Taskmaster Series 18 THE FINALE: The Stats Round Up

Warning! Past this point be spoilers for the FINAL EPISODE OF TASKMASTER SERIES 18! Do not go past the Taskmaster trophy in space if you haven’t seen THE FINAL EPISODE OF TASKMASTER SERIES 18!

One small step for Greg Davies, one giant leap for Little Alex Horne (because he’s so little)

ZALTZMAN 160 NOT OUT: a low scoring final episode, a collapse by Jack Dee and an extremely erotic goose combine to give Andy Zaltzman the Taskmaster crown! He finishes with 160 points, a PPT score of 3.20, three points clear of Jack Dee in second.

Let’s get to it and take a bite out of the entire raw onion that is THE TASKMASTER GRAND FINAL STATISTICS!

Headlines:

• Before this series, the first episode was usually a good indicator of who would win the series — ten of the previous seventeen series had been won by contestants who won (or got to a tiebreak in) the first episode. Andy, however, changed all that — not only is he the first contestant to come bottom in the first episode and go on to win, but he’s also the first championto score fewer than 10 points in the first episode. In fact, before Andy, no-one who had scored fewer than 10 points in the first episode had finished higher than third (and that was just once — Mawaan Rizwan in Series 10). Rosie Jones, meanwhile, is the second contestant to win the first episode of a series and then finish bottom (after Alice Levine in Series 6).

“This guy shares 99% of his DNA with William Shakespeare.”

• Jack Dee is the first contestant to lead in seven episodes and not win the series — it caps a miserable final four episodes for him, where his 10 point lead at the end of Episode 6 was swallowed up and replaced by a lead for Andy that, before the final studio task of the series, was as high as 8 points. Indeed, having dominated solo filmed tasks for the nine episodes, Jack fell off a cliff here — before Episode 10 he only came last in two solo filmed tasks, but in this ep he finished last twice (and scored just two points in the other task). Still, at least he has his plane.
• Emma Sidi won her fourth episode of the series, taking the lead over Andy for episode wins. It’s the sixth time the person who won the series hasn’t won the most number of episodes, after Series 2 (when Richard Osman won two episodes and champion Katherine just one), Series 4 (when Mel Giedroyc won three episodes and champion Noel just one), Series 6 (when Russell Howard won three and champion Liza just two), Series 12 (when Guz Khan won four episodes and champion Morgana just one) and Series 16 (when Sue Perkins won three episodes and Sam Campbell just two). Emma’s tally puts her in elite company, as only five contestants have won four or more (regular series) episodes of Taskmaster: Guz Khan (four), Ed Gamble (four), John Robins (five), Richard Herring (five)… and now ̶S̶a̶m̶ ̶M̶e̶n̶d̶e̶s ̶Emma Sidi.

Prize Task (The Thing Most Likely To Make Your Buttocks Clench)

• This is (perhaps unsurprisingly) the first prize task ever to specifically mention “buttocks”, although it’s the third of the series designed to elicit a specific reaction (involuntary or otherwise) from the receiver. The other two were “the thing most likely to make Greg say ‘oh Christ, now that is badass’” in Episode 4, and “the thing that most makes Greg scratch his chin” in Episode 8. Interestingly (or not, if you’re not me), unlike those tasks, this one doesn’t specifically refer to making Greg’s buttocks clench, but rather the more universal “you”. Most of the contestants went for something designed to make a generic person’s buttocks clench rather than finding something that would specifically target Greg (probably a smart move as it feels like that could get very weird very quickly) — although Babátúndé took the “you” in the task to mean “him”, which (as usual in the prize task) didn’t work out for him.

• Babá’s prize was a fake plastic frog, which scored a generous two points. He’s the second contestant to go with a frog-themed prize in the show after Sarah Kendall brought in a frog jumper for “nattiest knitwear” (also scoring two points, maybe Greg hates frogs). Other contestants have discussed their phobias on the show — Mark Watson, David Baddiel and Munya Chawawa all have phobias of popping balloons (which Munya attempted to overcome in a task where he had to pop a bunch of balloons), while Jessica Knappett has a phobia of lifts (which she tried to overcome in five minutes for a task where she had to do a quick change in a lift) — but I think this is the first time a contestant has brought in the subject of a genuine phobia for a prize (which does kind of raise the question of what Babá would have done if he had won the episode). Greg also brings up the fact that some people lick frogs — it’s the second time frog licking has been mentioned in the show in recent series, after Series 17 when Sophie Willan pretended to be a Tudor queen who licked a frog out of boredom one day and hallucinated that she was flying while screaming “bloody nora, I’m flying”.
• Andy brought in a broken padlock to a lion enclosure, along with the sound of a lion (and a translation explaining that the lion was asking Greg to lunch). After eight weeks of high scoring prize tasks, this was decidedly middling — his 3 points means that he scores 38 in prize tasks for the series and sadly doesn’t break the record (held by Desiree Burch, Mawaan Rizwan and Steve Pemberton, all on 39). Overall he finishes sixth on the prize task list, level with Tim Vine — although his run between Episode 2 and Episode 9 is the longest streak anyone has had scoring nothing but 4s and 5s in prize tasks in a series. Andy is not a strong starter or finisher, but a perfect middle order prize task contestant.

Buttocks begin clenching.

• At LAST, after ten episodes, Jack Dee finally scored higher than 3 in a prize task! Going into this final episode he was the only Series 18 contestant not to have won a prize task — he was in danger of joining Alice Levine, James Acaster, Joe Thomas, Katherine Parkinson, Morgana Robinson, Chris Ramsey, Munya Chawawa and Ivo Graham in the list of contestants to have never won a prize task in a 10-episode series of Taskmaster, and the first ever to not score over 3 in a 10-episode series. As it was, he scored 5 here for his butt-tighteningly good series of “medical” sound effects (a rubber glove, lube and a drill clearly purchased at a hardware store). It’s the fourth time in five weeks that Jack has chosen to literally bring in his prize rather than showing it on the big screen (after the fart machine in Episode 6, the ukelele in Episode 7 and the Colin Phillips Book of Information in Episode 8) — while those efforts all got him 3, this one broke through for Jack. It’s the first time since Episode 1 that Jack has scored more than Andy in the prize task, and temporarily put him within a single point of the Boxing Snookering Cricketing Centurion-Wizard… although that of course would be the closest he would get to regaining the lead.

Emma approaches with the stick.

• Emma scored 5 points for her effort (termed ominously as The Stick). This was her fourth prize task win — in a neat quirk, every episode she’s won has also seen her win the prize task. Emma did very well in prize tasks in the end, averaging 3.50 points — that would have made her the top-scoring prize tasker in six of the previous series. As it was, she came third in prize tasks behind Andy and Rosie — it’s the first time in the history of Taskmaster UK that three contestants have scored 35 or more in prize tasks across a series. It’s either a reflection of just how strong these three prize taskers were, or an indictment of Babá and Jack’s performance (I know which one I think it was).
• Both Jack and Emma approached Greg’s chair during this prize task (an act which, in Jack’s case, made Greg’s buttocks clench immediately). It’s something that happens rarely in prize tasks, although it seems to be getting more common — in Series 17, both Joanne McNally and Nick Mohammed got out of their chairs to let Greg squeeze their nose and thigh respectively for the “Object That Greg Would Most Like To Squeeze In His Mighty Hands”, while Nick also approached Greg’s chair to sing the theme song to Sleepy Hollow for “Snazziest Hollow Thing”, and Sophie did a slutdrop during the “Best Thing For A Grandma” task (inexplicably). These instances aside, the only other times I can think that someone got out of their chair during a prize task were in Series 13, when Bridget Christie stalked around the stage yelling “stopcock” at Greg, and in Series 7, when James Acaster called Greg a “pussy” and had to be spoken to sternly at the back of the stage — although in Taskmaster Australia Series 2 Josh Thomas got out of his chair to smash a bottle over his head, while in Taskmaster New Zealand Ray O’Leary got out of his chair to perform a “backflip” (which definitely wasn’t done by a stunt double).
• Rosie Jones finished up the final prize task of the series with a used enema — it’s the fourth prize that has been at one point either inside or on Rosie (after a letter opener in Episode 1, a tattoo in Episode 4 and a bra in Episode 9). It’s also the second time that Rosie’s prize task has devolved into her talking about performing an intimate act with Greg and/or Alex, after the scroll two weeks ago asking if Greg would rather have sex with her body with Alex’s head or Alex’s body with her head. Rosie finishes with a points per prize task score of 3.60, level with Sue Perkins, Bridget Christie and David Baddiel. No-one has ever scored more points in prize tasks than Rosie and still come last in their series. 26.28% of all of Rosie’s points came in prize tasks — that’s the fourth highest percentage ever. Only Tim Key (28.41%), David Baddiel (28.13%) and Lolly Adefope (27.20%) were as reliant on prize tasks for points.

Task One (Say How Many Chairs Are In This Cinema)

• This was effectively a counting/estimation task — the second of the series after last week’s “walk a furlong in ten minutes” task, although the first to involve counting a discrete number of objects. I think it’s the first task since Series 15 to involve counting objects (when the Team of Three had to count how many items they had stuffed down Kiell’s trousers), and the first task in a main series to involve every contestant since Series 10 (when the contestants had to work out how many balls were in the basket). Confusingly though, this was actually a “fastest wins” task rather than a “closest answer to the correct one wins” task — the task was judged in minutes with a penalty being given for every wrong seat, and every item on the cinema screen missed. That is why Babá won this task even though Andy’s guess was more accurate — Babá missed fewer items on the cinema screen and gave his answer quicker.

“THREE!”

• The rule that the contestants could only give one answer has a precedent — in Series 10, contestants could only bag one item in the Christmas tree-bagger and their attempt would be over afterwards; and in Series 17 they could only flick, flip and flap their flop flop, flan and flapjack once. The idea that contestants couldn’t say a number before that moment is new though, and makes this task particularly difficult. The only comparative task I can think of is in Series 15, when the contestants had to make a picture on a piece of paper using exactly one hundred holes without looking at or addressing Alex in any way — in both tasks they are having to do multiple fiddly things at once while avoiding doing something that they would normally do naturally (look at Alex or say numbers while doing a sum). In that task Mae, Ivo and Jenny fell foul of the rules — in this one, it was Rosie and (eventually) Jack.
• Alex claimed that he had given the contestants a set of clues to help them with this task — if you took the first letters of all of the items on the cinema screen, it spelled out “THREE THREE THREE”. This seems like a ludicrously obscure clue to give, and has similarities with a task in Series 12, where the contestants had to copy Alex’s strange dance in a deconsecrated church — at the end, Alex revealed that if you took the first letter of each of his dance moves, it spelled out the word Taskmaster. In Greg’s words, the only person who could work that out hasn’t got a friend in the world.

• Both Andy and Emma spotted the reappearance of the robot from previous tasks (direct the robot to its charging station in Episode 5 and defuse the robot in Episode 6), although they both had differing reactions (“my nemesis” and “ahh I love that guy!” respectively). There were other little references in the items that were spotted on screen — the egg cup would be seen a few tasks later in the presentation of the “Present the Goose” task, where it held a little golden egg; the éclair was possibly a reference to the pistachio éclair that Jon Richardson unsuccessfully used to impress the Mayor of Chesham in Series 2, or a reference to everyone’s favourite former contestant-turned-podcast host; the extension lead coming immediately after the robot may have been a reference to Andy Zaltzman’s attempt during the “direct the robot to its charging station” task, where he begged the robot to eat an extension lead; and the egg timer was a reference to the ones found in the caravan which Ivo Graham used so effectively in a task where he had to leave the caravan after twenty minutes.
• Extra addition: during the airing of the show, many people on Bluesky and Reddit (maybe on X, but I’m not checking that) noted that Andy had, in reply to Alex asking “do you like eagles?”, replied “I couldn’t eat a whole one.” As “one” is a number, it was argued that that should have counted as Andy’s number (and not 328). I actually got to ask Alex about this because it happened during the book launch for An Absolute Casserole (out now, all good bookshops I’m shameless etc), and I can say that this was not a controversy that anyone on the show anticipated — Alex didn’t spot this (and no-one on the production team did either). His opinion (and I’m inclined to agree) is that it would have been extremely harsh and ultimately wrong. Obviously this is a show about pedantry, and I’m usually all for that, but I think if you’re being really pedantic, there is a semantic difference between the number “one” and the context in which Andy used it — there, it’s a pronoun specifying an already mentioned item. Jack Dee also said “it’s one of those exercise balls” during his attempt — that’s also not using the word “one” as a number but as a pronoun. You could argue that Andy used a word that could be interpreted as a number and therefore should be penalised, but that opens up a can of worms, as there are several words that all the contestants would have used that sound identical to numbers (“for”, “to”) that were obviously not numbers, but could (pedantically, contextlessly) be interpreted as such. Alex might have to get Susie Dent involved…

Task Two (Either… or… or…)

• This is the first time contestants have had the option to choose between five completely distinct options to complete a task. Usually, “choices” in tasks are either completely random and unknown (for example, in the fortune cookie task earlier this series, the contestants selected different fortune cookies which gave them different mini-tasks to do, but they had no way of knowing what those tasks were before they opened the cookies), or they are relatively minor customisations within a task (for example, in the darts task in Series 6, the contestants had to pick whether they wanted to throw lots of darts from far away, or one dart from very close up — while these options do have a material effect on the task, they’re still just variations on a game of darts). Here, we had the contestants being given five very different ways to complete the task — and we nearly had a full house of different approaches, but sadly Jack and Andy both went for the dice and no-one decided to eat the onion (at least, not during the task itself, Rosie.)

Babá realising he shouldn’t have got up.

• This task implies there are five different broad approaches to doing the show, and perhaps may be a useful categorisation tool for contestants in the future: The Dice, for contestants who look work arounds to rig the game (eg, Hugh Dennis or Mae Martin); The Haystack, for contestants who need to get all the information before proceeding (eg, Mark Watson or Sue Perkins); The Press Ups, for contestants who push through using physical effort (eg, Kerry Godliman or Sarah Kendall); the Onion, for contestants who will do something disgusting to themselves to win (eg, Romesh Ranganathan or Susan Wokoma); and the Sit, for contestants who want to do as little as possible (eg, Jo Brand or Judi Love).
• This is the first task where “doing nothing” was explicitly given as an option to complete the task — although by my estimation (having done some research for the People’s Podcast last year), there were twenty eight tasks between Series 1 and Series 16 where doing nothing (or close to nothing) would have likely earned the contestant at least one or two points. A good example is the Series 15 task “rotate the pulper wheel without pulping the egg” — if a contestant did nothing* in that task, they would have scored between 2 and 3 points (as both Jenny Eclair and Mae Martin were disqualified for pulping the egg). Of those twenty eight, I think there are six tasks where doing (close to) nothing would likely win the task (again, this is all very hypothetical as it’s hard to know if Greg would have allowed a contestant to effectively just excuse themselves from the entire game). It would be a faff to list the ones I’ve identified here but feel free to have a guess in the comments below! As a clue, two of them are prize tasks, two are team tasks and two are solo filmed tasks that both happen to be in Series 15… If you get them all, maybe you’ll win a prize?! Or maybe I’ll say that and then forget, I usually forget, sorry.

“I’m not going to give you that one, Rosie…”

• In this task, actually sitting and doing nothing for ten minutes (and not forgetting that’s what you were doing and getting up midway through like Babá did) would have earned you three points — only Emma Sidi and Andy Zaltzman managed to complete the task in less than ten minutes (not including Jack’s attempt which was NUMERICALLY DUBIOUS.)
• This is the second time this series that Andy has changed the number of dots on something in a task to his advantage using a pen, after he put hundreds of dots on a fish during the “dottiest fish” task — although it’s worth pointing out that this technically was filmed before the “dottiest fish” task (as that was filmed in Thorpe Park which would have come after the days in the house). It could just be coincidence that Andy used a workaround that the show was planning on setting up in the “dottiest fish” task later — or it might be that Andy in this task actually inspired the show to put in that workaround in the “dottiest fish” task. It is the kind of thing that I should ask Alex about but will likely forget (again, sorry).

• Jack Dee claimed that he was throwing five 5s using “adding and subtracting” to justify any number that he threw — it was a ruse that Greg saw through immediately as “horseshit”. There were similarities with the “find the special glasses” task in Episode 8, when Jack claimed he had completed the task by finding a random pair of goggles. Unlike that task, where Alex controversially seemed to give Jack reassurance that he had completed the task, here he was more careful, asking “do you want me to stop the clock?” Jack was not disqualified (despite a failure to actually complete the task) — while this was controversial, it did mean that both he and Rosie went through the entire series without scoring 0 in a solo, non-winner-takes-all task. They’re the first contestants to manage this since Series 9, when massive goodie-two-shoes Ed Gamble went the whole series without being disqualified once.
• Rosie Jones scored 3 points for her impressive hundred press-ups — it does mean she didn’t win a single “Fastest Wins” task all series, making her the first contestant since Ivo Graham in Series 15 to fail to win one, and the first since Johnny Vegas in Series 10 in a series where there were more than five “fastest wins” tasks. However it is worth saying that while Rosie didn’t win any of those speed-based tasks, she averaged 2.55 points per task in them — not brilliant but still better than forty one other contestants across the show’s history (including Series 2 champion Katherine Ryan). The weakest “fastest wins” contestant is still Ivo Graham, who scored just 2 points in four “fastest wins” tasks, giving him a PPT average of 0.50. John Kearns is the next worst — he managed 5 points in five tasks, giving him a PPT of 1.00.

• Emma Sidi won the task by finding the needle in the haystack — she was the only contestant who searched for the haystack itself. Interestingly, Jack Dee considered looking for the haystack but was discouraged by the usually fawning Alex Horne, who reminded him that once he found the haystack he would still have to find the needle within it. Jack (and likely every other contestant apart from Emma) was probably unsettled by the clause in the task which made it clear that you could only attempt two of these options — but Emma correctly realised that her decision to go looking for the haystack itself wasn’t actually an attempt to find the needle in the haystack (as she said during the task, she wanted to “know what [she] was dealing with”). If Emma had found the haystack and it had been intimidatingly large, she could (rightly) claim that she hadn’t attempted to find the needle in the haystack, she had just found the haystack itself. As it was Emma’s attention to detail paid off, and she won her fifth “fastest wins” task of the series — in the history of Taskmaster, only two contestants have won more (Julian Clary managed seven in Series 16, while Iain Stirling got six in Series 8). It doesn’t mean she was the best at “fastest wins” tasks, however — she had a tendency to be brilliant (charging the robot, the fortune cookies task, this one here) or diabolically bad (putting a rocket in her pocket, the scare maze…) She managed 3.36 points per fastest wins task — the 22nd best average ever and still behind Series 18 colleagues Andy Zaltzman (3.64) and Babátúndé Aléshé (3.45).

Task Three (Present The Goose)

• This was the final filmed task of the series — and in a surprise twist, it wasn’t a team task! It’s the first time since Series 14 that the final filmed task of the series wasn’t a team task, and it’s the first time since Series 8 that the entire final episode didn’t contain a single team task. It’s also the first time since Series 12 that there’s been a solo filmed subjectively judged task, when the contestants had to propose to Alex in the most irresistable way — much like this final task of the series, we got a real insight into everyone’s personalities (Guz Khan put a horse’s head in a bed, Morgana Robinson turned herself into a green mermaid in a bath, while Victoria Coren-Mitchell refused to do the task out of a fear that God or karma would strike her happy marriage down).

• In recent years, every series has had a task similar to this — an open-ended order which is open to interpretation. Series 13 had “show off”, Series 14 had “catch something”, Series 15 had “fake something”, Series 16 had “make mischief” and Series 17 had “create tension”. This one feels like another level because of how little context there is — whereas the other tasks give a sense of direction or aim, this one really can go anywhere as long as it has some kind of tangential link back to a goose.
• Rosie Jones won for her cerebral, ballsy attempt, where she played a French woman yelling instructions at a goose (Alex Horne). She is the third contestant in as many series to turn Alex into a bird — in Series 16 Lucy Beaumont put a duck mask on Alex’s head for her creepy “Head, Shoulders, Knees And Toes” performance, and also fed him a doughnut while dressed as a bird in the final episode of the series; while in Series 17 Sophie Willan put Alex in a pigeon mask not once but twice (once in the best midair photo task, and again in the thumb war task) — it was a mask that would later be used by Andy Zaltzman in the puppet sidekick task to create “Pigeor”. It’s worth saying that Rosie’s goose creation was the first Alex bird to involve a homemade beak rather than a mask — you can see why she earned the five points. It was Rosie’s first filmed task win since the “ring the bell” task in Episode 7, and her first in a subjectively judged task since Episode 3 (in the recreate a famous 2D artwork task — a task that everyone scored 5 points in). It’s the first time the last place contestant has won the final filmed (solo) task of the series since Series 10, when Katherine Parkinson scored 5 points for neatly hanging Bernard’s clothes up.

• Andy Zaltzman scored 3 for his nature documentary which claimed to capture the first footage of geese “getting their goose on”. I believe it’s the third sex scene to have appeared on the show, after Sally Phillips and the water cooler in Series 5, and Ed Gamble had intercourse with the corpse of a chickpea in Series 9. As such I believe it’s the first sex scene on the show to take place outside the caravan (and the first to take place outdoors in general, with Linda the Cow watching). The male goose was a seagull (which I believe was only introduced in this series as part of the set dressing), while the female goose was Ardal O’Hanlon’s wind-powered owl that he had delivered to the house in Series 13 (which was also used by Steve Pemberton to flap a flapjack as an owl). For the full-sized goose’s egg, I believe Andy used a rugby ball painted gold (which he then kicked with a welly) — this is the third time a rugby ball has turned up in this series, after it was one of the balls that could be chucked in the “knock over the cans” task in Episode 1, and for one of the clues in the “defuse the robot” task in Episode 6. As previously mentioned, this is the first series to feature a rugby ball in the house at all, meaning it’s likely a reference to Emma Sidi’s rugby-playing father, Paul.

• Babátúndé Aléshé presented the goose by waddling into the centre of the study and laying an egg, before giving Alex two thumbs up and saying “big up yourself, every day, all day” (his catchphrase, which he would later put on a keyring and put in Alex’s pocket as a prize in Episode 6). Babá argued passionately in the studio that he had overcome a lot to make that happen — “it’s quite tough to make it out of the hood… I feel like I did my best” — but ultimately scored 1 point. It’s another great example of a contestant being unable to see the potential scope for a task, and putting self-imposed limits on themselves which only become obvious when they see what everyone else did. Other examples include Paul Chowdhry spreading his clothes around the house in Series 3 when every other contestant took transportation to get as far away from the grounds as possible; Mel Giedroyc in Series 5 thinking that she couldn’t leave the study to camouflage herself so just hid behind some sunflowers; and (of course) Katherine Parkinson in Series 10 not leaving the room to find the spider so turning a table upside down and claiming that was a spider instead. It means Babá finishes with a subjective task score of 2.80 PPT — only fourteen contestants have scored worse, including Hugh Dennis (2.29) and Roisin Conaty (1.91).

• Jack Dee made a plane out of cardboard which he named “The Goose”, as a reference to Howard Hughes’ The Spruce Goose. Although the use of SFX did help elevate it (literally), Greg gave it 2 points. Combined with his two last place finishes in the previous tasks, it meant Jack’s filmed task score for this episode was 4 points — his worst return all series (level with Episode 7, where he received minus points for failing to lie during the team task.) This task was Jack’s lowest scoring subjectively judged solo filmed task all series — in fact, since Episode 1 (when he scored a generous 3 points for his offer of vegan champagne for the cast for “the most beautiful thing with bubbles), Jack scored over 4 in ever subjectively judged filmed solo tasks (including three 5 pointers). At the moment when he needed points more than ever, he dropped them more casually than a plane dropping hypenated leaflets for a supermarket.

“Go feed that bloody goose!”

• Finally Emma Sidi rounded out the filmed tasks this series with her play, not directed by Sam Mendes — “The Goose”. In it, Alex played Emma’s goose-obsessed son — I believe it is the fourth time a contestant has played Alex’s mother. Sally Phillips gave birth to Alex in Series 5; Kerry Godliman played his lover/mother in Series 7 in the soap opera Cul de Sac; and Rosie Jones was the Virgin Mary who gave birth to Alex outside the Taskmaster house in this series. This is also the second task this series where Alex has worn a colourful jumper, after the “create the most charismatic new children’s television puppet sidekick for Alex”. This was the first time Emma scored more than 3 points in a subjectively judged solo filmed task that wasn’t an art task — her previous 5 pointers came in the “recreate a famous 2D piece of art” and the “clean the most profound picture of majestic nature on a dirty thing” tasks. It’s perhaps surprising that it took until the final task of the series for Emma Sidi, the most accomplished sketch performer of the five contestants, to score highly in a task like this, but she did finish on a high and finally showed off her acting chops in a task that didn’t involve pretending to be sick during a pub quiz.

Live Task (Eyes Down, Eyes Up)

• This was yet another Winner Takes All task — the fourth of the series. Before this year, there had never been more than two solo winner-takes-all tasks in a series. As I’ve said previously, this really plays havoc with the scoring (more so than dodgy team task scoring or the hot dog)— there are only 5 points available instead of the usual 15 during these types of task. As such, it means Series 18 contestants have had 40 fewer points available to them compared to other series with no Winner Takes All tasks, which makes it tricky to fairly compare them across the series. I’ll try to raise it with Alex but I’m worried it’ll just make him add more in.

“There will be just five points available.” “OH BOLLOCKS!”

• Andy wore his hot dog outfit, and in the end it was a very poor decision — it’s the first time a contestant has worn the hotdog in the studio, and the first time they’ve worn it in a task with so few points available. He scored 0 (which, multiplied by two, is still 0) — it means he joins Rosie Jones as the lowest scoring hotdog contestant (if we don’t the minus points that Rosie accrued during that task). Overall, it means that the hot dog added an extra 10 points during the series (5 for Babá, 4 for Jack and 1 for Emma) — that’s actually fewer than the number of bonus points that were given out in Series 17 (when every contestant got 2 extra points for completing a secret task during a team task, and the Team of Three got a bonus point in the final team task of the series for the best catchphrase), and not as many as were given out in Series 12 (when the bonus points tally went up to as high as 15). It’s also worth saying that within the series, the hotdog points don’t change the standings — Babá would still finish 4th (but just 5 points ahead of Rosie), Jack still 2nd (7 points behind Andy) and Emma still 3rd (but just 2 points behind Jack).
• Jack Dee won the live task — it was his third and means that he finishes as the highest scoring live tasker of Series 18. It’s all the more remarkable given that Jack was disqualified in three of the first four live tasks — in fact, going into Episode 5 he had only scored 3 points in the first four live tasks. He picked up 25 points in the final six live tasks of the series (dropping just 5 points in the process, 2 of which came in a team task) — sadly it wasn’t enough to make up for his poor start, or to catch Andy.

All Time Leaderboard

All Time Leaderboard after Series 18 (1–21) — Andy Zalzman in joint 21st

• Andy finished with a score of 160 — it’s the second lowest by any champion in a 10 episode series. Only Sarah Kendall in Series 11 scored fewer (158). However, there were more tasks in previous series (like Series 6, 7 and 8), so it’s not necessarily a fair comparison. By points per task, Andy is the 21st best contestant of all time, level with Noel Fielding, and ahead of previous champions Richard Herring, Sarah Kendall, Lou Sanders and Josh Widdicombe. If you adjust the scores to allow for the number of Winner Takes All tasks (an imprecise science because as I say every week, I am not really a mathematician at all and have no idea how any of this works), Andy’s score climbs up to 3.38 points per task and puts him in 6th position on the all time leaderboard, level with Chris Ramsey. Ultimately Andy’s success was built in the studio, not necessarily in the filmed tasks: he scored 63 points in the studio (6.30 points per episode), 5 more than his closest rival (Jack Dee, 58). Out of context, 63 isn’t that impressive a studio score (twenty four contestants have scored as many or more points in the studio in a series), but one has to remember there were four Winner Takes All live tasks, when usually there are at most one (or very occasionally two). That means that in every other 10 episode series, contestants had a total of 280 and 300 points available to them in the studio — the Series 18 gang only had 260. In that context, Andy’s studio score is extremely impressive.
• It’s the first time since Series 13 that the contestant who was best at solo filmed tasks (in this case, Jack Dee, who averaged 3.60 points per solo filmed task) hasn’t won the series — in that series, Chris Ramsey (3.85 points per solo filmed task) lost out to Sophie Duker (3.46 points per solo filmed task). Overall, this is the sixth time this has happened in eighteen series — the champions who have won despite not being the best at solo filmed tasks are Katherine Ryan (Series 2), Kerry Godliman (Series 7), Lou Sanders (Series 8), Richard Herring (Series 10), Sophie Duker (Series 13) and now Andy Zaltzman (Series 18). Overall, Andy’s filmed solo task average was 3.04 — level with Series 18 co-star Emma Sidi, and only fractionally above Series 14’s last place finisher John Kearns.

All Time Leaderboard After Series 18 (23–32) — Jack Dee in 28th.

• Jack Dee finishes the series in 28th place on the all-time list with a PPT of 3.14 (level with Bridget Christie). While he had a perfect score in the studio in the final episode (5s in the prize and live), it was ultimately there (and the team tasks) that let him down: in solo filmed tasks, Jack had a score of 3.60 PPT putting him 7th on the all time list. Only Chris Ramsey, Dara Ó Briain, Ed Gamble, John Robins, Morgana Robinson and Noel Fielding were better in that regard. Jack started the series extremely strongly in objectively judged tasks — at one point after Episode 3 he was averaging a higher score than the highest objective scorer ever, John Robins — but a series of poor workarounds in later tasks (the special glasses and the dice in particular) meant that he fell away badly, ultimately averaging just 3.00 in objectively judged tasks, putting him in a medicore 35th place overall by that metric. Jack’s success really came out of grounding out points in tasks that he didn’t excel at — he didn’t come last in any of the solo filmed tasks in the first five episodes. While he wasn’t able to keep that record up (eventually coming last in four solo filmed tasks), his ratio of tasks wins to task losses (2.75 wins to losses) was impressive — it’s the seventh highest ratio in Taskmaster history, higher than champions Noel Fielding, Josh Widdicombe, Morgana Robinson, Liza Tarbuck, Sophie Duker, Sam Campbell, Kerry Godliman and Andy Zaltzman.

All Time Leaderboard After S18 (37–46) — Emma Sidi in 41st

• Emma Sidi becomes the second contestant to win four episodes and not win the series, after Guz Khan in Series 12. Guz also missed out on the title by one point, whereas Emma was, in the end, a distant third. Ultimately Emma’s downfall was her inconsistency — while she won eleven solo filmed tasks (no-one won more), she also came last in seven of them (no-one lost more either). She is the seventh contestant to hold both the highest episode score of a series (22) and the lowest score of episode score of a series (8), after Paul Chowdhry (Series 3), Mel Giedroyc (Series 4), Aisling Bea (Series 5), Joe Thomas (Series 8), Katy Wix (Series 9) and Richard Herring (Series 10). For a while it looked as if Emma might score one of the lowest subjectively judged task scores ever (she was hovering dangerously close to the Baddiel Zone after Episode 8), but an excellent final few subjectively judged tasks (including two prize task wins, her beautiful picture of New Zealand and her very moving Goose) pushed her into 40th place with a score of 3.20, clambering ahead of Joanne McNally, Ed Gamble and even Sam Campbell. Emma’s third place was respectable but means she does not beat the Footlights curse — no contestant who has been a member of the Cambridge comedy society has won the series (although Emma’s PPT score of 3.04 makes her the second most successful member, after Richard Osman).

All Time Leaderboard After S18 (50–59th) — Babátúndé Aléshé in 54th

• A poor final episode (10, 2.0 PPT) means that Babátúndé Aléshé finishes with an average of 2.94 PPT, putting him in fourth place for the series and 54th place of all time, alongside Iain Stirling and Josh Widdicombe. More than anyone else, Babá floundered in the studio (in terms of points, at least — in his banter he was a gem but we don’t judge banter here). Babá scored just 4.40 points per episode in the studio tasks — only two contestants in the history of the show (Victoria Coren Mitchell and Roisin Conaty) fared worse. It’s a shame, because in the filmed tasks Babá excelled — his solo filmed task score of 3.28 is the 24th best of all time, higher than Lou Sanders and Sam Campbell. In fact, if one takes studio tasks out of the equation, Babá would have won Series 18 — in filmed tasks he averaged 3.43, the 12th best score of all time. This is partially because of his use of the hot dog, but it’s also worth saying he did have a few other excellent filmed tasks (in particular in the final two episodes, where he got 5 in the furlong task and the cinema chair task). If nothing else Babá did surprisingly well for someone who clearly had no idea what he was signing up for. A subpar goose, but a wonderful player.

All Time Leaderboard After Series 18 (70–79) — Rosie Jones in 73rd

• Finally, Rosie Jones’ topsy-turvy final episode (where she managed to come 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th across five tasks) gave her a score of 14 (2.8 PPT) and a final total of 137 — overall she has a PPT score of 2.74, level with Jamali Maddix and Sue Perkins in 71st. Like Jack, she was let down by the team tasks — without them she’d have finished in third, 1 point ahead of Emma and 6 clear of Babá — although unlike Jack, her solo filmed task score didn’t help her very much. She averaged 2.92 PPT in solo filmed tasks, joint 50th with Judi Love, Mark Watson, Jamali Maddix, Munya Chawawa and Fern Brady. Her score means that she is the third highest last place finisher of all time by points per task — only John Kearns/Fern Brady (who both finished joint last in Series 14) and Judi Love (Series 13) had a higher points per task average. Although, if you adjust the scores to balance out the number of winner takes all tasks (again, see earlier caveat about this being very dodgy mathematically), Rosie’s score rises to 2.89, and it means she climbs up to 59th. Rosie won 18.19% of the points in her series — sixteen contestants did worse in that regard, and Rosie was some way better than the worst ever contestant by that metric (Victoria Coren Mitchell, who won just 15.55% of her series’ points).

And Finally…

• After last series’ worrying points inflation spike (where the average number of points given out per task shot up to 15.82, the highest ever not including double tasks), you’ll be relieved to know that the points this series have come back down to more reasonable levels. Series 18 averaged 15.06 total points per task — the sixth highest overall but the second lowest of the past seven series. It’s worth saying though that this points stabilisation hasn’t been achieved by reining in Greg’s overmarking in subjective tasks — he gave out an average of 16.20 total points in subjective tasks — but by the surfeit of Winner Takes All tasks which dramatically reduced the number of available points. Is this a sustainable way to treat inflation over the long term? We’ll ask Martin Lewis during the New Years’ Treat.
• Is Nick Mohammed an actual wizard? Before the series started, he predicted that three contestants would have a 7 in their final score on Taskmaster The People’s Podcast. As I pointed out at the time, this seemed like a wild prediction, given that this had only happened twice before (in Series 7 and Series 13). Not only did Nick’s prediction come true, but it did so despite the fact that, unlike Series 7 and 13, none of the contestants scored 170–179 points (which, statistically, is the most likely way someone is going to get a “7” in their final score). I don’t know how he did this, and I’m scared.

If you want more stats, simply squawk like a goose while muttering “I don’t want to be a goose on TV, everyone in Tottenham won’t talk to me if I’ve been a goose on TV.” Or simply click here for the Terrifying Spreadsheet!

And don’t forget to listen to Taskmaster The People’s Podcast, where this week Jenny doesn’t realise quite how much she wanted Jack Dee to win, and I get emotional over Rosie’s used enema bag!