Taskmaster Series 18 Episode 4: The Stats Round Up

Warning! Ahead be spoilers for the latest episode of Taskmaster Series 18! If you have not seen it, do not go past the furious statue of Greg Davies!

ALL HAIL BABÁ, THE MAGNIFICENT CARROT-EATING HOTDOG

He’s the man! A well-chosen hot dog joker gives Babátúndé Aléshé a series high score of 22 (4.4 PPT), sending him soaring into second place in the series, just three points behind series leader Jack Dee.

Let’s dig deep like Emma Sidi putting her hand into her own pocket and pick something even better than a Taskmaster’s locket — SOME STATS!

HEADLINES

• Babá wins his first episode — this means that there have been four different winners of the first four episodes of the series. This has only happened three times before — in Series 2, Series 3 and Series 12. If Emma Sidi wins next week’s episode, it will be the first time all five contestants have each won one of the first five episodes — a good reason to root for the badass sunglass adorned cherub next week.
• Babá was last going into this week’s episode but now finds himself in second — it’s the first time anyone has jumped from last into second place in one episode*. The previous most impressive leap came in Series 15, when Ivo went from bottom place to third in Episode 3 — having previously been nine points behind leader Mae, he was just four points behind the (new) leader Jenny. Obviously the less said about the rest of Ivo’s series, the better.

*for the purposes of this I’m talking about “mid-series” episodes — as in, I’m not including times when someone was bottom after the first episode and then leapt up to second thanks to a good second episode.

• Jack Dee had, by his high standards, a stinker — 12 points (2.4 PPT) is his lowest episode score (lower than either Rosie or Emma’s worst scores), and marks the first time he’s been bottom of the table in an episode. His lead is now just three points — by comparison, Daisy May Cooper’s lead at this stage in Series 10 was 8 points, and Jenny Eclair’s lead in Series 15 was 7 points. Neither went on to win their series (sorry Jenny).
• Emma Sidi is now at the bottom of the table, but there are just nine points between her in fifth and Jack Dee in first. This is the closest it’s ever been between 1st and 5th after four episodes — the previous record was held by Series 12, when there were 14 points between Desiree Burch in 1st and Victoria Coren Mitchell in 5th. For reference, last series there was already a gap of 28 points between John Robins and Nick Mohammed, while in Series 11 the gap between Sarah Kendall and Charlotte Ritchie was 38 points.
• If Emma were to win next week’s episode by the same margin that Babá managed against Jack (not unthinkable), she could actually leapfrog him into first place. Is this just me trying to manifest my pre-series prediction that Emma would win? POSSIBLY, but it’s also true!

Prize Task (The Thing Most Likely To Make Greg Say, “Oh Christ, Now That Is Badass”)

• This is the first prize task this series to reference Greg by name, and actually the first to be directly aimed at Greg’s sensibilities and tastes rather than more generally (like Series 16’s “The Best Bit of Old Crap That Greg Likes The Best”). As it was the contestants focussed mostly on the “badass” aspect and not the “Greg” aspect, so it was largely irrelevant, but one possible angle could have been to find out what Greg considers badass (hint: it’s not clothes from T.K. Maxx or some trainers).

Emma’s “badass” statue.

• Emma Sidi brought in a statue of an angel with crossed arms wearing sunglasses, and received very little in the way of a reaction from Greg (“nothing”, in fact). She received 2 points — remarkably this is the highest scoring effort for any contestant who has gone first in the prize task this series (Andy, Babá and Rosie went first in the first three episodes and all scored 1). This is the second representation of an angel to be given out as a prize on the show, after Sarah Kendall brought in some melted wax angel faces for “craziest thing” in Series 11 — she fared better than Emma, scoring 5 points. It’s not clear whether the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost liked Sarah’s attempt as much as Emma believed they liked hers.

Sarah’s crazy angel heads.

• After winning last week’s prize task, Babátúndé Aléshé was in familiar stomping ground with 2 points for his Nike Air Force Ones. In fairness to Babá, the other shoes that had been brought in this series (Andy’s shoes with dover soles attached last week) had scored 4 points, but for the most part Greg doesn’t react well to unprovoked footwear, or being told that his own style is rubbish. So far Emma and Babá have the worst prize task scores this series, averaging 2.50 points per prize task — that is level with Daisy May Cooper (Series 10), with only twelve contestants scoring worse than them across 18 series. Somewhat amazingly, they’re both behind John Kearns in prize tasks, which should worry them.

Greg being told by Babá that his shoes are rubbish.

• After three 3s in a row, Jack Dee shook things up — with a disappointing outfit from the “rapper” T.K. Maxx, worth just 2 points. It means he joins an unenviable gang of contestants, all who failed to score more than 3 points in the first four prize tasks of a season — Roisin Conaty (Series 1), Richard Osman (Series 2), Hugh Dennis (Series 4), Asim Chaudhry (Series 6), Jamali Maddix (Series 11), Morgana Robinson & Victoria Coren Mitchell (both Series 12), Sophie Duker (Series 13) and Sophie Willan (Series 17).

• After her unsatisfying sax effort last week, Rosie came good once again with her tattoo that informed Greg that she’d killed a man (and the promise that if she didn’t get a lot of points, she’d do it again) — Greg, not wanting to risk it, gave her four points. It means she’s crept back into the Top 10 for prize tasks, joint 9th with Noel Fielding and Sally Phillips (with a point per prize task score of 3.75), although she’ll have to be near perfect from here on out to overthrow Lolly Adefope (who sits at the top of the prize task table with a score of 4.25 points per prize task). Rosie is the first contestant to offer up a tattoo for a task since Josh Widdicombe famously got his foot tattooed with Greg’s name in Series 1, as part of a “buy a gift for the Taskmaster” task — although while Rosie’s was fake, Josh’s was all too real.

• After two 4s in a row, Andy Zaltzman won his first prize task of the series with his painting of a donkey in a jumpsuit behind bars. Much like his shoe effort last week, he went for a multi-layered linguistic approach, arguing that this was a triple threat: the ass was bad because he had commited a crime (therefore, bad ass); the ass was badass because committing crimes is badass (therefore badass); and the whole thing had been drawn horribly, therefore it was bad…ass. For the fourth week in a row the object that was shown last got the 5 points, which initially implied Greg was just rewarding the last thing he sees. Emma tested this theory by demanding he look at her angel again — it backfired horribly, confirming her 2 points.

Only just noticed that the donkey has done a four bar gate, instead of a five bar gate — is this evidence of how badass he is (even breaking mathematical convention), or does Andy think donkeys count in base-8 instead of base-10?

• In the judging, Alex rather threw Babá under the bus, by recommending to Greg that he put his effort in with Emma’s and Jack’s at the bottom of the table. I think this is the first time Alex has actively pushed Greg into making a decision in the prize task since the first episode of Series 15, when he pointedly noted how Ivo and Frankie’s efforts should technically be disqualified for failing part of the criteria. The sneaky so and so.

Task 1 (Push The Envelope)

• This task may have been intended to be a very open-ended task, like Series 13’s “Show off”, Series 14’s “Catch something”, Series 15’s “Fake something”, Series 16’s “Make mischief” or Series 17’s “Create tension”, where contestants were supposed to do something which pushed the boundary metaphorically (for example, as Jack suggested at the start, by getting cancelled). As it happened, every contestant took the task to mean “push this envelope” (ie, the envelope that the task came in) and did something more literal — which meant it was more like Series 16’s “do something shocking (but family friendly) with this donut”, or Series 9’s “do the most preposterous thing with this chickpea”, where the contestants do something strange with a prop.

Cartwheeling to one point.

• Emma Sidi received 1 point for her “polite” letter to Greg — but on the plus side I believe she is the second* contestant in the show’s history to attempt a cartwheel in the process. Emma has scored just 23 points from 9 subjectively judged tasks so far this series, giving her a subjectively judged score of 2.56 points per task. Only three contestants have a worse score from subjectively judged tasks — Paul Chowdhry, Hugh Dennis and Roisin Conaty. This is not a good list to be on.

[a previous version of this stated she was the first contestant to do a cartwheel, but Reddit user boomboomsubban has correctly pointed out that Sara Pascoe cartwheeled her way to the microwave in the first task of Series 3 while trying to avoid goose poo. I apologise and will eat a thousand envelopes as penance.]

• Rosie Jones pushed the envelope by eating it (or “pushing it down her gullet”, as she said), earning herself three points — I think she is the first contestant to eat paper on the show, although not the first to eat stationery (after Lou Sanders tried to erase an eraser by eating it in the final episode of Series 8). This is not the first instance of paper being eaten on Taskmaster— Alex Horne ate burnt pornography with popping candy at the behest of (that lady again) Lou Sanders in the “devise the most delicious dust” task, in what I think he has described as the most disgusting thing he’s put in his mouth for the show. If you have a question about a contestant eating something weird, Lou Sanders is probably the answer.

• Jack Dee won the task by pushing the envelope, quite literally, in a wheelbarrow. At first, his technique was similar to Series 3 Champion Rob Beckett in the “propel this pea the furthest” task — in that he wheeled the wheelbarrow in laps around the garden in an attempt to rack up distance. The task really took off once he exited the Taskmaster grounds (becoming the first contestant of the series to do so), and wheeled the wheelbarrow along the river for three miles (although the time ran out after two). The bench which he sat on has been seen in the show previously — in Series 3 Sara Pascoe sat on it while attempting to decipher Rob Beckett’s charades across the river (and also while petting a very cute dog) — and it was around this area that Mark Watson gave Alex a special cuddle, and also unsuccessfully threw a coconut into the River Thames, in Series 5.
• (There were also some balloons in the distance when Jack was walking off, which I spent far too long analysing: was it a reference to Jack’s sitcom Lead Balloon? Or maybe a homage to Tree Wizard, the creation of another famous Taskmaster misanthrope Romesh Ranganathan? And actually if it was intentional, how did the production team know to put them there if they didn’t know Jack was going to leave the grounds in that task? Did they run ahead of Jack, stick them up and then run back? Or was it just a nice weird coincidence, like Ben Fogle turning up in Series 3? Anyway, I clearly have a problem.)

• Andy “pushed” the envelope to a confession using enhanced interrogation techniques, eventually discovering that the envelope had stolen the life cast of Alex Horne, shrank it, and hid it in a wooden box under a cow. This is the second time Andy has used Linda the Cow in a task (after last week’s harrowing recreation of Guernica), and the first time anyone has used the statue of David (previously seen in the David Hat-n-Bra task in Series 6, and as the heavy item that Steve Pemberton stuck to the board in Series 17). It got Andy 4 points and reflects his growing confidence in subjectively judged tasks — he’s scored 3.56 per subjectively judged task, putting him top of the series and in 15th place on the all-time chart by that metric (fractionally ahead of Sally Phillips).

• Babá, meanwhile, rejected the idea of presenting his nuts on a pillow to his wife (only just, mind) and went with the slightly better option of turning the envelope into a cereal bowl, from which he spoonfed Alex. It’s the second time Alex has been fed food by a contestant this series, after Rosie Jones made him chew a bunch of bubblegum in Episode 1. It didn’t score very highly (just 2 points), possibly because Greg isn’t a man to be that impressed by cereal being eaten out of unconventional containers — in Series 6 he was nonplussed by Russell Howard’s invention of “Cup Cereal” (pouring cereal into a cup and eating it so that his mum wouldn’t find out). Babá finds himself in 76th place in subjectively judged tasks with a score of 2.78 PPT — level with Lolly Adefope and Charlotte Ritchie.

He’s having a good time at least.

Task 2 (Eat Alex’s Carrot)

• This was a twist on a “hide and seek” task, where contestants have to find Alex (or vice versa) — it has similarities with Series 12’s “Strike Alex with a ball”, where contestants had to chase Alex around the Taskmaster house while he avoided them. As with this task, contestants had to wear a headcamera which created a terrifyingly intimate POV — although unlike this task, contestants didn’t have to laugh menacingly throughout as they traipsed through a maze smeared with blood. So there’s that.

• There was a doppelganger Alex in the maze, also ringing a bell, to add extra confusion to this nightmare scenario. There have been doppelganger Alexes in previous tasks (most notably the “Spot the Difference” task in Series 5, when Mark Watson, Alex’s close friend of many, many decades, failed to spot that he had been replaced by a lookalike), although this is the second* time that doppelganger has been played by series producer, father of Nell the toddler and all round good egg, Andy Cartwright. Taskmaster NZ and Taskmaster Australia have also had fake Pauls/Toms in multiple tasks — in the final task of Taskmaster NZ Series 2 contestants had to find Paul and film him (with various Paul lookalikes dotted around the grounds), while in Taskmaster Australia Series 1 contestants had to deliver a pizza to Tom, but there was a decoy Tom who tricked a few of them (he would also shout “buongiorno!” at them every time they spoke to him).

[A previous version of this article claimed this was the first time Andy had been a doppelganger, but Reddit user RunawayTurtleTrain has correctly pointed out he also tricked the contestants as a doppelganger in the first task of Champion of Champions 3, when the champions had to serve Alex breakfast. More apologies, I will eat one hundred more envelopes in penance]

A glimpse of the myth, the legend, Andy Cartwright.

• Babá became the second contestant to play his Hotdog Joker — and the first to gain maximum points from it (his 5 points for the win were doubled). He’s the first contestant to score 10 points from a single task since Mae Martin, Kiell Smith-Bynoe and Jenny Eclair earned double points in a controversial live team task in the fifth episode of Series 15, and the first to do so in a solo task since Guz Khan got 10 points in the live task of the fifth episode of Series 12. Am I happy with all these points being given out? No. Do I have to admit that Babá looked surprisingly good in his hot dog outfit? Yes.
• This was the first “fastest wins” task of the series that Jack Dee has not won (after the first filmed task of the series and the controversial “rocket” task). He took 3 minutes 26, nearly three minutes slower than Babá’s time of 35 seconds — although it’s worth pointing out that the task clearly stated that neither Alex nor the contestant could walk faster than a gentle pace, and Babá was, at best, walking briskly, and at worst outright running. This didn’t get called up in the studio (possibly because Greg was too distracted by how good Babá looked in a hot dog costume).
• Emma Sidi finished last, the second time she’s been the slowest contestant in a “fastest wins” task (after it took her nearly 40 minutes to find three rockets last week). Her score of eight minutes also marks the second time this series that she has been over 13 times slower than the eventual winner of the task. Style points for her laugh though, which was streets ahead of Jack’s effort.

A woman on the edge, not in the mood for Alex’s games.

• Andy finished second with four points and an effort of 2 minutes 55, while Rosie grabbed two points for her decent 3 minutes 26. Neither contestant have finished first or last in a “fastest wins” task so far this season.

Task 3 (Pick The Taskmaster’s Locket)

• This task was similar to Series 14’s “find the back of your hand” task and Series 13’s “Display the shoe that Alex is thinking of”, in that it feels like a “fastest wins” task but in actual fact it’s about getting the correct answer in as few guesses as possible. As with both of those tasks, the contestants who didn’t barrel straight in trying to find the pocket and instead tried to find a strategy did the best. Unless you were Andy and that strategy was “go to a local snooker club and put some branded cough sweets in a pocket”.

Andy giving Alex a high five, grumpily.

• Of course, the locket was on the contestants, having been planted there by either the Sound People or Make-Up Artists (hence why one of the items in the pocket was a note not to trust Sound People or Make-Up Artists). It’s the second time in consecutive series that the Sound People have been involved in a task, after last series’ “What have you caught” task — there the sound guy planted a sign saying “FISH” on the contestants’ backs.
• Some of the items that were in Alex’s pockets were: lipstick, Chinese Five Spice, a rubber duck, a dog biscuit, a stone with a Y on it, a stone with an O on it, a stone with a U on it, a compass pointing to a picture of the contestant in question, upwards of seven rockets from last week’s “Put A Rocket In Your Pocket” task, a bag of yellow, an Alex Horne business card, milk, a padlock, a party popper, two googly eyes (as seen in Series 16's “Make The Most Cool But Scary Gang” task), a picture of Richard Herring on a red fish (a joke the show has previously made in Series 13 Episode 1, during the “find the ten ducks” task) and a piece of paper telling the contestants that the locket is in their pocket.
• Andy earned his second disqualification of the series by failing to find the locket in the allocated time. He’s the only contestant to be disqualified this series (or at least, the only contestant to be disqualified in a task where there was a full complement of points available — Babá and Jack were disqualified in last week’s live task but it was negligible because it was a Winner Takes All task). He’s still a way off of the record number of disqualifications in a series — 8, set by Johnny Vegas, Katherine Parkinson and Ivo Graham.
• Babá picked forty pockets, while Jack Dee picked seventy, meaning they scored three and two points respectively. Somewhat remarkably it’s the first time Jack has scored fewer than 3 points in a solo filmed task this series — by coincidence or design, he’s following the John Robins’ strategy of minimising task defeats rather than going for the win, and currently (despite this weak effort) it’s paying off.

Rosie stealing money off of the sound guy.

• Rosie picked eight pockets and scored 4 points (as well as £15 off of the sound guy). Last week Rosie was seen giving money to the production crew as a bribe during the pub quiz in a team task — as the team tasks are filmed after the individual tasks, there’s a chance that she used the sound guy’s money in that bribe. So if the sound guy wants his cash back, go talk to that member of the production team…
• Emma Sidi won this task thanks to her obsession with “clean lines”, and noticing the fact there was something in her pocket from the beginning of the task. In so doing she becomes the second contestant this series to score more in the final filmed task of an episode than she did in the previous tasks combined, after Andy Zaltzman in Episode 1 (whose Beauty and Ze Bubble earned him 5 points, more than his prize task of lungs (1 point), his speedy uttering of a Q word (3 points) and his effort in knocking over the cans (disqualified).

Live Task

• This live task segment lasted less than two minutes — almost certainly making it the shortest ever live task in the history of the show. (I haven’t timed out the other live tasks, and I’m not going to, I have limits.)

• There was at least a quick appearance for Patatas the cat (previously seen in Series 2 and Series 17), and the revelation that, because there were two sets of animals for each team, there are TWO Patatases (meaning Richard Osman shouldn’t feel so bad about leaving it up in the tree, they had a spare all along).
• This was also the first time a flamingo has been seen in the show since the controversy over the “sleeping” flamingo in Series 16, when Sam Campbell paid a child £100 (in book tokens) to say that a toy flamingo was asleep in a bed.
• One thing to note is that this has created a bit of a gulf in the teams — whereas last week there was just one point between them, now there are six. Without team tasks, Jack would be first by six points (instead of three) and Rosie would be second (instead of second last) — it seems, much like Series 15, team tasks could play a big part in deciding the order of the contestants at the end (especially as it is so close).
• It’s also more bad news for Jack —he’s the fourth contestant to score three 0s in the first four live tasks, after Joe Wilkinson (Series 2), Tim Vine (Series 6) and Kiell Smith-Bynoe (Series 15).

All Time Comparisons

All Time Leaderboard after Episode 4–1–15

• After a poor episode, Jack Dee tumbles out of the all time top 10 and into 13th, between Series 7’s Kerry Godliman and Jessica Knappett, with a points per task score of 3.25. His score of 65 after four episodes is decidedly average — while it’s level with Series 12 champion Morgana Robinson, it’s one worse than Jenny Eclair managed at the same stage. By comparison, Dara Ó Briain had scored a whopping 83 after 4 episodes (averaging 4.15 points per task), while Sarah Kendall was on 79 (3.95 PPT) and John Robins 75 (3.75 PPT). Suffice to say unless Jack really kicks it up a gear in the next few episodes, it seems unlikely that he’ll challenge John Robins’ record breaking 192.

All Time Leaderboard After Ep 4–26–35

• Babátúndé Aléshé, by contrast, has rocketed up the all-time table from joint 76th (level with Sara Pascoe, only just ahead of Ivo Graham), all the way up to 30th (level with Julian Clary and Daisy May Cooper, ahead of Series 8 champion Lou Sanders). This is all down to the Hot Dog, of course — without it he would be second from bottom, just one point ahead of Emma on 57, and would find himself in 60th place on the all-time chart (behind Jo Brand and Sophie Willan). As it stands he has a score of 62, which puts him level with where Guz Khan was at this stage.

All Time Leaderboard After Ep 4–44–53

• Andy Zaltzman, meanwhile, built on last week’s episode win with a quietly impressive 18 (3.6 points per task), with only that disqualification in the third task spoiling things. Since the end of Episode 2, Andy has scored 39 points — he’s gone from having the fourth lowest score of all time after two episodes to near the top half of the all time table. His score of 60 is, incredibly, one point more than Series 15 champion Mae Martin managed after four episodes. What’s more, he’s just five points off the series lead, and the highest ranking contestant who is yet to play their joker. His points per task score of 3.00 puts him joint 47th, level with Dave Gorman, Frankie Boyle and Munya Chawawa. With Babá he’s making history — it’s the first time that two contestants who scored fewer than ten points in their first episode have gone on to be second and third after four episodes.

All Time Leaderboard after Ep 4–49–58

• Rosie had her worst episode of the series (mostly thanks to the bafflingly short live task), and worryingly for her every episode her score is getting lower (she got 17 in Ep 1, 15 in Ep 2, 14 in Ep 3 and 13 in Ep 4). On the plus side, the last person to do this went on to have a great series — Mae Martin scored 19 in their first episode, 16 in Ep 2, 14 in Ep 3 and 10 in Ep 4, before roaring back in Episode 5. Rosie also has the exact same points tally as Mae after four episodes (59) — can Rosie turn it around and have a similar trajectory to Ol’ Pinhead? In the all-time chart Rosie finds herself in 54th place with a PPT score of 2.95, fractionally ahead of Series 1 champion Josh Widdicombe — while her subjective score is good (3.44 PPT, 21st on the all-time list) her objective task score is letting her down — joint 67th, level with Andy Zaltzman and amazing, a few points worse than Lucy Beaumont.

All Time Leaderboard after Ep 4–65–74

• Emma Sidi scored two 5s in the last two tasks to salvage a respectable 14 (2.8 PPT) from what was looking like a historically terrible episode after Task 2. It’s not enough to save her from last place in the series though —her series PPT score of 2.80 means she is 67th, just below Asim Chaudhry, Judi Love and Joe Thomas. She’s still 15 places and 0.24 points above The Baddiel Zone, so there’s no need to panic just yet, but her score of 56 after four episodes does not inspire much confidence — no-one with such a score after four episodes has won their series, and of the 27 contestants to have a worse points per task tally at the same stage, only two (Frank Skinner [Series 1] & Kiell Smith-Bynoe [Series 15]) have finished higher than third in their series. Of course, as Babá proved this week, the Hot Dog Joker can change everything — but with six episodes left Emma still has to ensure she’s still within touching distance of the rest of the pack for it to have any impact. Exciting but dangerous times for the girl who loves a clean line.

And Finally…

Jack Dee chomping on Alex’s carrot.

• This episode marked the first time contestants have had to eat a carrot for a task (yes, I checked), and possibly reflects the show moving away from less healthy food options. In previous series, the sausage has been the go-to edible cylinder of choice — see the Series 7 game “Sausage or Finger”, Series 15’s Sausage Exam, or Chris Ramsey’s Sausage Cement Mixer — but here it looks to have been overthrown by the carrot. It’s unclear why — I don’t think any of this series’ contestants are vegan (and the show has used meat replacements in the past as well). Potentially the show thought getting the contestants to bite a sausage off of Alex’s back in a bloodsoaked room while laughing manically might be a bit too weird — or that making Babá eat a sausage while dressed as a sausage might give him some kind of existential cannibalistic crisis. Who can say? Certainly not me, a man who spends his precious time on this earth searching through episodes of Taskmaster for instances where comedians eat carrots.

If you liked these stats and want MORE, simply print out this article, scrunch it up, pop it in a wheelbarrow and trundle down the length of the Thames, contemplating how your life ended up this way. Or just click here for the spreadsheet!

And don’t forget to tune into Taskmaster The People’s Podcast with me and Jenny Eclair, where this week I have completely unusable gossip, we find out where the expression “pushing the envelope” comes from and Jenny has one of the worst stories about a shoe I’ve ever heard!