Taskmaster Series 18 Episode 2: The Stats Round Up

HOWDY! DINA HERE, TELLING YOU THAT IF YOU HAVEN’T WATCHED EPISODE 2 OF TASKMASTER SERIES 18, THERE ARE SOME MIGHTY BIG SPOILERS BELOW, Y’ALL!

HOT DIGGA-DEE DOG: Jack Dee uses his Hot Dog Suit Joker to win the second episode with a points tally of 20 (4.00 points per task) and leap into the series lead!

Jack with his new best friend, An Effigy of Guy Fawkes.

Let’s get straight to it and look at the stats… TODAY!

Headlines

• Jack Dee won this episode without actually winning a task — he becomes the sixth contestant ever to do this, after Frank Skinner (Series 1 Episode 5), Dave Gorman (Series 3 Episode 4), James Acaster (Series 7 Episode 3), Lou Sanders (Series 8 Episode 2) and Jenny Eclair (Series 15 Episode 4).
• This was down to the Hot Dog outfit (about which we will talk more later) which gave him an extra 4 points — although it is worth saying that even without the bonus, no other contestant scored more points than Jack. If Jack had decided against the Joker, he would have been level with Emma Sidi (16, 3.20 PPT).
• Jack leads the series on 36 points, 4 clear of last week’s winner Rosie Jones — without the Hot Dog Joker points, Jack and Rosie would be neck and neck (possibly in a bin-liner, like they were in the team task).

• There’s a 15 point gap between Jack in 1st (36 points) and Andy in 5th (21 points) — there has only been a higher gap after two episodes in five previous series (Series 2 had a 23 point gap, Series 3 had an 18 point gap, Series 11 had a 20 point gap, Series 13 had a 17 point gap, and Series 14 had a whopping 26 point gap). It’s not all set in stone, however — in three of those series, the person leading at this stage did not go on to win the series — Series 2 (Jon Richardson), Series 3 (Al Murray) and Series 13 (Chris Ramsey).

Prize Task (“The most serious object that looks quite silly.”)

• Rosie Jones won the prize task for the second week in a row — she is the fifth contestant to manage this at the start of their series, after Tim Key (Series 1), Noel Fielding (Series 4), Tim Vine (Series 6) and Steve Pemberton (Series 17). Combined with her live task win last week, she is the first contestant to win the first three studio tasks in a row since Tim Key in Series 1.

• Somewhat surprisingly for a show like Taskmaster, this is actually the first prize task to feature the word “silly”. In fact “silly” has only come up in the wording of one other task previously — in Series 17, when the contestants had to declare a gardening tool in a silly voice.
• Rosie Jones is obviously the first contestant to bring in their own coffin but she is not the first to bring in an item for storing remains — in the finale of Series 16, Julian Clary brought in an urn containing the ashes of his friend who loved Taskmaster and took home five points. (He also won the episode so thankfully took home the urn as well.) Meanwhile in the third New Year’s Treat, Amelia Dimoldenberg brought in a (cardboard) coffin for a fly for the item that Greg would be most surprised she owns (and received a barely comprehensible three points).
• Other prize tasks infused with death include Jenny Eclair’s deceased dad’s hair for Most Heroic Thing (5 points), the last will and testament of a stranger that Bridget Christie found in a skip (5 points), Katherine Parkinson’s dead wasp for Best Thing With Wings (3 points), and Frankie Boyle’s “high concept death bag” for Best Greg Davies merchandise (1 point).
• Andy Zaltzman nabbed 4 points with his effigy of Guy Fawkes — he’s the first contestant to bring in an effigy that is actually meant to be burned (as opposed to just an effigy that is just a statue/representation of someone, like Noel Fielding’s Woollen Noel, complete with disturbing woollen penis).
• Jack Dee brought in a safety harness — which he also chose to model himself. This is the first time this series that a contestant has modelled a prize task themselves, and seems to be a growing trend on the show (Mae Martin demonstrated their coward’s glasses in Series 15, Joanne McNally got into her Tutankhamun sleeping bag in Series 17). Jack has scored 3 points in the first two prize tasks — decidedly middling, but he’s following in the footsteps of previous champions Sarah Kendall (Series 11) and Sam Campbell (Series 16), as well as previous not-so-champions Aisling Bea (Series 5), Jo Brand (Series 9) and Victoria Coren-Mitchell (Series 12).

Jack Dee modelling a safety harness.

• Emma Sidi’s “Comic Sans Is My Daddy” clock scored just 2 points. This is the seventh time a clock has been brought in as a prize — although five of those times were for the “Most Flamboyant Clock” prize task of Series 3. The only other time a clock has been brought for a prize was in Series 11, when Charlotte Ritchie brought in three alarm clocks for The Most Annoying Thing prize task.
• It was unremarked upon but Emma did another wink here in an attempt to sell the idea that her clock was cheeky. Unlike last week, it did not work.

Another bawdy wink.

• Babátúndé Aléshé brought in a (toy) Viking helmet and scored just one point. This was the first mention of the Vikings on the show since Series 5, when Alex revealed that a Viking from New Zealand had eaten a dry Weetabix in 2.17 seconds (a world record). It’s not entirely clear why he did this (the Viking or Alex). Like many prizes over the years, one should expect to see this helmet turn up in the shed or dressing up cupboard in future series (for instance, Jenny Eclair’s dog mask (Series 15) turning up in Sophie Willan’s Make This Mannequin Come Alive task (Series 17)).
• Babá has scored just 3 points from the first two prize tasks — only Hugh Dennis (Series 4), Nish Kumar (Series 5), Asim Chaudhry (Series 6) and John Kearns (Series 14) have scored fewer points.

Pre Task One — The Joker

• This is the first time in Taskmaster UK that there’s been a task (or bonus) that stretches across a whole series (as opposed to being confined to a single episode). The only vaguely comparable task is in Series 16, when Alex consistently teased contestants about a “secret task” throughout the series — which none of the contestants actually found, so it had a minimal effect on the show.
• This is a unique innovation to English-speaking Taskmaster (as in, I haven’t seen it in TM Australia or TMNZ): anyone with detailed knowledge of the international versions can let me know if this has been seen anywhere in Taskmaster across the globe…

“Oh, this old thing?”

• For the second week in a row, this “task” started with something being withheld from the audience (what costume Alex was wearing), after the first task of the first episode (where contestants didn’t read the task aloud). In this sense it was also a mirror inverse of a task in Series 8, where contestants had to work out what costume Alex was wearing through a complex series of honks, while the audience could see he was dressed as a giant parrot.
• The costume is, of course, a giant hot dog — this is the first time anyone has worn a giant hot dog on the show. This probably shouldn’t be surprising, but given the number of weird and wonderful costumes we’ve had over the years, it’s still worth mentioning. The only thing that comes close that I could find was in TMNZ Series 2, when Laura Daniel brought in a hot dog hat for The Most Edible-looking Inedible Item. She scored 2 points and should have thanked Jeremy for that.

Task One — Remember These Ten Fine People

• There have been a few memory tasks in the show’s history — in Series 5 the contestants had to play “spot the difference” with a scene that changed while they were blindfolded (where Mark Watson failed to recognise Alex Horne, his friend of many decades, had been switched out with someone else); in Series 8 the contestants had to memorise the order of a deck of cards (which Lou accidentally shuffled immediately); in Series 9 the contestants had to recall everything that was hanging the lab; in Series 10 the contestants had to learn lines (and Richard Herring had to be a pervert); in Series 12 the contestants had to memorise a thrusting dance in a church; while in Series 13 the contestants had to learn Swedish from a phrasebook in 10 minutes (although Bridget Christie got around this by getting her brother to speak Swedish on the phone).
• The first memory task in the show’s history is particularly relevant to this task though — in Series 1, the contestants had to memorise three names each of an Australian Rules football team for the fourth live task of the series. Among the names of those players were Chisel, Grillsy, Reggie, Gordo, The Colonel, Dina, Blanket, The Yank Tank, Izzy and Trev — all names of the “fine people” the contestants had to memorise in this week’s task.
• Some of the fine people had distinguishing features from old tasks — Gordo was wearing the Ahoy hat, first brought in by John Kearns for a prize task (The Thing That You’d Most Like To Have With You On A Car Journey), and later worn as a safety hat by all the cast members of Series 15 for the barge task; Trev was wearing steampunk blackout goggles, previously seen in Series 11, when contestants had to put items on the table in order of number of sides while wearing the goggles; Reggie was wearing a golden cap, which was the hat which Kiell Smith-Bynoe chose to throw onto the Greg statue from the furthest distance during Champion of Champions 3. There are doubtless more that I’ve missed, please comment angrily below to let me know!

• This was the first two-part task of the series — in that this task was actually just a set up for another one at the end, and points were only awarded right at the end of the episode. The show has done this multiple times before, most recently last series, when contestants put together a hamper for one of their rivals and then had to make a portrait out of the items in that hamper. As there were no points awarded at the end of the first part of the task, and as there were no points awarded in the reveal of the Joker, this is almost certainly the longest an episode has gone without points being awarded for a filmed task. (I say almost certainly because there’s no possible way for me to check without going through every single episode and I’m not doing that, I have a wife and kids, come on.)
• Emma Sidi scored 5 points and won this task, but didn’t score the most number of points due to Jack’s use of the hot dog bonus. This is only the third time this has happened in Taskmaster UK history: in Series 4, Hugh Dennis scored five points for eating the most amount of his exotic sandwich, but he was still outscored by Mel Giedroyc and Noel Fielding, who were given bonus points for snorting an M&M and eating a bit of Alex’s beard respectively; and in Series 12 Victoria Coren Mitchell technically won the “Sit On A Cake, Fastest Wins” task in Series 12 but she was still outscored by Morgana Robinson, who earned an extra 5 points for the “best cake”, taking her score up to 6.
• This is the first objective filmed task of the series that Jack Dee has not won (although confusingly he did still score the most number of points). As the oldest contestant, Jack is bucking a trend — only three times in the past seventeen series has the oldest contestant scored the highest number of points in objective tasks in their series (Hugh Dennis in Series 4, Bob Mortimer in Series 5 and Dara Ó Briain in Series 14).
• Never in the history of the show has a contestant decided to bust a two-step instead of trying to finish a task, so congratulations to Babá I guess?

Babá making good choices.

Task Two — Become The Best Multi-headed Creature

• The first team task of the series, and quite an unconventional split, where neither gender nor age are defining factors. This is only the third time in ten series that the team of two have been neither the same gender nor the oldest contestants in the series — Richard Herring and Daisy May Cooper (Series 10) and Munya Chawawa and Sarah Millican (Series 14).
• It’s also the first time that all the teams have met indoors since Series 9, before the pandemic (Richard and Daisy met in the lab in Series 10, but the team of three met in the garden due to Covid restrictions). It’s also the first time ever that a contestant has immediately corralled their teammate into helping them do an unsuccessful handstand, and the first time a contestant has introduced themselves with their full name to their teammates.

This just feels like a bad idea.

• This task shared similarities with Series 8’s “Make Yourself Look Like One Person” team task — like Jack and Rosie, the team of three in that task used a bin bag to make themselves like one person, while Andy, Babá and Emma used Joe Thomas and Siân Gibson’s technique of a really, really big blanket.
• There are also similarities with the first team task of Taskmaster Australia Series 1, where, despite it not being part of the actual task, the Team of Three decided to speak one word at a time, which meant they asked Tom Cashman such impossible-to-answer riddles as “what… is… your… name.”
• The Team of Three in particular used a lot of items from previous episodes in their costume — there was the skull that Steve Pemberton used as in his portrait of Joanne McNally in Series 17; the alluring aimal (the Siberian Tiger) from Series 14’s “pin the alluring tail on the alluring animal”; the baby heads from Sam Campbell’s cool but scary googly-eyed gang from Series 16; while Emma Sidi’s favourite tool (the blender) was used previously by Joe Lycett, Hugh Dennis and Jamali Maddix. Thankfully they’ve cleaned out the bits of camel since then.

Babá reacts to Emma’s great smoothie idea.

• Greg was not in a good mood, scoring both teams just 2 — it’s the first time ever Greg has given out the same scores for the first team task of a series. It’s also the first time that Greg has not awarded 5 to either team in the first team task of the series. Team tasks have previously been the biggest source of points inflation, but with just 10 points scored in total, this was the the lowest scoring team task in sixteen series. You have to go back to Series 1 for a lower scoring team task (when the scoring was all over the place).

Task Three — Capture the Most Remarkable Footage on this Doorbell Camera.

• This is the third task in the show’s history to directly refer to the doorbell, after the task in Series 10 where contestants had to ring the doorbell while building a beermat tower; and a task in the third New Year’s Treat, where the celebrities had to obey instructions every time the doorbell rang (which is where we got the fantastic footage of Olympian and national treasure Sir Mo Farah screaming HELLO! WOOOOO!).
• It’s the fourth time that contestants have been given a camera and have had to shoot footage with it — in Series 2 they were given a disposable camera and had to find an inanimate object that looked just like them; in Series 5 they were given a headcam and had to record the most incredible footage (which is where Aisling Bea created Spoony Neeson, Sally Phillips recorded the birth of Alex Horne and Nish Kumar got told off in the corner of the studio by Greg for purposefully sabotaging himself); while in Series 12 the contestants had to film the most thrilling 30 second footage on the welly-cam (where we got Guz Khan’s West Country farmer duel, ‘ooh-arr, blud’.)
• Rosie Jones won her first filmed task with her reimagining of the nativity — like Sally Phillips in the headcam task, she depicted the birth of Alex (thankfully mostly off-screen), although unlike Sally Phillips she also depicted Alex as our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. It’s a huge improvement on her last subjective filmed task where she came last (last week’s Do The Most Beautiful Thing with Bubbles) — she’s only the third contestant ever to score 1 in their first solo subjective filmed task and then 5 in their second, after Roisin Conaty (Series 1) and Asim Chaudhry (Series 6).

Rejoice, rejoice.

• Jack Dee scored 4 points and was the only contestant to take the doorbell off the house — in so doing, he employed a tactic used by Mawaan Rizwan in another doorbell task (where he brought the doorbell inside the house and pressed it as he built his beermat tower). Despite giving himself the option of filming anywhere in the house, Jack went for less than a metre away from the original location and filmed Alex’s “bowel movements” coming through the sewer. Here he shared a strategy with an aborted Bob Mortimer task attempt in the head cam task, where Bob said that if all else failed he would film himself going to the toilet (and the footage would be incredible because he has an unnaturally high anus).
• Emma Sidi scored 3 points for her posting the pancake sketch — her highest score for a filmed subjective task so far (after a 2 in the bubble task, and a 2 in the team task). It’s early days, of course, but as the character/sketch comedian of the group, Emma is perhaps scoring a little low in an area that she might have earmarked as a category to pick up points. Strangely, all three of her filmed subjective tasks so far have featured food — as well as the pancake last week, she was eating a chocolate bar in the bubble task last week and she was the brains behind the “really impressive” smoothie in the team task (despite Babá’s concerns).
• Babátúndé Aléshé may have scored 2 points for his effort (which he did admit “was shit, bro”), but he did at least make good use of the shed — he used the kids play tunnel, previously seen in Series 6 of the show (when Tim Vine crawled through it, following a piece of string, before the task had even started), as well as sitting on Linda the cow at one point (the first contestant to make use of Linda this series). He also attempted to do keepie-uppies — he is the third contestant to incorporate keepie-uppies into a task, after Paul Chowdhry in Series 3 (who kicked the ball really high into the air and then ran around the house several times before catching it, some camera trickery may have been involved) and Russell Howard, who thought the most fun he could have would be doing keepie-uppies while Alice Levine sat in the bath. To be fair to Babá, he was about as good as Russell at it.

• After winning last week’s subjective task, Andy Zaltman came back down to earth with a bump here, scoring just 2 for his confusing ghost story. He’s the second contestant to involve a ghost with a sheet over their head in one of these “film the most X footage using this Y camera” tasks, after Morgana Robinson featured a bunch of ghosts (all played by Alex Horne) in her welly-cam task — and he also made use of the chicken, who also featured in Johnny Vegas’ attempt at the “Make The Biggest Thing Disappear” task, when he made the chicken destroy London.

Live Task — Spin the Wheel

• This was a slightly odd live task, in that I don’t think there was any strategy or skill involved (unless the wheel was actually much easier to control than it appeared) — it was effectively a game of chance. I’m not sure I can recall another live task like it — the only vaguely comparable tasks are in Series 9, when contestants had to predict whether Greg was thinking of a horse or laminator (in the sense that that is mostly chance), or in Series 3 when contestants had to place the lowest unique number of donuts on a stick; but even in those tasks there was an element of outthinking Greg and their fellow contestants.
• This was Babátúndé’s first task win (and he celebrated with a two-step, naturally) — it means that every contestant has won a solo task after two episodes, which is quicker than Series 13, Series 14 and Series 17. This series is shaping up to be fairly even…

All Time Comparisons

• Jack Dee leads the pack with 36 after two episodes, and a points per task score of 3.60. This is the tenth best ever PPT score at this stage, level with Series 11 champ Sarah Kendall — not bad company to be in — although worth saying that he’s 11 points behind Dara Ó Briain’s score at this stage. Jack’s score of 4.20 PPT in objective tasks is currently the highest ever, but it’s a small sample size that is inflated by the Hot Dog Joker. It will likely come down as the series goes on (don’t worry, John Robins, your crown is still safe for now.)

• Rosie is on 32, with a PPT score of 3.20 — that puts her joint 33rd after 2 episodes, level with Rose Matafeo, Desiree Burch, Bridget Christie and Sue Perkins (although above champions Josh Widdicombe, Richard Herring and Sophie Duker, who all admittedly had a bit of a slow start in their series). Rosie’s success so far is coming from her subjective tasks — she’s scored 18 points in subjective tasks alone, just three points fewer than Andy has managed in all tasks. She has a healthy score of 3.60PPT in subjective tasks, putting her 11th in the all-time list so far (just ahead of Mae Martin and, perhaps surprisingly, Steve Pemberton).

• Emma Sidi is on 29 points (2.90 PPT), putting her joint 55th at this stage. It’s not a great score — she’s currently behind where Nish and Phil were at this stage in the series (although she’s already five points clear of the Baddiel Zone, thankfully). No contestant has ever scored fewer than 29 after two episodes and gone on to win the series — only Josh Widdicombe (who was also on 29 after two episodes) wrestled his way back into contention with a score so low. The good news for Emma is that her underlying stats do seem to be positive — in filmed solo tasks (which is often a good indicator of how well a contestant will do), she’s second in her series with a score of 3.40 PPT (behind Jack Dee, whose score of 5.00 PPT is a little inflated from the Hot Dog Joker but still very high, in fairness). Overall in solo filmed tasks she’s currently 19th overall, level with Rose Matafeo. If she can stop bringing in Comic Sans clocks, she might be alright.

• Sadly the same can’t be said for Babátúndé Aléshé or Andy Zaltzman, on 22 and 21 points respectively, and in danger of being stranded at the bottom. The seven point gap between Emma and Babá is the fourth highest ever between third and fourth at this stage — the series with bigger gaps are Series 2 (Doc Brown and Joe Wilkinson), Series 11 (Jamali Maddix and Charlotte Ritchie) and Series 17 (Sophie Willan and Nick Mohammed). Time is running out for Babá and Andy to avoid becoming the next low-scoring double act in Taskmaster history…
• Andy and Babá’s stats are remarkably similar so far. Both have the same number of points in solo filmed tasks (12 from 6 tasks [2.40PPT], putting them both in the bottom ten in the all-time list), and both have won one task and come last in two others.
• Andy in particular is in trouble — only Charlotte Ritchie, Joe Wilkinson, Paul Chowdhry, Asim Chaudhry and Jamali Maddix have performed worse at this stage. Every one of those contestants (and John Kearns, with whom Andy is level) finished either bottom or second from bottom in their series. Although at least, to quote Andy, “there’s a dignity in total failure”.

And Finally…

“Andy! Who’s YOUR daddy?”

• Emma Sidi broke a taboo of sorts in this episode — she is the first contestant ever to use or mention Comic Sans on Taskmaster UK. Frankly I don’t thank her for it. This episode marks the second time there’s been an extended conversation about fonts in the show — the first time was in Series 14 Episode 2, when John Kearns got distracted by the format menu in the “print, laminate and distribute the most signs” task and started messing about with Jokerman and Wingdings. When he couldn’t work out what any of his Wingdings signs said, he claimed the font changed every time you use it, prompting Dara Ó Briain to tell him he was thinking of the Enigma Machine.

To peruse these stats and facts yourself, simply sing “we are so impressive with instruments and I love playing instruments” at Jack Dee while he loses the will to live… or click here!

And don’t forget to listen in to Taskmaster The People’s Podcast with me and Jenny Eclair, right here!