Taskmaster Series 18 Episode 6: The Stats Round Up

Warning! Past this point be spoilers for Taskmaster Series 18 Episode 6! Do not go past Hula Hooping James Acaster if you have not seen Taskmaster Series 18 Episode 6!

James Acaster hula hooping (2 points).

PIGEOR, CONQUEROR OF WORLDS: Andy Zaltzman pecks his way to victory for his second episode win, scoring 18 (3.6 PPT) and squeezing into second in the series!

Little Alex Horne being pecked to death.

Let’s make like a robot being defused by a woman roleplaying cutting wires and drinking wine, and EXPLODE into some stats!

• This was Andy’s second best episode score of the series after his 21 in Episode 3. Had he won the final “all or nothing” live task he would have scored 23, dropping just two points all episode — a feat I think only four contestants have bettered (Joe Thomas in Series 8 Episode 7, Katy Wix in Series 9 Episode 7, Dara O Briain Series 14 Episode 2 and Sam Campbell in Series 16 Episode 3). He also would have been level with Jack Dee in the series scores…

A proud man, who dotted the rim of the fish.

• Instead, Jack won the final task, meaning he got an episode score of 17 (3.4 PPT), and he stretches his series lead to 10 points. Only five contestants have had bigger leads at this stage (Liza Tarbuck [13 points], Lou Sanders [12 points], Sarah Kendall [20 points], Mae Martin [13 points] and Sam Campbell [11 points]). All went on to win their series… although as usual we have to caveat that those series didn’t have the Hot Dog Joker. It’s also worth noting that there are two contestants who had slightly smaller leads than Jack at this point, and went on to finish second — both Rose Matafeo and Daisy May Cooper were 8 points clear after six episodes in Series 9 and 10 respectively.
• After a good start, Babátundé Aléshé had a bad final two tasks of the episode, finishing on 13 (2.6 PPT) — which means he slips down to third in the series behind Andy. Babá is averaging 3.00 points per task — only one contestant has scored lower than that rate after six episodes and gone on to be the champion of a series. That was Josh Widdicombe in Series 1 (when, admittedly, the scoring system was all over the place). It’s not unthinkable that Babá could win but as the only member of the chasing pack to have used his hot dog, he’s probably relying on others to make the robot spew…
• Rosie Jones scored 10 (2.0 PPT), which is not enough to pull her off the bottom of the series scores. Weirdly this is just the second time this series that the person bottom of the series score at the start of an episode remained bottom of the series score at the end of the episode (after Andy Zaltzman in Episode 2) — everyone else who was bottom after an episode managed to leapfrog the contestants ahead of them into 4th, 3rd or even 2nd place (in the case of the ILLEGALLY RUNNING Babá in Episode 4).
• The gap between 1st and 5th has widened to 20 points — this means that this series is no longer the closest ever. There were smaller gaps after six episodes in two previous series — Series 13 (where Chris Ramsey led the series by 4 points, and was just 19 points clear of Judi Love in last place) and Series 4 (where Noel Fielding was 5 points clear of Joe Lycett and Mel Giedroyc in second but was just 13 points clear of Lolly Adefope in last). There is a chance for Rosie to close that gap (given that she’s yet to use her hot dog) but time is running out. Hopefully she won’t have to rely on Alex Horne to use wirecutters again.

“It was fastest, right?” “No, it was most dots.”

• Emma Sidi, meanwhile, had a dramatically terrible episode, scoring just 8 points (1.6 PPT). It’s the lowest score of the series, and only 19 contestants have ever scored worse scores in a single episode (among those with lower scores are illustrious Taskmaster alumni like Katherine Parkinson, Lucy Beaumont, Ivo Graham and Roisin Conaty, just a great list to be on). She scored 1 point from the final three tasks — this is the worst return by a contestant in the last three tasks of an episode since Sue Perkins (Emma Sidi’s best friend) scored just 1 point in the final 4 tasks of Series 16 Episode 7.

Prize Task (The Most Fun Thing To Put In Alex’s Pocket Without Alex Knowing)

• This is the third task to mention “pockets” this series, and the second to feature the multi-pocketed jacket (previously seen in the “Pick the Taskmaster’s locket from its pocket” in Episode 4). What’s odd is that before this series, there had never been a task to mention the word “pockets” — it seems Alex really wanted to make “pockets” a theme for this series (along with rockets and lockets). This also happened last series, when there were three tasks in Series 17 that revolved around thumbs (after sixteen previous series of entirely thumbless tasks).

Greg really enjoying watching Alex drink the elixir.

• Andy Zaltzman went first, and scored 5 points — he becomes the first contestant to get maximum points going first in a prize task this series (everyone who went first in the first three episodes of this series all scored 1). His elixir was the second consecutive prize that he’s brought in with fake branding after last week’s “Instant Trampoline”, and featured a range of health warnings (“Please do not share recipe, may destabilise world, not suitable for pets”, while side effects included “irritability, loneliness, despair, regret, shrinkage, boredom, futility and hair loss”). Arguably Andy got the five points less because of the graphic design of the bottle and more because Greg made Alex drink the whole thing (which he found very fun). Previous prizes that Greg has forced Alex to eat include an entire key lime pie from Jessica Knappett and some ice cream from James Acaster (in one sitting) in Series 7, and five super sour sweets from David Baddiel in Series 9. None of those things included dolphin spludge though.

“I don’t care for what you want to do!” Babá tells Greg where he’s coming from.

• Next up was Babá, who took a risk by going for a prize designed less for Greg and more for Alex — a key ring urging Alex to big up himself, all day and every day. This is the first time Alex has been “bigged up” on the show, although contestants have bigged up other people — Katherine Ryan bigged up the Mayor of Chesham during her rap in Series 2, while Guz Khan abandoned the live task in Series 12 Episode 7 to write “big up to Cov and West Midlands mandem” on a whiteboard. It’s also the second time a keyring has been brought in as a prize — this scored better than the previous effort, a bottle-top key ring brought in by Fern Brady for “most underestimated item” in Series 14.

Seconds before the “over-exertion”.

• Jack Dee scored 3 (yet again!) for his device designed to warn you if you’re overexerting yourself (AKA a fart machine), which he demonstrated on Alex. It is Jack’s fifth 3 pointer in a prize task this series — no contestant has ever scored as many 3 points in prize tasks after six episodes, and only five contestants previously (Roisin Conaty, Hugh Dennis, Asim Chaudhry, Victoria Coren Mitchell and Sophie Duker) have failed to score higher than a 3 in the first six prize tasks. Despite this mediocre stat, Jack is still not the worst prize tasker in Series 18 — that award goes to Babá, who is averaging just 2.50 points per prize task (Jack is faring slightly better, on 2.83). It’s also the second prize task in the show’s history to make a farting noise, after Bridget Christie’s fart putty in Series 13 (complete with story about a nervous doctor trying to break her waters).

“I’ve seen Wrong Jovi three times, if you include my wedding.”

• Emma Sidi brought in an e-ticket to go and see Bon Jovi cover band Wrong Jovi on 19th October 2024 (the Saturday after this episode airs, which is either incredible planning on Emma’s part or just a massive coincidence). This is the first time anyone’s given tickets to a gig as a prize, and is in fact only the second “ticket” as a prize in the show’s history, afer Alan Davies received part of a Manchester United season ticket from Victoria Coren Mitchell (described as “the most passive-aggressive, calculated personal attack that [he’s] ever experienced”).

Reddit user Eldric_Shadowchaser has pointed out that Tim Key brought in a plane ticket for the prize task of the final episode of Series 1, rendering the above fact INCORRECT. They noted this less than 30 minutes after I had published these stats. This is the most calculated personal attack I’ve ever experienced.

Rosie, very proud of her “multiple layer bullying”.

• Rosie Jones brought in ice, in anticipation that it would make Alex look like he’d pissed himself. I believe she is the third contestant to bring ice in as a prize, after Charlotte Ritchie brought in a bucket of ice for “the most shocking thing that is bigger than a cat and smaller than a pig”, and Nick Mohammed brought in the concept of putting ice in your wine for “the best thing to get into”. Both of those efforts scored just 1 point — so while Rosie didn’t do particularly well here, she can at least be proud that she’s received the highest score for ice in prize task history (3 points).

Task One (Dottiest fish)

• While other tasks have involved fish previously (Series 17’s “What Have You Caught?” task, where contestants had to work out what was on the end of their fishing line), and contestants have introduced the concept of fishing into a task (Aisling Bea fishing for Galaxy bars next to a watercooler for her watercooler moment), this is the first task to actually involve fishing as part of the task. Munya Chawawa did dangle a dart down on a piece of string like he was reverse-fishing in the esgrape room task, but that DOESN’T COUNT, OKAY.

Jack looking down at the dotty fish.

• There were passing similarities with a task from Series 10, when contestants had to get an egg into a frying pan below them using the equipment provided. However, in this task the contestants were actually very close to the frying pan, and there were hidden fish around them — meaning that they didn’t actually have to interact with the faraway fish unless they wanted to. In the Series 10 task they didn’t have this option and had to construct a kind of egg airship (or, alternatively, fill an egg with helium to see what would happen.)
• Emma Sidi found the “hack” (discovering a hidden fish under the frying pan) but actually only ended up with 3 points as it was only a moderately dotty fish, while Rosie Jones discovered a hack of moving the dots from one fish onto another — but it was so timeconsuming that she only managed seven (2 points). Both are an example of the backfiring hack (something that Emma was also a victim of last week, when she spotted the clause in the “Make the most powerful smell” task).

Emma, realising she could have found dottier fish down on the tracks.

• This was Andy Zaltzman’s first solo objectively judged filmed task win, and the first time he’s successfully found the hack in a task (after weeks of trying to manufacture lockets into pockets, or trying to create homemade rockets. He found the pen and drew on 657 dots. Conversely it was also the first time that Jack Dee came last in a solo objectively judged filmed task, scoring just one point (with just one dot on his fish).
• As such, Andy did 657 times better than Jack in this task — this is one of the largest gaps between first and last in a task, but not the largest by any means. In the third episode of Series 4, Hugh Dennis kept his basketball on the treadmill for 4 months, while Noel Fielding kept his on for 3.75 seconds. As such Hugh did 2,803,507 times better than Noel in that task. (For more pointless facts like this one, make sure you buy An Absolute Casserole: The Taskmaster Compendium by me and Alex Horne, coming to a bookshop near you in late November!)

Andy dots his way to victory.

• For the second week in a row, Babá celebrated his achievements in a task by going “brap”. Much like his victory in the scare maze he also exclaimed that he was the man (although this time he didn’t demand that Alex also call him the man).

Task Two (Create, handle and voice the most charismatic puppet sidekick)

• This is the second time that contestants have had to make a puppet on the show — in the first episode of Series 8, contestants had to create a ventriloquist’s doll and be chatted up by it. In that task, Iain Stirling was the only contestant to legitimately make a ventriloquist’s doll — every other contestant used an inanimate object (or, in Lou Sanders’ case, Alex Horne) and made no attempt to puppeteer it. Iain was unhappy (as was his default on the show).
• This task was similar to Series 7’s “Best soap opera cliffhanger” task, and Series 17’s “Best Shiny Floor Gameshow Task”, in the sense that contestants had to create a TV segment during the show. It was particularly similar to Best Shiny Floor Gameshow Task in another sense — one of the entries did something truly unspeakable with poo.

Horney and Horsey.

• After suffering what seemed to be an out-of-body experience after reading this task, Jack earned 4 points with a commendable segment called “Horney and Horsey”, using the horse head which is currently hanging just outside the lab. The head has been used by contestants previously: most notably by Guz Khan in the final episode of Series 12, where he proposed to Alex by putting a ketchup-covered horse’s head in his bed.
• Andy was the only contestant to build a human-sized puppet which he piloted from outside of the biodome. He’s the second contestant to puppeteer something in this manner, after Sue Perkins in Series 16, who used a series of levers and pulleys to attempt to trick a child into believing that she was asleep in a bed (she, of course, failed, scoring 2 points). Andy’s Pigeor, from whose beak of bleakness flowed a bitter cascade of eternal despair, scored a measly three points — possibly Greg was sick of the pigeon mask after last series, when Sophie Willan used it in two different tasks (the best mid-air photo task and the thumb war task). Pigeor was also dressed in a royal cloak (the same one used by Sophie when she was playing a Tudor queen who was tripping after licking a frog) and a top hat (as used by Joanne McNally in the world final of Custard, Mustard, Oh My last series).

Banana Boy, seconds before death.

• Emma scored 1 point for the tragic tale of the spontaneously dying Banana Boy. This is the second time Emma has claimed that she couldn’t remember doing a task, after she forgot the contents of the secret letter she had written to Greg in the “Push The Envelope” task in Episode 4 (another subjectively judged task she scored 1 point in). Emma has been surprisingly poor in tasks like this. She’s averaging just 2.50 points per subjectively judged solo filmed task — only four contestants have a worse score (Series 1’s Tim Key and Roisin Conaty, Series 3’s Paul Chowdhry and Series 4’s Lolly Adefope). Of the six subjectively judged solo filmed tasks of the series so far, Emma has scored 2 or worse in four of them. That said, her only win in a task like this was her take on Klimt’s The Kiss, which is one of the best things anyone has done in eighteen series of the show (according to Jenny Eclair whose opinions on art I trust with my life).

Man Like Tyrone the Otter.

• Babá took the 5 points for Man Like Tyrone The Otter — it’s his third filmed task win of the series, and the first time he’s scored the most in a subjectively judged filmed task (his only other 5 points in a subjectively judged filmed task came in the 3D art task for his recreation of a Banksy artwork, when every contestant scored 5). It’s the second time a contestant has pretended to be an otter in the show, after Victoria Coren Mitchell posed as one in the first live task of Series 12. Yes, I cannot believe I checked this either.

Move over, Poo Do You Think You Are.

• Rosie Jones scored 2 points for her ridiculous, disgusting, disturbing “Alex Horne and Mr Poo(oooooooo)”. It’s the second time a contestant has made Alex interact with his own “poo” this series, after Jack Dee filmed the contents of Alex’s stomach going through the sewage works of the house for the doorbell footage task in Episode 2. Rosie used a fair number of old props in this task — the poo cushion’s eyes were googly ones, previously seen in Series 16’s “Make the most cool but scary gang using these eyes” task (and also brought in by Noel Fielding for the Cutest Thing prize task in Series 4), but on the table there was the knitted versions of Phil Wang, James Acaster, Jess Knappett, Rhod Gilbert and Kerry Godliman (Series 7), various pineapples that contestants had to fish out of a river (Series 15) and a rubber duck (Series 1–18). There was also a boat that looked very similar to the Debajo de la Mesa from Series 2.

Task Three (Defuse the Robot)

• This was effectively an escape room, where contestants had to use clues in the room to solve a puzzle (in this case, a spewing robot). Previous escape room tasks include Series 14’s/Taskmaster NZ Series 2’s Eat The Grape task, and the “Find The Link, Then Do It Exactly 100 Times” task in Series 6 (AKA, the “Liza Tarbuck hops while Tim Vine and Asim Chaudhry ignore her” task). This one had the added bonus of including a prop from a previous task — the robot from Episode 5 (no longer with Alex inside, and therefore at least 50% less annoying). It’s the second time a “living” character from one task has turned up in another in the same series, after the mannequin in Series 17’s “Make this mannequin come alive” turned up in the “Hug Your Special Friend” task a couple of episodes later.

“Ugh! It’s awful!” (immediately takes second sip)

• This was Andy’s second filmed objective task win of the series — having not won any before the start of this episode (although you’d expect nothing less from a commercial fisherman and bomb disposal expert).

“So have I won?”

• Both Babá and Emma were disqualified in this task — this is the first time someone other than Andy has been disqualified in a solo task this series*. Rosie also made the robot spew, but was allowed to keep her 3 points as Greg decreed that it was Alex’s fault for failing to cut the wire in time. This is a rare genuine mistake from Alex, where a contestant is the victim of an accidental error by Alex (and not an “admin” error that means Josh Widdicombe has to count a load of beans) — other examples include Guz Khan being given an ice cold glass of water instead of a room temperature glass in a drinking task in Series 12, the vegan Lee Mack being given an actual scotch egg and leather wallet in Series 11, and Alex Horne accidentally fondling Mel Giedroyc in a cupboard. Having said that, I believe this is the first time that Greg has had to step in to award points that would have otherwise been denied due to that mistake — the only other relatively similar example I can think of is when Morgana Robinson admits her goggles weren’t put on correctly which allowed her to win a task in Series 12, but Greg allows her to take the 5 points because it’s Alex’s error, not hers.
• Not including the disqualifications in the live task in Episode 3, which had no effect on the score because it was a Winner Takes All task, this is pedantic but I just KNEW one of you was thinking of emailing in about it.

Andy discovering the red wine is safe.

• At one point Jack Dee found a phone and called the number on it, getting a series of pre-recorded messages from Greg Davies. I think this is the first time Greg has been involved in a filmed task in any way (this seems mad but I can’t think of another example, do get in touch if you can…). The messages were functionally useless — possibly the only red herring in this task (although the phone itself did give the code to the safe). It’s the second misleading/pointless voicemail of the series, after Sue Perkins tricked the Team of Three with her voicemail in the pub quiz task in Episode 3.

“I would have done it if you had done your fucking JOB!”

• The safe contained an All Blacks rugby ball. This is only the second time that a rugby ball has featured in the show, after the first episode of this series (when the contestants had to throw balls at tin cans in Thorpe Park), and adds credence to the idea that they’re putting this rugby balls as a reference to current contestant Emma Sidi, whose father played rugby for England.

Live Task (Correctly Guess This Person’s Job)

• This task saw the return of Quentin, whose name the contestants had to guess in Series 13 Episode 6. That was one of the longest live tasks ever, with Sophie Duker only guessing Quentin’s name on the 75th question — Ardal O’Hanlon set the tone in that task by asking “are you a French trapeze artist” as the first question (with Greg despairing: “what sort of fucking opener was that?!”). Assuming we saw all of the questions the contestants asked, this task was only sixty one efforts shorter — Jack Dee got the man’s profession after fourteen questions.

The telltale G on the stage.

• There was a clue in the staging here — when Quentin is rotated at the start of the task, one can see a “G” created through red tape on the stage. This was also the case in the Series 13 task — a large “Q” is visible in that one.
• This was yet another Winner Takes All task — this is the third of Series 18, the most there has ever been in a single series. It means that, once again, there were just 65 “available” points in this episode, as opposed to the usual 75 — partially explaining why this series has been so low scoring. This, more than the Hot Dog, is really throwing my stats off. I’m fine about it though.
• The Series 13 version of this task was a bit of a turning point for Sophie Duker — she hadn’t won an episode and she was 5 points behind Chris going into this task (and a remarkable 11 points back in the series). After winning this task, she ended up winning the episode on a tiebreak — and then won Episode 7, overtaking Chris in the series score and going on to win the Series 13 crown. This task may be as consequential for Jack, just as his crown was slipping — a moment of good fortune (especially being set up to get the right answer by Emma Sidi’s preceding guess of obstetrician) and his lead is back up to 10 points. Could Quentin be a good luck charm?

All Time Leaderboard

All Time Leaderboard after Episode 6: 1–10 — Jack in 8th place.

• A decent episode for Jack means he climbs a little higher into the All Time Top 10, overtaking Morgana Robinson with a PPT score of 3.37 and nestling, like a happy little puppet horse with a Scarface accent, into 8th place. Jack’s success has been built on all-round competence — he’s the only Series 18 contestant to average more than 3.00 points per task in both subjective and objective tasks (3.43 in subjective, 3.31 in objective). This is not necessarily a unique achievement — 21 contestants have managed it in previous series — but points to how inconsistent the rest of the chasing pack are. Only four contestants have a higher objective and subjective score than Jack Dee (John Robins, Dara Ó Briain, Mae Martin and Sarah Millican), so he’s definitely doing something right. Only eleven contestants have scored more points than Jack’s 101 after six episodes and in as few tasks — he’s currently outscoring where Morgana Robinson, Bob Mortimer and Lou Sanders were at this stage.

All Time Leaderboard After Episode 6: 38th-46th — Andy Zaltzman in 42nd.

• Andy jumps 15 places from 57th to 42nd, leapfrogging Mark Watson, Sally Phillips and Joe Lycett in the process. He’s now on 3.03 PPT for the series — a relatively healthy return, given that he was on 2.10PPT after 2 episodes and in danger of going down as one of the worst contestants to ever play the game. It’s objective tasks where Andy has really started to make some improvement — before this episode, he was averaging 2.31 points per objectively filmed task (only ten contestants were worse than him at them, and he was even worse than Nick Mohammed). Two objectively judged task wins later and Andy is now averaging 2.50 points per objectively judged task — he’s jumped over his Series 18 colleague Rosie Jones into 70th place by that metric, level with Steve Pemberton (not exactly known for his objectively judged tasks, but still. Baby steps.)

All Time Leaderboard After Episode 6: 45th-55th — Babátúndé Aléshé in 47th place.

• Babátúndé Aléshé falls down thirteen places to 47th, level with Frankie Boyle and Munya Chawawa. If you take his hot dog points out, Babá falls even further, to 60th place, just ahead of Hugh Dennis and Sue Perkins. Babá’s big problem is the studio — he’s averaging just 4.50 points per episode (ie, in the prize and live tasks). Not only is this comfortably the worst return of anyone in Series 18, it’s actually the fourth worst studio score ever, with only prize task opposite-of-experts Hugh Dennis, Victoria Coren Mitchell and Roisin Conaty averaging a worse score. Could possibly do with bigging himself up, all studio tasks, every studio task.

All Time Leaderboard After Episode 6: 64th-72nd — Emma Sidi in 69th.

Subjective Points not including Prize Tasks: 83rd-90th — Emma Sidi in 85th place.

• Emma Sidi scored just 8 this episode (1.6 PPT), dropping a devastating twenty two places to 69th on the all-time chart (one place behind Lolly Adefope, which might be mildly satisfying for anyone who watched Ghosts and remembers how Emma Sidi’s character treated Kitty). Emma’s struggles in subjective tasks have already been outlined, and the bad news is it doesn’t get much better in objectively judged tasks — she’s averaging 2.75 points per average task, meaning that she’s the only Series 18 contestant to be sub 3.00 PPT in both subjective and objective tasks. She’s also doing the worst of any Series 18 contestant in the filmed solo tasks, averaging a score of 2.73 PPT (although she’s still much higher than the worst ever solo filmed tasker, Katherine Parkinson, whose average was just 1.96 PPT.) The good news for Emma is she still has her joker to play — the bad news is that she’s now 18 points behind Jack in first.

All Time Leaderboard After Episode 6: 73rd-90th — Rosie Jones in 75th.

• Rosie Jones slides down eleven places to 75th after a middling episode (10, 2.00 PPT) — she’s now hovering dangerously close to The Baddiel Zone, just seven places above it. The problem for Rosie is she’s relying on her prize tasks to see her through — 24.69% of her total points have come from the prize tasks alone, which is the 10th highest proportion ever (Andy Zaltzman, who has scored 25.27% of his total points through prize tasks, is 8th). And it’s fair to say she’s running out of steam in the prize tasks (given that her last two entries have been a balloon and ice). She’s also been having some seriously bad luck in the live tasks recently — she’s scored just 5 points in the last five live tasks, meaning that she scored as many points in the first live task as she did in the next five combined. Like Emma, she’s still got a hot dog to play so she can’t be ruled out yet, but the omens aren’t looking good — in all but one of the previous series, the contestant who was bottom at the end of Episode 6 remained bottom until the end of the series. The only exception was Susan Wokoma in Series 16, who clambered off the bottom to finish a respectable third (albeit 22 points behind the champion).

And Finally…

“Whisper it to me. Whisper it to me.”

• After Jack’s Horney and Horsey sketch, where Alex heavily implied that he wanted to call Jack’s character the c-word, Greg demanded that Alex say the C-word into his ear. This wasn’t going to happen — Alex has only dropped the f-bomb five times in the show’s history (and only once in anger, when Munya Chawawa made him throw a ball a lot in Series 14). Greg did however give Alex a cheeky kiss — this is the second Alex-Greg kiss, after Series 6 Episode 6. This little kiss came one episode after Greg told Jack Dee that the simmering rage he feels for Alex is just a facade, and that he and Alex are in fact lovers. Not doing anything to dissuade the fan fiction writers, the filthy little ferrets.

If you want more stats, simply yell “LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! I’VE NEVER DONE ANYTHING PRACTICAL IN MY LIFE!” at Greg Davies, or click on the link here for the Terrifying Spreadsheet!

And don’t forget to listen to the Taskmaster People’s Podcast where this week Jenny and I are joined by a VERY special guest, the incredible Becky Cant from the production team! She talks about her favourite moments in the series, what it was like being in the pub quiz task AND whether or not the sound guy ever got his money back from Rosie Jones…