebody served this to you, you would not remain in contact with them.
    Tim: I've served it to you.
    Alex: And so it ends.

Series 2

Fear of Failure

• The contestants struggling to keep three large exercise balls on top of a yoga mat at the summit of a hill, in particular Joe and Jon's balls both rolling all the way back down the hill.
• The infamous debacle that is the 'throw a potato into the hole without touching the red green' task.
  • At one point Joe is on his knees, begging.
    Joe: Please don't take this away from me.
  • While Joe is out of the room, Doc gives his rationale for not voting to give him the point:
    Doc: Without those couple of centimetres that he gains over the red... that potato would've been all rim and bounced out.
  • Then, when Joe comes back in, and Greg disqualifies him:
    Doc: That's harsh. [The audience immediately bursts out laughing, prompting a suspicious look from Joe] I'm just sayin'! That's, that's fuckin' harsh.
    Jon: (who also voted against Joe) Yeah, we fought for you, mate, but... (he points to Katherine and Richard, who both voted in favour of Joe)
• The contestants are faced with the task of finding the answers to six personal questions from someone who understands English but may only respond in Swedish. Joe Wilkinson, who failed to get any of the answers, had this gem of an interaction:
  Joe: You frightened of anything?
  Swedish person: Att misslyckas. (To fail.)
  Joe: (not understanding) Yeah, me too. (slumps his head on the table)
  (Later, on the Taskmaster set)
  Greg: And if there was any debate about who of our contestants would make the worst U.N. ambassador, there he is right there. Incredible.
  Joe: I hated him.

Pork is a Sausage

• For the "eat the egg the quickest" task, Doc and Jon cook the egg before wolfing it down as quickly as they can. Joe takes it even further and prepares his egg with an elaborate toast and salami spread.
• The task is to make a music video for a nursery rhyme, and every contestant produces a hilarious result.
  • Jon does a very creepy rendition of 'Three Blind Mice'.
  • Doc Brown, while recording a video for his rap version of 'One, Two, Three, Four, Five', apparently punched a fish so hard its scales became embedded in his hand.
  • Richard parodies Bitter Sweet Symphony with his video for 'She'll Be Coming Round the Mountain'.
  • Katherine writes her own nursery rhyme, about cleaning your teeth. Alex stood in as the tooth model.
    Alex: I can fit a pound coin in between my two front teeth.
    Jon: Is that so you don't get stolen from supermarkets?
  • And then there's Joe Wilkinson's attempt.
    Greg: [after remarking how Joe didn't get the lyrics right] On that farm he had a pig, E-I-E-I-O. With a...
    Joe: What — what song are you singing?
• Tasked with finding an inanimate object resembling himself, Richard Osman photographs a 'protective glasses must be worn' sign.
• The pizza ordering task:
  • Doc gets increasingly frustrated with the person taking his order but insists that he got along well with them.
  • Katherine, while avoiding the use of the banned words, mentions that she is not from England as an excuse for not knowing words like cheese.
  • Richard is the only one not to use any of the banned words while ordering. However, the person taking his order is undoubtedly confused and messes up his order, so he ends up with the least accurate pizza order (there are two pizzas for a start).
  • All the contestants could win a bonus point if the person serving their order said the word 'bubbles'. Most of the comedians seemed to be under the impression that they themselves were not allowed to say 'bubbles'. Both Doc Brown and Richard tried to do this by asking their server if they could remember the name of Michael Jackson's pet chimp; and Katherine and Jon tried describing a bubble. Joe took a different approach:
    Joe: Could you do me a huge favour, and say the word 'bubbles'?
    Server: Bubbles? No.

A Pistachio Eclair

• One of the tasks is to impress the mayor of Chesham:
  • Joe Wilkinson decides to impress him by buying him beer and 42 Calippos. And £15.
  • Jon's attempt to impress the mayor is so cringe-worthy that he leaves the theater to avoid watching the replay. First he shows a photo of the titular eclair... which he had bought and not made. Then he shows a photo of whales on a holiday to America and attempts to make dolphin noises. And finally he ends up singing "Desperado," which he expressly tried to avoid (but both he and the mayor knew it was inevitable).
    Jon: I'm going to end up singing you a song, aren't I, Peter?
    Mayor Peter Hudson: We all know where that's going to end up.
    Jon: I'm going to end up screaming a song into your face
    Greg: [later, in the studio] Interesting, innit? Because you could argue that Jon has a much better voice than Doc... and yet, it was far more embarrassing.
• Alex summarises the unexpected silhouette task as "The Lion King, The Moon Attack, The Acid House Face, The Animal Attack, and The Balloon Tumescent."
  Richard: It's like one of those really terrible years at the Oscars.
• The gift-buying task returns, and there's a particularly good exchange when Katherine reveals that she bought Greg a plot of land, making him technically 'Lord Greg Davies':
  Katherine: What's your name?
  Greg: ...Greg.
  Katherine: No.
  Greg: ...yes?
  Katherine: I changed it!

Welcome to Rico Face

• The entire 'conceal a pineapple on your person' task:
  • Jon decides to wear the pineapple bits which he wasn't able to hide within the time in a container on his head. This is Alex's first guess.
  • At one point, Alex guesses correctly because a fly comes out of Jon's sleeves.
  • Richard decides to hide the pineapple leaves in his unzipped fly.
  • In contrast to the men, Alex is much more bashful about guessing where the pineapple has been hidden with Katherine.
    Alex:Do you have any in your bra?
    Katherine: Nope.
    Alex: [gesturing around his pelvis] In the front area?
    Katherine: [cracking a smile] What do you mean "the front area?"
• Jon doing all four tasks that the other contestants have set for him, which include Katherine's task of 'do a makeup tutorial'.
• The team task to build the best item for the Taskmaster:
  • Joe spends most of the task complaining while Katherine and Doc work diligently to fit items together.
  • Jon and Richard end up staging a hostage video to market their "tickle station" with Alex in the front seat and Richard (and by proxy Greg) seated behind him tickling him.

There's Strength in Arches

• Richard Osman throwing a shopping trolley over a river.
  • From that same task, Richard spending forever pumping up an air bed before he starts, then discovering that he never needed to and it probably made the task harder.
  • Doc wades across the canal to get to the shopping trolley with some of his shopping. After he's finished putting the groceries into the trolley, he sees that there are not one, but two bridges that he could have used to cross to the side of the canal with the shopping cart.
• The contestants completely failing to notice the useful bridge-building items taped under the table, despite several clues saying 'under the table'.
  • One of the clues is a boat with ‘under the table’ written in Spanish on the side. Jon translates the phrase but fails to put two and two together.
  • Doc’s reaction to this reveal.
    Doc: You know my eyesight is affected around bridges!
• The live task initially requires contestants to 'put on gloves, eat a banana, correctly put on a tie, and clap'. Katherine argues that this is sexist, as she does not know the correct way to put on a tie. By way of a solution, Richard shifts the comma before 'correctly' to after it, so the contestants now have to 'eat a banana correctly'. Joe ends up spectacularly failing this part of the task, claiming to be allergic to bananas and stuffing the banana whole into his mouth without peeling it.

Series 3

Pea in a Haystack

• The prize task is to bring in the most flamboyant clock. Al Murray opts for clock that comes with five gas burners and two fan ovens (aka his oven from home), and Dave Gorman brings in a digital clock that can heat up food (aka a microwave oven).
• The "reach the microwave in as few steps as possible" task:
  • Rob Beckett decides to minimize his steps by rolling on the ground the whole way. This makes him extremely dizzy, covers him in goose poop, and even makes him sick by his own admission.
    Rob: Oh, I've just had a coffee as well! I feel like me head's going to explode!
    • This culminates with Rob attempting to do a parkour jump over a railing to avoid rolling, but instead doing an awkward forward roll and landing on his back, causing the normally-stoic Alex to burst out laughing.
      Rob: (retching) Arguably, it's a more efficient way of transporting yourself about. More fun. Er, don't have a big coffee beforehand. I thought I was going to be sick out me eyes!
    • Somehow, he makes it in time and ends up winning the task for his "shitty, sicky performance".
• Dave getting caught cheating at the 'propel a pea the furthest distance' task.
• The "make the best snowman" task without the use of snow:
  • Al makes his snowman by building a moulding, pouring water in it and adding ice, and putting in in the freezer. The result is what Greg describes as a "creature in pain."
  • Sara makes her snowman out of ice cream and calls it "Scoopy." Then Alex rolls additional time-lapse footage of Scoopy after the task melting!
    Greg: You know what, at the end of that VT, Scoopy was still happier than Al's snowman.
  • The reactions to Paul Chowdhry's "Snow Bear."
    Paul: 'S a Snow Bear, innit?
    Sara: It's not a bear, that's a-
    Dave: (through stifled laughter) It's a rabbit with some ice on it!

The Dong and the Gong

• The 'Surprise Alex' task.
  • Paul pops out of a box in a clown costume, calling himself 'the Brown Clown'. In the studio, Paul reveals that he had been waiting inside the box for over 40 minutes, even though he knew that he had an hour to set up his attempt before Alex would come out of the shed.
  • Al, meanwhile, strips to his underwear and smashes a massive gong. Even better when it's revealed the gong wasn't given to Al by the production team - he just happened to know a gong rental place up the road and sourced it himself.
  • As part of Dave's surprise, he bribed the male crew members to strip down to their boxers. One person, however, ended up with a cardboard box protecting his modesty.
    Dave: I said "boxers" and he misunderstood.
  • Rob dresses up as a grandmother and sits on a sofa just outside the shed. The cackling as he hoses Alex down with a power washer, followed by a genuinely concerned "I'm sorry! I'm sorry, are you alright? Are you wet?" netted Rob the win.
    Rob: (dressed as a grandmother, sitting on a couch) Alex, you've been a bad boy! (sprays Alex with a power washer) AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
    • A very baffled Greg asks Rob what he was thinking; Rob admits when they filmed the task, he'd had a child the week before and was running on very little sleep.
• After overlooking the phone in the picture of Greg during the team task, Al gets tired of the team failing their spot checks.
  Al: We are a trio of dickheads.

Little Polythene Grief Cave

• Paul brings in light-up dreadlocks for the prize task:
  Paul: This way you can become a Rasta without becoming a Rasta.
• In the challenge to collect sweat in an egg cup within a time limit, Rob has the additional challenge of doing it without using his own accent, despite being unable to speak in any other accent. Rob jokes that his career has finished, and asks the others to tell him when the video is over while he cradles his head in his hands.
  Paul: Might as well give him the dreadlocks now.
  • Rob's accent morphs into various forms over the course of the sweat task, sending the studio audience and contestants into hysterics.
    Rob: (in the video, in an unplaceable accent) I'll gö and get me cöoat!
• Paul's incredibly creepy way of giving Greg Twister as a gift, which in his deadpan tone makes Greg sound like a sex offender.
• In the 'flag meal' task:
  • Sara singing 'O Canada' to the tune of 'O Christmas Tree'.
  • Al's British flag made entirely of coloured rice.
  • Paul's terrible Mexican flag, complete with a poorly made eagle, which ends up looking more like the flag of Mali.
    Alex: I don't think it looks like an eagle.
    Paul: Well, it did look like an eagle, you ate the beak.

A Very Nuanced Character

• The task where they have to find out what the pensioner did for a living while whispering.
  • Paul takes over 42 minutes to find out that the man used to be an anaesthetist:
    Alex: Paul said the word "doctor" 63 times. He made 15 sexual references and swore 23 times.
    Greg: (through laughter) 15 sexual references?!
  • The start of the video package shows contestants getting to doctor before Alex bursts their bubble:
    Rob: (whispering) That's niche. What sort of doctor? Are you mad?
    Paul: (whispering) He's a doctor.
    Alex: (whispering) What sort of doctor?
    Paul: (whispering) Oh for fucks sake you fucking bastard. (accompanied by the retiree audibly cracking up)
• The special effects task:
  • Dave and Paul play a game of football with Al's creepily grinning disembodied head.
  • Even better is Rob and Sara's, which involves Rob winking flirtatiously at the camera and making pairs of shoes spontaneously appear and disappear.
    Greg: I thought he was a very nuanced character, though, the... [holding back laughter] insane winking gay magician.
• Paul being given his own task, to 'have the most fun on a bouncy castle for one hour'.

The F.I.P.

• The task is to transfer water from one bucket to another bucket, without moving the buckets. Al, however, just decides to pay Alex to move the buckets for him.
• The team task involves playing a game of charades while on opposite sides of a river.
  • Everything seems to go wrong for Rob and Sara. They can barely hear one another, then a plane flies over while Rob is miming, and then Sara gets distracted by a cute dog named Nelly. When Rob starts ranting to the camera on his side and waving his arms and legs about, Sara thinks that he's miming and starts guessing.
    Sara: [waving to Rob across the Thames] Hey!
    Rob: [yelling across the Thames] Hello!
    Sara: Hello!
    Rob: Who are you?!
    Sara: I'm alright, how are you?!
    Rob: What's your name?!
    Sara: [addressing Alex] "What's my name?" Why doesn't he know my name?
    Rob: [addressing his camera crew] Gone quiet, hasn't she?
  • One of the TV shows on the list is Dave Gorman's show Modern Life Is Goodish. Nobody manages to get the title right, not even Alex.

Series 4

General

• Mel taking the wax seals from the task envelopes and putting them in the breast pocket of her boiler suit, to 'melt down for later'. According to Mel on the Taskmaster podcast, she never did actually melt them down but ended up giving them to a massive Taskmaster fan who was the son of a woman she worked with on a theatre show.
• Joe Lycett kissing the portrait of Greg every time he goes outside to do a task.

A Fat Bald White Man

• The task is to destroy a cake as beautifully as possible.
  • Hugh dissects it into several parts with knives, like a serial killer. Made worse by Hugh’s claim that he doesn’t even remember completing the task
  • Lolly uses her cake to paint a heart on the wall, which is quite sweet and gentle...
  • ...and then Joe destroys his cake with several fireworks. He subsequently ruins the moment by putting a blob of destroyed cake in his mouth and disliking the result.
  • Noel puts his in the washing machine (and apparently caused plumbing problems for the Taskmaster house).
  • Finally, Mel just decides to smash the cake upside-down on the table and is done in five seconds. She also ruins the moment, this time by almost tripping over a table as she steps backwards gesturing at her work.
• Hugh comes up with a clever way to draw a person he isn't looking at - he positions a mirror so that he's technically looking at her reflection. You'd assume that his drawing would be the best... but it is horrendously inaccurate, drawing a black woman as a 'fat bald white man'. Greg places him last in the task.

Look at Me

• The prize category is the most boastful item. Mel brings in a bunch of awards that her guinea pig has won. Greg notes that this is most impressive... if Mel were a child. Mel then reveals that she was 45 when she and her guinea pig won those awards.
• During the long-distance painting of the Taskmaster portrait:
  • Joe Lycett has to smile with increasing enthusiasm every 30 seconds while painting a portrait of the Taskmaster, the only contestant with this extra instruction. Greg describes it as "sixteen lovely smiles and four difficult poo faces".
  • Mel's running commentary during her attempt at the task consists of her unintentionally insulting the Taskmaster.
    Greg: (repeating Mel's quotes) "He's got hair, hasn't he?" "Mean eyes." "Big 'ole mouth." "Quite pallid, isn't he?" What's your problem, mate?
    Mel: [laughing and covering her face with her hands] I'm really sorry! I'm really sorry, I can't look you in the eye!
• Noel meddling with Alex's clock during a team task.
• The eggcup task. The contestants are instructed to move an egg into an eggcup using only the items provided on the table and without touching either the egg or the eggcup in the shortest amount of time. However, a one-minute penalty is added if someone else touches an item you touched. Mel touches all the items before she realises halfway.
  Mel: (as she touches the horse figurine) Now why is that there? I've just touched it again. I mean, look, (proceeds to touch everything) now I've touched them all now, sorry. But why is there- why is a horse there?
• Greg and the contestants (mostly Noel and Mel) becoming strangely aroused by the live task, where they had to tie as many balloons into a chain as possible whilst their hands remained underneath a hairdresser's smock and they had to stare at Greg the whole time.
  • Lolly hasn't so much created a chain as she has a squid. Alex is baffled by it.
  • Noel describes the resulting pile of balloon chains as looking as though the people who designed the London Underground map have had a breakdown.
    Noel: Where's Edgware?!

Hollowing Out a Baguette

• Greg poking fun at Hugh Dennis's subscription to the Cloud Appreciation Society.
• The whole camouflage task:
  • Noel, who uses his yellow onesie to disguise himself as a banana in a fruit bowl. His cheeky wave to the camera when it's revealed is hilarious.
  • Mel, by contrast, thought she couldn't leave the room the task started in - so she hid her face behind the sunflowers. Greg decides she deserves one clap from the audience when he announces last place.
    Greg: That is the sort of hiding place my niece would choose. She's five.
  • Lolly's attempt sees her hiding under some fake grass on the lawn. Greg, of course, immediately spots her. It later emerges that she poured icing sugar over herself to replicate the frost, with Greg noting that if anything, the decision made it easier.
  • Joe's attempt sees himself hiding in a crowd of other identically dressed people from behind. Among the others is series 3 contestant Al Murray.
    Greg: He will not accept that he's not on the show anymore!
• The team task in this episode is to make the best trailer for Taskmaster:
  • Hugh and Mel's trailer for 'Tugtemester'.
  • Lolly, Noel, and Joe's trailer features mostly stars Alex as each of the cast members taking part in odd tasks, such as injecting a sunflower with water and eating a napkin. Greg, meanwhile, is played by Noel, (sneering at the camera in a wig that does not cover his hair) while Alex himself himself is played by Lolly (in a wig with stubble drawn on, smiling in the most bizarre way possible.) The narrator (Joe) sums up the dynamic between the two beautifully.
    Joe: With your taskmaster, Greg Davies, and tiny bitch puppet Alex Horne.
• From the "persuade three dogs" task:
  • In a case of Real Life Writes the Plot, while everyone else has to persuade three dogs to place exactly 12 legs on the red mat, Lolly filmed her task with chickens (and other fowl like ducks and geese in the mix). Alex explains that the task initially called for chickens, and after Lolly shot her task but before everyone else could, there was an outbreak of avian bird flu that forced all chickens to be kept indoors.
    Lolly: [unamused] So now I have avian bird flu?
  • Greg also ridicules Lolly for asking whether they were all chickens or not.
    Greg: You kids, you're so obsessed with your iPads, you don't know the difference between chickens and ducks.
    Lolly: I can see it on the internet, I don't need to see chickens in real life.
  • Joe calls one of the dogs a prick for constantly barking at him.
  • Hugh suggested that Lolly could have picked her chickens up, to which Alex replies "or killed them."
    Greg: I mean, silly Lolly trying to wrangle [the chickens] when she could have just run round kicking their heads off.
• The task is to transfer water from one fishbowl to another without moving the fishbowls.
  • Lolly moves the fishbowls several times, and the editors even poke fun at her by interspersing clips of her saying 'Without moving the fishbowls...' into the video of her completing the task.
  • For the final task, Alex gets Lolly to read the card. As Alex hands it over to her, she gives a pointed look at Greg and asks if she’s allowed to touch it.
  • Greg repeats some choice quotes from Lolly throughout the episode:
  Greg: [quoting Lolly] "Without moving the fishbowls... Camouflage, camouflage, camouflage... They're not all chickens, right?"

Friendship is Truth

• The prize task category is 'the most surprising picture of yourself'. Hugh's entry is a mask of his own face under the rationale that strangers would never think it's him, Mel superimposes herself into a Monet painting, and Lolly's winning entry is a photo of herself in whiteface as Princess Diana as part of a "political statement about when people black up in movies."
  Greg:It's a conspiracy theory about Lady Di that we've not heard before. That she was a black woman.
• The whole 'dance to a ringtone' task, in particular Mel's overly dramatic dance, titled 'Sencha', which Alex later reveals is not to the ringtone named 'Sencha' (as Mel believed^note the ringtone that they dance to is actually called "Radiate") after all. Alex's buttcrack also pops out during his dance with Mel.
• Mel making the pommel horse disappear.

Meat

• The task is to slide the furthest in one attempt. Lolly spends forever preparing for her slide... then slips and completely misses the sled.
• In the team task, each team member is given a separate task that has to be performed in the same tub with Mel/Joe having to cover the top in cling film while Hugh/Lolly have to fill it with as many objects as possible. Noel, meanwhile, is given the unique task of filling the tub with water.
  • Mel and Hugh almost immediately realize that they were given different tasks and begin cooperating, including Mel clingfilming Alex's bare feet (as Hugh had put both his socks and shoes in the bath). Greg almost tears up at the wonderful show of cooperation. He then notes that he doesn't see why the younger team of three can't do exactly the same, which becomes hilarious with what happens next, as evidenced by Joe and Alex's sheepish expressions.
  • Joe and Lolly begin actively sabotaging each other immediately, with Joe throwing Lolly's items out of the tub and Lolly grabbing Joe's cling film and throwing them as far away as possible. Noel just watches the two bicker and fight while nonchalantly using a hose to fill the tub. Joe's final line is a belated realisation that they should've told each other their tasks.
  • Greg sums up Noel's actions during the task:
    Greg: There was a slight nod from Noel at the beginning, "is this a team task?" he asked, and then he just stood there pissing water into a bath while Rome burned.
  • Lolly's obsession with placing a large table in the bath is particularly hilarious.
    Lolly: I thought the table would stop the cling film from ruining my (pointed look at Joe) journey.

Spatchcock It

• The contestants mutilate a stuffed camel to get it through the smallest gap.
  • Mel wins the task by not mutilating her camel at all, but instead taking it to a Baby GAP - the smallest GAP store.
  • Freeze-Frame Bonus: While Mel and Alex are driving to Baby GAP, Mel made sure to put a seatbelt on the camel, to keep it safe.
• Alex is asked to pull together a montage of Mel Giedroyc being positive throughout the series (with gasps of excitement and positive exclamations like "brilliant!" and "excellent!"). It is screened in the studio ahead of the next surprise task...
• Mel, who has been maintaining a surprisingly positive attitude, is given her own task - to hide a gigantic ball from Alex. Alex finds it quite quickly. Then it is revealed that Mel was actually given two more tasks beforehand - to inflate the giant ball, then to get it out of the house and score a goal with it. (It doesn't really succeed in destroying her positive attitude, however.)
• Hugh tries to argue that tipping over the sleeping bag is not taking things out.
  Joe: Oh, not sure. "Oh, I didn't take your virginity. It just sort of fell out."
  Hugh: To be fair, it's putting something in rather than taking it out.
  Greg: You were responsible for those objects coming out-
  Hugh: Well, I didn't take them out.
  Alex: I was there and it looked like you took them out.
  Greg: (in teacher mode) Listen, I'm telling you now - you fucked that.
• Just before the cut to adverts, a loud boat horn sound effect plays for a long time. Greg points out that, as always... that sound means the end of Part 3. This is the only episode of the whole show to have this sound effect to signal it, and it comes right the fuck out of nowhere.
• Greg shuts down Noel for arguing that a carrot skipping rope doesn't exist outside of Taskmaster with:
  Greg: And you don't like flights of fancy Noel, do you.

No Stars for Naughty Boys

• The whole hide-and-seek task:
  • Hugh decides to watch Alex from inside the house and move according to where he's seen Alex go. When Hugh sees Alex enter the house, he decides to leave the room he's in; and the moment he opens the door, he sees Alex standing on the other side. Turns out, the person he'd thought was Alex was actually the cameraman.
  • Joe spends two minutes running away from Alex after he had been spotted.
  • Noel gets caught out after 16 seconds because he chose to hide behind the caravan where Alex had been counting, and then didn't move after Alex came out. Though, as Greg notes, the fact that he was wearing a bright yellow boiler suit probably didn't help his chances to begin with.
  • Alex accidentally feeling Mel's breasts while searching the wardrobe she's hiding in. What's even funnier is that you can see the exact moment on Alex's face when he realises what he's just done.
    Mel: There was a drive-by: both of them, and possibly in the Pennyfield area as well.
    Alex: I found you after two and a half minutes, and then felt embarrassed for three days.
  • Lolly taunting Alex, who is struggling to find her, by sending him a picture of herself at a beach, and one of her as a child. It takes him twenty-three minutes to finally find her.
    Greg: You've hidden yourself in time.
• Joe's new handshake, which consists of him and Alex rubbing each other's palms and saying 'I love you'.

Tony Three Pies

• The exotic sandwich task.
  • All the contestants make huge sandwiches that are edible but require a large appetite to finish it off in one sitting, except for Noel who attaches two pieces of bread to Alex's head and makes Alex perform an exotic dance.^note Alex: I've never been further out of my comfort zone. Then comes the second part of the task—they need to eat their exotic sandwich.
  • Mel's expression when she opens the second task and discovers she has to eat her giant sandwich - which contains copious amounts of chocolate and confectionery - is hilarious. She later accidentally snorts an M&M. This is so funny that even Alex, who usually keeps a straight face, is struggling not to laugh as he's trying to tell her what's gotten stuck in her nose.
• The whole of the live task, which involves drawing 'the median duck'. Joe uses lateral thinking and gets caught up in his own insistent terminology.
  Joe: You asked to see the median duck so I have done the median duck (flips over his page to reveal the words "the median duck" rather than a drawing of a duck). That says and I have drawn "the median duck".
  Greg: Or have you written it?
  Joe: ... I have drawn it. (Beat) Please! I have thought about the task, and I have written - ... DRAWN!

Series 5

Dignity Intact

• Several of the special cuddles:
  • Aisling dresses up in a robot costume, calling herself the 'cuddle-bot'.
  • Bob locks himself and Alex in the boot of a car.
  • Mark actually starts out fairly well, taking Alex on a riverside picnic... before admitting out loud he had to look up advice. He also thought bringing a photo of Alex's wife along would help.
  • Sally's, meanwhile, is absolutely ridiculous, and includes covering Alex in salad and placing slices of chocolate cake in his armpits. Later she pours water over his head. All of this while laughing maniacally. At one point Alex breaks character and starts giggling right next to her.
    Greg: At the end, you essentially waterboarded him.
    Sally: That's how I roll.
• Aisling removes her trousers for the 'get Alex onto dry land' task. Upon completing the task, she dances wearing nothing but her top and knickers while singing about how her dignity is still intact. On the side of a lake.
• It looks like Nish manages to kick a basketball into the hoop on his first attempt...and then Alex shows the other fifty-two attempts Nish took before he succeeded. According to Alex, Nish made four references to Groundhog Day and called the ball racist twice.

The Leprechaun or the Lesbian

• Mark arguing about whether a hat is a machine or not.
• In the 'paint the best rainbow in the dark' task:
  • Nish discovering the catch:
    Nish: Oh... I can't see the colours!
    Cut to the studio, where Nish has his head in his hands.
    Greg: Very nice to have the task really spelled out.
  • Bob tells a story while painting his scene.
    Bob: My very first job was as a painter and decorator. I saw the woman whose house was the first house we painted, and she said it had never needed painting since... cause it'd fucking burnt down.
  • Sally's rainbow scene is a little strange:
    Alex: She said she was going to paint two lesbians using a Test Your Strength machine.
    Sally: Well, everyone knows lesbians love using Test Your Strength machines, they can't walk past one without... (she dissolves into laughter)
  • Unfortunately, one of Sally's lesbians is painted in white paint on a white canvas, rendering the figure practically invisible.
    Greg: The awful news is one of the lesbians is dead.
  • Bob's rainbow scene, on the other hand:
    Alex: It's a little man. You said he's called Matthew and he's being chased by a policeman.
    Bob: Lovely day for it.
  • Mark is the only one to notice the illuminated light switch. Despite actually being able to see his painting, his rainbow ends up more as a square than a bow.
    Sally: That is worse than what we did in the dark.
  • Greg decides to award Aisling the five points ahead of Sally based on unusual reasoning:
    Greg: I suspect, and feel free to write in, lesbians, I suspect that they don't feel the need (Corpsing) to prove their strength using an old-fashioned Test Your Strength machine, but I can't prove that leprechauns don't smear shit everywhere.
• For the "slice a loaf of bread" task:
  • Aisling "Wrong Room" Bea slicing the loaf of bread in the caravan with a tin lid and bleeding all over the bread, interspersed with shots of Alex standing in the lab looking increasingly concerned at her absence.
    Greg: There's nothing worse than a blood-covered loaf of bread in the wrong room.
  • Nish, on watching Mark's attempt:
    Nish: I have to say, I'm starting to increasingly understand why we're being grouped together [...] because when you got that grill out, I was like, "This guy's a fucking genius."
  • Following the footage of Sally's attempt, where she used the same can lid as Aisling but produced a pair of safety gloves beforehand...
    Greg: The fact that Sally had protective gloves on... had we learned from a previous accident?
    Alex: (shakes his head, but then nods his head)
    Aisling: (looks around guiltily)
  • When Nish and Mark realize they were the only contestants to follow the rules, they actually hug each other.
    Mark: This is our moment.
• For the "make the best splat" task:
  • Alex introduces the task via a toy crane to the two teams. However, the crane fails to work during Mark and Nish's team task day because of all the rain.
  • Mark getting hurt by yogurt.
  • Bob pissed in one of the balloons that his team uses for their best splat and called it "warm fun."

Phoenix

• The 'get the ball out of the pipe' task:
  • To use Greg's summation, Aisling "entered the room, she got pissed, she put some paper down the tube, she flagrantly ignored the rules and turned the tube upside down."
  • Mark takes issue with Alex's introduction to his and Nish's attempt:
    Alex: Aisling has demonstrated that the tube has holes in so water comes out. We presumed that people would notice the holes and not just pour in... but do you wanna see Nish and Mark?
    Mark: I'm not sure I like the way that was framed really.
  • Both Nish and Mark come up with the idea to block the holes, Mark with tape and Nish with clingfilm, though you can hear, as he's covering the tube, Nish asking if clingfilm is waterproof. Though the clingfilm does somewhat block the water, Nish still can't get the ball.
    Nish: gravely This is my Everest.
  • Nish took half the movie Phone Booth, aka 44 minutes.
    Alex: After half an hour, you shouted "god it's like a bassoon!"
  • Bob not only completes the task incredibly simply but has enough time to concoct a story about a family that sells stools, ear protectors, and tape, as well as chat with Alex about catchphrases.
  • Sally, having discovered the holes, decides, for no apparent reason, a funnel is needed. Despite completing the task the second fastest, she calls this brain fart one of her horror ones, much to Nish's indignation:
    Nish: A horror one?! It took me three quarters of an hour!
• Mark Watson takes six minutes to open a briefcase. It was on the right combination from the beginning. And opening the briefcase wasn't even part of the task; it was just the thing they had to do to get the task.
• The task inside the aforementioned briefcase is the wonderfully absurd 'coconut businessman' task, which has plenty of great moments:
  • Aisling, at the start of the task:
    Aisling: Does it have to be a businessman? Or for once could we open up the idea and call it a businessperson?
    Alex: You can interpret the task however you like.
    Aisling: I will interpret it as sexist.
  • She ends up making a coconut businesswoman, who is forcing three businessmen to drink coconut water (i.e. her own blood) at gunpoint.
  • Sally's coconut businessman has a tiny Oystercard and a graph showing rising profits.
    Nish: Wow, that business is doing so well!
  • Mark makes an actual online business for his coconut... and may or may not be Hearing Voices from said coconut.
  • The highlight is Nish's, however. He emerges from the house in a suit, covering his head with a bowler hat; when he takes it off, he reveals that a coconut is underneath it, in place of his head. Alex mentions it was the task Nish laughed the most at.
    Nish: (in a vaguely Southern drawl) Hello! I'm the Coconut Businessman, off for another day of lovely business!
• In the three snacks task:
  • Aisling Bea is tasked with balancing the jelly on top of a pole. After doing so, the pole pierces the jelly and it slides down the entire length, with Aisling and Alex looking on forlornly without moving. The artistic composition of the camera shot is what sells it.◊
  • Nish's attempt at the task goes disastrously - the Weetabix he attempts to throw into the bucket keeps breaking up with each impact, and he ends up crushing the remainder in his hand while he is seething. Nish then tries to balance the jelly on the pole, but just as with Aisling and Bob, the jelly is pierced by the pole and slides down to the ground. Finally, he ruefully (and successfully) throws the spent jelly into the bucket, after which he topples over the table in frustration.
    Nish: The anger had got the best of me. It was quite a hot day. There were quite a lot of people watching and openly laughing and shouting, "Look at that man. He's terrible."
    Greg: It's interesting how quickly you can remove any hint of film star cool by getting someone to chuck a Weetabix into a bin.

Residue Around the Hoof

• The teams are tasked with doing something remarkably synchronised. Aisling, Bob, and Sally plan well - they even recorded Sally's voice telling them what to do. Aisling and Sally are very well synchronised. Bob? Not so much. He messes up very early on and from there he just goes from bad to worse. It's hilarious.
• In the 'spot the difference' task, all of the contestants notice that Alex's headwear had changed, but Aisling was the only one to spot that Alex himself had been replaced by a body double. Made especially embarrassing for Mark and Alex since they have been friends for nearly 20 years.
  Mark: (after the task is over). Thanks, everyone. (Waving to the double) Bye, Alex!
• Later in the show, the body double briefly replaces Alex in the studio.
• The task is to sneeze the fastest:
  • Aisling and Sally fake their sneezes. Greg pulls them up on it in full teacher mode.
    Greg: You two need to explain yourselves.
    Sally: You can't prove mine wasn't real.
    Greg: I can't prove it? I can ask you to tell me the truth.
    Sally immediately corpses like a teenager in trouble
    Aisling: Where is the doctor? Show me the doctor that says that's not a sneeze!
    Greg: Oh I see! You're the worst liar I've seen since I was a teacher.
  • When Greg is scoring the task, he disqualifies Nish, Sally, and Aisling:
    Greg: Well, Nish ruled himself early doors.
    Alex: Mm hmm.
    Greg: Both of the women did—
    Aisling: [interjecting] Er, "Sally and Aisling."
    Greg: Oh, I sometimes group the men together as well, but if you want me to go individual— both of the chicks, Sally and Aisling—
    [audience laughter, Aisling faux-dramatically rolls her eyes]
    Greg: Sorry — hot chicks.
    Aisling: [flattered] I'll actually take that one. Okay!

A Wind-Dried Puffin

• The prize task for most high-octane item
  • Mark brings in a stolen pair of Greg’s trousers. Mark explains that he had Ed Gamble steal them from Greg while Greg was doing a show. What really sells it is the dawning realization on Greg’s face as he puts the pieces together.
    Greg: That’s amazing! Because the last thing I said as I left that gig was ‘who loses fucking trousers?’!
  • Greg further notes that on the evening in question, he'd actually thought that Ed had seemed surprisingly quick to leave after the gig. This was apparently because Mark was at that point on the phone to him shouting at him to leg it.
• Before the task to "put the largest item in a balloon and blow it up larger than your head," Sally accidentally greets Alex as "Andy."
• The water cooler task:
  • Aisling pretends she's rowing a boat during a storm, but inadvertently knocks over the water cooler, sending water everywhere.
    Alex: You capsized on a driveway.
  • Mark tries to send the water cooler on a journey, hoping to pass it on from person to person until it's travelled a great distance. The cooler goes from South West London, to South London, to South East London... where it stops.
    Alex: It would've been faster if it had just rolled.
  • Sally pretends (presumably) to have sex with the cooler. It's both hilarious and disturbing.
• Mark had his own task - to send a cheeky anonymous text to Greg every day for five months. Although he put in a lot of effort, he discovers (to his horror) that he only sent 148 instead of the required 150, and therefore scores no points at all. He is distraught.
• The task is to make the tallest can tower while greeting Alex and saying you're from a different country every ten seconds. Aisling apparently went for ages - but we don't see any of it, as nobody realised during the task that she failed to greet Alex the first time. Much like Mark beforehand, she is distraught.
• The final task consists of each of the contestants being able to ask one question to one of five people in order to determine which of them are from Finland. While most of the questions remain fairly ordinary, Bob chooses to ask one of the potential Finns "have you ever seen or eaten a wind-dried puffin?"^note Puffin is a delicacy but it's primarily found in Iceland, and it's highly unlikely to help in a situation where you only get one question to determine someone's nationality. Naturally, everyone in the studio loses it once the question is asked, to the point where the person who was asked the question can barely get the answer out.

Spoony Neeson

• During the 'balance Alex on a see saw' task:
  • Mark demonstrates that he apparently believes Alex to weigh the same as a microwave, a Hoover, and some fruit. He is wrong.
  • When Nish is announced as the winner of that task, he goes to shake everyone's hands. When he reaches Greg, though, he is swatted away.
    Greg: Jesus Christ, we're not your friend!
• Bob Mortimer describes the troubles he has due to an unusually high anus. What follows is a masterclass in understated potty humor from Bob, causing Nish Kumar to fall out of his chair and Sally Phillips struggling to stay upright from laughing too hard.
• The task is to 'record the most incredible footage with a camera strapped to your forehead'.
  • Aisling's is a parody of Taken entitled Took, starring a wooden spoon (the titular Spoony Neeson).
  • Nish's "most incredible" footage is of him quickly and incorrectly filling out a Sudoku puzzle. Greg is so underwhelmed, he finds it necessary to go into "teacher mode" and pull Nish aside and talk to him as if he were an underperforming student.
    Greg: You're not a bad guy, Nish...
  • Sally once again has the most disturbing solution - a fake birth video, starring Alex as the baby. It's as weird as it sounds.
• One of the tasks is to get a lit candle through the house and into the caravan, where they must use the flame to light another candle; and if the flame goes out along the way, the candle will not be relit. Along the way, the house is rigged with a bubble blower machine and sprinklers.
  • The moment Nish sees the bubbles, he says "bubbly fuck" which instantly extinguishes the candle.
  • Aisling tries to run with her candle, causing it to go out within seconds of starting.
• After the tiebreak between Bob and Sally is shown, neither of them actually having gotten yoghurt into the target, Greg asks one audience member who he thought should win the episode:
  Man in Audience: Bob!
  Greg: Congratulations, Sally is the winner!

Boing Boing

• The first task in "Boing Boing" involves the contestants travelling as far as possible in three minutes while blindfolded. When they take off their blindfold, they must then retrace their steps, and whoever is closest to their starting destination wins.
  • When Greg and Alex begin with "These are intelligent people," Sally immediately bursts into an uncontrollable giggling fit.
  • Nish's attempt sees him walking around in circles while blindfolded; and when he takes it off, he walks so far away in the opposite direction to his starting point that he loses the challenge by quite some distance.
  • Despite dropping pieces of bread to help guide him, Mark wanders off in the wrong direction because a passing dog had eaten the bread!
  • Sally comments that she thought she would be able to use the bread as a compass.
• The flick book task:
  • Aisling's flick book film, in which she jumps into the arms of a random stranger who then forces her to eat dog feces.
  • Bob's is also delightfully bizarre, involving him producing a banana from his various facial orifices.

Their Water's So Delicious

• The "get the coconut as far away from the house as possible without touching the ground" task.
  • Nish gets to the doorstep of the house and chucks it, only for it to bounce back and roll back to him. Instead of picking it back up (the coconut having rolled within arm's reach) and having another go, he gives up!
  • Mark decides to work around the requirements of the task by hitching a piggyback ride from the sound man and makes it to the bank of the Thames... only to step immediately on the grass before he flung the coconut into the Thames.
    Alex: You might not have actually touched the ground, I mean, we could just check the— we could check the footage— [Closeup shot of Marks' feet clearly on the ground] yeah, you did.
• Greg's reaction to the reveal of Sally's graph showing the amount of sex she wants vs. the amount she gets:
  Greg: This is the latest in a series of incidences with Sally where she's made it very clear that she wants more sex in her life. And I think it's a bit like fossil fuels and the ozone layer — you know, the time for graphs has probably stopped, and we all — we should all huddle together and see what we're gonna do about it.
  (audience erupts in laughter)
  Aisling (genuinely scandalized): Oh my God!
  (more laughter)
  Sally: That's great! That's great, that's wonderful to hear. My work here is done. (getting up as though to exit, pointing at everyone else on stage) I'll see you... all...
• The final task of the series is for the teams to interview a woman named Rosalind and then compose a song about her:
  • Bob's questions to Rosalind are somewhat... strange.
    Bob (to Rosalind, before reading the task): Do we strike you?
    Bob: Have you stolen much in your life?
    Bob: What is your favourite meat?
    Bob: Have you ever wanted to fly?
  • It results in a final Moment of Awesome for Nish and Mark whose upbeat and genuinely very good song "I'm Always Seeing You (Do Cool Stuff)" receives enormous applause from the audience and fellow contestants, and even Greg says he has nothing bad to say about the song. Their song includes the memorable line:
    I saw you listening to the Mozart symphony
    But my attention span is... Hey, look at that tree.
  • Aisling, Bob and Sally's song, "Quite Good, Considering", is basically just a minute and a half of insulting the woman to her face, complete with Alex running around the stage fixing things that keep getting blown over by the wind and Bob passionately belting out that "Rosalind's a fucking nightmare." A particularly good rhyme from "Quite Good, Considering":
    The great thing about Alan
    Alan could not be dreamier
    But the viola player sadly
    Well, he contracted septicaemia

Champion of Champions

In General

• The trophy the contestants are playing for is a life-size model of Greg's body and is intended to be completed by the winner inserting their trophy of Greg's head onto the statue... unless Josh wins, in which case the top of his karate trophy will be inserted into the head instead. Josh won.

Wiley Giraffe Blower

• Rob lights up and starts shaking with excitement when he learns what Josh brought in for the prize task. Cue a video clip of Josh making an ill-advised appearance on a politics talk show, babbling almost incoherently about a social topic he's clearly unfamiliar with.
  Josh: The next week, the guest on This Week In Politics was one of my friends, so he phoned me up and he said ‘have you got any tips?’. I said ‘well, you should probably watch it’. So he phoned me back up and he said ‘mate, that’s the biggest car crash I’ve ever seen’. And that man was Rob Beckett!
• The live task involves the contestants writing words on a whiteboard. The only problem was that the first set of marker pens they were given were water-resistant permanent marker pens.
  Greg: You all laugh, but somebody is going to lose their fucking job.

I've Sinned Again

• Josh is given his own task, to sing along with the Taskmaster theme tune. The vocals he provides for the task are used for this episode's opening sequence.
• The contestants being asked to find out what is inside a locked briefcase. Some contestants try to work out the code. Others employ different methods:
  • Rob manages to guess what is inside the briefcase. (It's frozen peas.)
  • Noel just smashes the locks with a hammer and opens the briefcase.
  • Note that the combination to the briefcase is not only written in the room, it is WRITTEN ON THE ROOF OF THE SHED IN GIANT RED LETTERS...in such a manner that only the camera can see it if the contestant leaves the building.
• Bob's edible mask, which spawned the title.
• The last prerecorded task is to make the biggest mess and completely clear it up.
  • While most of the contestants make a physical mess, Katherine instead decides to try and convince her sister that her husband is cheating on her. It's somehow both hilarious and terrifying, and Greg duly awards her five points.
  Greg: But Jesus Christ, if for the sake of an entertainment show on Dave, Katherine Ryan's prepared to fuck her own family up, yup, she's gonna get the five points!
  • She also tries messing with her father, but he knows her too well and just laughs.
    Katherine's father: Heh heh heh...Hey, I didn't come over here on the last banana boat, you know.
  • Bob, meanwhile, realizes that the most fun is to be had actually making the mess. He spends nine minutes making a horrendous mess in the hall, one minute of bare minimum effort with a vacuum cleaner, and then leaves Alex to tidy the rest of it up.

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