Taskmaster Series 19 Episode 2: The Stats Round Up

WARNING! Beyond this point are spoilers for Taskmaster Series 19 Episode 2! Do not go past the terrifying robot if you haven’t seen Series 19 Episode 2!

Nice when I let my six year old nephew pick the images for these round ups, isn’t it.

Already the Grapest? Mat Baynton win his second episode in a row with an astonishing score of 23 (4.6 PPT) and firing him well clear of the chasing (and invisible-jump-rope dodging) pack.

Let’s make like Jason Mantzoukas being pulled off the roof of the Taskmaster house by a group of production staff dressed entirely as him and head, kicking and screaming, into some STATS!

• Mat now has 42 points from the first two episodes, with a points per task score of 4.20. Only three people have had a higher number of points after two episodes — Series 14’s Dara Ó Briain (47), Series 2’s Jon Richardson (43) and Series 7’s Kerry Godliman (43). Both Jon and Kerry had more tasks in their first two episodes — in terms of points per task, only Dara has done better (4.70 PPT) after two eps.

• Mat’s lead over Stevie is now 12 points: that’s the joint highest lead after two episodes, level with (that man again) Dara Ó Briain in Series 14, and it’s just the second time that the lead has been over 10 points after two episodes. HOWEVER this doesn’t necessarily mean the competition is all over. After Dara and Mat, the next highest lead after two episodes is Chris Ramsey, who held a 9 point lead over Bridget Christie in Series 13 — of course neither of those contestants went on to win, with Sophie Duker swooping in late in the series. Similarly in Series 2 Jon Richardson held a 7 point lead going into Episode 3 — that was eaten up quickly by Katherine Ryan in the following episode. Plus it’s worth remembering that Dara, despite an ultimately recordbreaking performance, found himself level on points with Sarah Millican as late as the second task of Episode 9. So don’t start tearing up your betting slips yet, the leapfrogging heading Stevie Martin could stage a comeback…
• Mat is only the fourth contestant to win the first two episodes of a series, after Kerry Godliman (Series 7), Chris Ramsey (Series 13) and Steve Pemberton (Series 17) — although worth saying that only Kerry won her series in the end. Mat is also the second contestant to win the first two episodes of the series by two points or more in both eps — only Chris Ramsey achieved that feat previously.

“I’m busy giving you a dirty look”.

• While Mat might be running away with it, Fatiha’s improved performance (15, 3.0 PPT) means it’s now much, much tighter for everyone else — in fact only twice previously has there been a smaller gap between second and fifth after two episodes (Series 5, when Sally Phillips was just four points ahead of Aisling Bea; and Series 8, where Iain Stirling was only four points ahead of Paul Sinha). This would be vaguely exciting if there was a prize for second place and/or a punishment for last, but there’s not, so it’s not.
• Fatiha followed up her 1 in the prize task last week with another 1 — it’s the sixth time a contestant has scored two 1s in the first two prize tasks, and the first time since Series 14 and the hapless John Kearns. The previous double 1-pointers were Hugh Dennis (Series 4), Nish Kumar (Series 5), Asim Chaudhry (Series 6) and Joe Thomas (Series 8). It’s also the first time a female contestant has scored two 1s in the first two prize tasks. So…uh…a victory for equality? Overall Fatiha is having a lousy time in the first four studio tasks, scoring just 5 points in total. No-one has ever had a worse return from the first four studio tasks, with only Jamali Maddix (Series 11) scoring the same.
• Fatiha brought in “Swiss chocolate” — somewhat surprisingly, I think she’s only the fifth contestant to bring in chocolate* as a prize task, after Ed Gamble brought in a mannequin filled with mini eggs in Series 9 (5 points), Victoria Coren Mitchell brought in cherry liqueurs in Series 12 (2 points), Ivo Graham brought in a Greg shrine made out of Miniature Heroes’ chocolates in Series 15 (4 points), and John Robbins brought in some chocolate (and ciggies) for his neighbour AND a giant chocolate malted ball in Series 17 (5 points and 4 points respectively).

*Not counting stuff where the chocolate is tangential or implied, like, for instance, the chocolate on a Cornetto BEFORE YOU ALL START WRITING IN.

• The first filmed task of the episode saw the contestants performing commentary for a Really Tricky Thing, which they would then have to achieve. It has parallels with a team task in Series 12 Episode 8, where contestants had to commentate on themselves playing the most brilliant minute of socially-distanced sport — the key difference being here that the commentary came before the event, not after. It’s also the third time contestants have had to commentate on themselves in a task — the other time being in Series 4, where the contestants had to commentate on themselves transfering water between two fishbowls (without moving the fishbowls, Lolly).

• Mat won this task (again) — he currently has a 100% record in filmed subjective tasks, following his success in the “backwards cool” task from last week. He is only the second contestant ever to score five points in the first two subjective filmed tasks in a series, after Kiell Smith-Bynoe in Series 15 — and in fact he’s the first contestant to “win” both tasks outright, as Kiell shared one of his five points with two other contestants (Ivo Graham and Jenny Eclair). Combined with his excellent prize tasks, it means he’s scored 19 points in just 4 subjectively-judged tasks this series, dropping just one point so far (that in the first prize task of the series). To put this in context, Roisin Conaty managed 21 subjective points across her entire series, in 11 tasks — there’s a very good chance Mat will overtake her having done six subjective fewer tasks than her.

• Jason Mantzoukas finished last in this task for ultimately failing to achieve his RTT of getting onto the Taskmaster house roof. It’s the second time he’s tried to get onto the roof in the show (after being denied the opportunity in the “backwards cool” thing task last week), and it marks the closest anyone has come to achieving this goal. Jason was pulled off the roof by the production staff — it’s the second time we’ve seen the production staff being incorporated into a task this series, after Clarenz starred in Stevie’s attempt in the “backwards cool thing” task (as a person inside a bin).

“HE IS DOING IT.”

• Fatiha scored 4 points for her paper airplane attempt — this is the first time Fatiha has scored more than 1 point in a subjectively judged task this series, and in fact she scored more in this task than the previous three subjectively judged tasks combined. Maybe she needs Andy Murray to coach her in her prize tasks too…
• The second filmed task of the series revealed the way that the teams have been split this series, with Jason and Stevie on one team and Fatiha, Mat and Rosie on the other. It’s a vaguely historic split, in the sense that it’s the first time the oldest (Jason) and the youngest (Stevie) contestants in a series have been paired up together in the Team of Two — although as Jason is an untraditional “oldest” contestant (ie, he’s not a Big Name Comedian who is playing into his grumpiness a la Jack Dee, Jo Brand or Julian Clary, and more just a force of nature who wants to eat the show alive), this age-gap dynamic might feel less pronounced than in other series. Don’t expect any Captain Jackie and the Hot Dog moments is all I mean.

“GO STEVIEEEEE!”

• This task was effectively an adaptation of an improv game, where in the scene there always has to be one participant sitting, one participant standing and one participant leaning/lying — meaning that when one participant stands up, another must lie or sit (and vice versa). It’s also the first time a task has heavily involved marbles since the final one of Series 16, when Alex Horne as “Qrs Tuvwxyz” was a “forks and marbles salesman” coming to stay at the Taskmaster hotel — like that task, this one involved waiting on Alex hand-and-foot.
• Despite finishing in half the time of the Team of Three, the Team of Two were penalised for failing to bring the marbles on a plate, as specified in the task, and for failing to ensure there only 100 marbles. They scored just 1 point compared to the Team of 3’s 5points — and it marks the first time since Series 4 that there’s been such a large gap between the two teams after one episode (after the Team of 3 was disqualified for tampering with Alex’s clock midway through).
• The use of the word “exactly” was ultimately what undid the Team of 2 here (along with the use of the word “plate”) — in that sense it had similarities with the “Knock over exactly 100 cans” task from Series 18, where contestants were presented with several towers of cans and most assumed there were exactly 100 to knock down, and the “fortune trail” from Series 16, where contestants had to put exactly £13 on the lucky plate. Again, a piece of advice for future contestants — if the word “exactly” features in a task, never assume that the amount of money/marbles/cans you’ve been given is correct…

“Not a problem.”

• The third filmed task saw contestents having to fill up a large metal can without leaving the Submaravan. It’s the first time the caravan has been used as the primary task location since Series 17, when the contestants had to create a new tradition to celebrate Assistant’s Day, and the first time there’s been a task where the contestants are kept inside the caravan since Series 15, when they had to exit the caravan after exactly twenty minutes. In a sense though, it shares more similarities with a famous task from Series 14 (and the original that it was based on from Taskmaster New Zealand Series 2) — “Eat The Grape”, AKA The Esgrape Room, where contestants had to complete a series of mini-tasks inside the caravan in order to find a way out to eat the grape on the plate. Like that task, the contestants here had one primary goal — to fill up the can with as much liquid as possible — but which could be attained by achieving a series of smaller goals (IE, trigger the many Rube Goldberg machines that had been set up in the caravan, or get the “breakfast drink” which was sitting outside). There was even a potential nod to the “eat the grape” task, in that a bunch of grapes had been left in the caravan to be crushed into liquid (along with a set of bath pearls, almost certainly taken from Nick Mohammed’s prize task in Series 17, because who else would have bath pearls in 2025).
• NB: As the caravan didn’t feature very heavily in Series 18, the production kept the “Submaravan” design for this series (and it’s already featured more times in the first two episodes, as the location of the “fish tank” last week). That’s why it’s a naval design, even though that doesn’t necessarily fit in with the Science Theme of Series 19.

• Jason Mantzoukas earned his second filmed task win of the series after last week’s success in the Pea-lympics/Pealy-mpics — he attained victory despite his now customary method of destroying nearly everything in sight (most notably the glass bowl balanced on top of the caravan as part of the shower). Jason is a man of extremes — in this episode, he finished first or last in every filmed task. In fact, across the series, he’s scored 1 or 5 points in every filmed task apart from one (the “backwards cool” task, where he scored 3). He’s the fifth player to score 1s and 5s in every filmed task but one of the first two episodes, after Hugh Dennis (Series 4), Daisy May Cooper (Series 10), Mawaan Rizwan (Series 10) and Sophie Willan (Series 17). In this sense he’s well on the way to fulfilling a prediction made by Ben (listener of Taskmaster The People’s Podcast, get it from all good podcast stores, etc), who thinks that Jason will hold the record for the most number of 1s and 5s in a series. He’s currently 5th in the “Inconsistency Chart” (the combined percentage of times a contestant finished first or last in a solo task), with a score of 55.56% — he’s currently behind Roisin Conaty (65.52%), Bridget Christie (65.20%), Lee Mack (57.14%) and Sue Perkins (56.53%).

• Stevie started a small (fairly uncontrolled) fire during her attempt (in order to melt the ice and the wax) — it’s the first time anyone has used fire this series, and the first time that anyone has started a fire in the caravan since Series 15 when Jenny Eclair set the curtains of the caravan on fire (before immediately extinguishing them). It’s worth saying there were many, many more fire safety officers present for Jenny’s task attempt than this one here…
• The live task saw the contestants putting one selected item inside another, and it shared a few similarities with the final task of Series 14: like that task, the contestants had to select items with no idea of what they would be used for in the second part of the task, and like that task it would involve putting one thing inside (or specifically covering) another. However, there was also an extra ruffle — the contestants had to swap their selected items in a certain direction, making their initial selections entirely pointless. In this sense it had similarities to a live task in Series 17, where contestants had to select a letter of the alphabet and then write down a word a certain number of letters away from that letter in the alphabet (much to Sophie’s annoyance, as it meant she had to write down a country beginning with X, which does not exist).
• Fatiha expressed her displeasure at having to pop balloons in this task — she is one of many Taskmaster contestants to have discomfort around balloons (which is unfortunate, given that they are used a lot in the show). Previous contestants with a thing about balloons include Aisling Bea, Mark Watson and David Baddiel, whose balloon phobia inspired the name of an episode (“Don’t Like Them Go Bang”).

All Time Leaderboard

• After two dominant episode wins, Mat is unsurprisingly at the top of the all-time leaderboard with a PPT score of 4.20. Obviously with eight episodes to go it’s unlikely that he’ll be able to keep up this pace throughout, but his excellent start means that he’s in a good place to challenge the all-time champion John Robins (3.84 PPT). It’s worth saying that Mat’s score is all the more remarkable because Greg has been very disciplined with his scoring so far (IE, he’s not giving out multiple 5s in many tasks at all) — Mat has so far scored 27.10% of all the points this series, the highest proportion ever, well ahead of John Robins (24.27%) and Dara Ó Briain (23.12%) Again, with eight episodes to go that will almost certainly come down further — so don’t panic, this series is not a washout already…
• The essential reason for Mat’s big lead is not just that he’s great at a lot of different types of task (scoring 18 points out of a possible 20 in studio tasks; scoring maximum points in subjective filmed tasks), but also that in the area where he isn’t so dominant (objective solo filmed tasks, where he’s scored “just” 9 points from 3 tasks), everyone else is just as inconsistent . Stevie was the winner of the first solo objective filmed task last week (the “fish tank” task), but came last in this week’s solo objective filmed task (the “fill the can” task), while Jason, the winner of the “fill the can” task, finished last in the “fish tank” task last week. Mat is benefitting from the fact that there’s no single challenger to exploit his (one) weakness so far.

• After a good start last week, Stevie’s underwhelming 13 (2.6 PPT) sees her overall score hit 3.00 PPT, meaning she falls to joint 49th (alongside Dave Gorman and Frankie Boyle). In fact, 3.00PPT is a pretty common score for her — that’s what she’s averaging in subjective tasks, objective tasks AND prize tasks. She’s averaging that score in all of those metrics despite the fact that she’s still yet to actually score a single 3 in the series! There’s a kind of wonderful inconsistent symmetry to her scores, in that she will score 5 in an objectively judged task, then a 1 in the next one, or 2 in the first prize task and a 4 in the next one… all of which average out to 3. It’s hard really to know what will happen with Stevie — it might be that she irons out these inconsistencies as the series goes on and begins to challenge Mat (similar to how Andy Zaltzman played the game last series); it might be that these inconsistencies come to define her whole performance (similar to Bridget Christie in Series 13); or it might be that these early task wins are just irregularities, and she crashes down the leaderboard (similar to Rosie Jones in Series 18)…

• Once again, Jason and Rosie are neck-and-neck in the episode scores and series score — a score of 13 (2.6PPT) means they both sit in 62nd place, just ahead of Sophie Willan, John Kearns and Fern Brady (“another failure for Jason Mantzoukas in a lifetime of epic fails”). Never in the history of the show have there been two contestants who have scored the exact same scores in Episode 1 and Episode 2 of a series — and it’s all the more remarkable because Rosie and Jason could not be more different in how they approach the tasks. Jason is currently shading it in other metrics — he’s scored 8 points in prize tasks compared to Rosie’s 7, while in solo filmed tasks Jason has racked up 15 points, just ahead of Rosie’s 14. It may, as is so often the case, come down to team tasks — the Team of 3’s dominant performance (in score, not necessarly in actual achievement) may be the thing that eventually separates Jason and Rosie.

• Fatiha improved after last week, coming second with a score of 15 (3.0PPT) — she’s on 25 points for the whole series, with a PPT score of 2.50. She’s in 87th place, level with Charlotte Ritchie — her score after two episodes is the same as a lot of previous contestants, including Ardal O’Hanlon, Sophie Willan, Johnny Vegas, Victoria Coren Mitchell and Katherine Parkinson. Fifteen contestants have had a lower score after two episodes — including many contestants who went on to have fine series (Mawaan Rizwan who finished 3rd in Series 10, Tim Vine who finished 2nd in Series 6 and Andy Zaltzman, who obviously won Series 18). In objective tasks she’s doing fairly well, averaging 3.00 (the same as Stevie Martin) — if she can just start improving her historically low studio score, and continue to do well in the team tasks alongside Mat and Rosie, she should sail clear of the all-time bottom ten (AKA, The Baddiel Zone).

And Finally…

• The item that won the Prize Task (Snootiest Thing) was the cap worn by the Oppidan Team during the incomprehensible “Wall Game” at Eton College. It’s only the second time Eton has been referenced on the show — the first time was when former student Ivo Graham was a contestant in Series 15 (and his fellow contestants questioned whether he could get a refund from Eton following his performance in various tasks). Tragically, by scoring five here, this Eton item did better than any of Ivo’s prize task efforts in his series (sorry Ivo).

For more stats, simply scratch your genitals, work out 9x9 with your fingers and then projectile vomit (twice). Or click here for the MEGA-SPREADSHEET!

And make sure you listen to Taskmaster The People’s Podcast this week with me and Jenny Eclair! This week we’re chatting about what snooty really means, whether or not anyone has ever baked failure into a task in the way Jason did, and whether or not Jenny can sue for not being allowed to burn down the caravan. Give it a listen on Monday!