Taskmaster

Boo!

Yeow!

I just need to read that again.

SHE LAUGHS

APPLAUSE

Hello, welcome to Taskmaster.

I'm Greg Davies and I am the wizard of Task Towers.

With a wave of my wand, five intelligent, successful people

have parked their dignity and

bravely exposed themselves to judgment.

One of them even trumped a bit of his bottom out

trying to please me, for goodness' sake.

How far will our magical five be prepared to go today?

Let's meet them and find out.

They are Charlotte Ritchie,

Jamali Maddix, Lee Mack,

Mike Wozniak, and Sarah Kendall. CHEERS AND APPLAUSE

And next to me, a man who once drunkenly confessed

that he hasn't brought car tax or insurance since the '90s

because he thinks it's an example of big government,

it's little Alex Horne.

APPLAUSE

Hi, Greg. Hello.

I've had a birthday. Oh, God.

My mother and father gave me £10.

All right, stop. £10 each.

I have, um... I've budgeted on this occasion

for Alex wittering away to total silence

and I've decided that we're going to start the show slightly differently.

Alex is going to do some extreme improvisation for you. Is he?

Ooh! Yeah. So, Mike, if you'd like to give me a song style.

Funk. Charlotte, perhaps you'd like to give me a dance style.

Disco.

Disco and funk, meh, it's a bit kind on him.

Oh, sorry, I meant disco break.

Disco break. What is disco break?

You know. You know. You know. It's in your bones.

And finally, Sarah, I need, an event from history.

The division of North and South Korea.

LAUGHTER

And so, ladies and gentlemen, for your entertainment,

Alex will represent the division of North and South Korea in, um...

..in a disco break dance-style

singing a funk song.

# In 1953, there was a terrible situation

# Ow! # Uh...

# When everyone got very sad

# Because they divided the nation. #

CHEERS

Yay!

APPLAUSE

That was rubbish and... Still better.

..it was much better than what you had to say.

On with the prize task.

Yes, on we pop,

and this week the category is the most satisfying wobbly thing.

Greg will judge whose thing is the most satisfyingly wobbly one

and give that person five points.

At the end of the episode, one lucky person will take home

all five wobbly things and be totally satisfied.

I'll tell you now, anyone who's brought a jelly, no points.

OK, Jamali, what's your satisfying wobbly thing?

Do you know what, this is... I had a whole speech lined up

cos I feel like whenever I put in minimal effort, you go,

"You know what, Jamali, you actually tried, here's four points," right?

So, right, then when you just said that, I was like,

"Oh, right, so it's gone, then." I've got...

I genuinely didn't know you'd brought a jelly in.

No, but it's not just jelly, innit?

Cos I knew you would just go tut-tut-tut. Yeah.

So what I did is I still brought in jelly,

but inside the jelly is a complete Rubik's cube.

Here we go. Ah.

There you go. It's pretty satisfying.

Well, how's it satisfying?

Because Rubik's cubes are hard

and to see a complete Rubik's cube kind of gives me a bit of joy.

It's aesthetically pleasing. I'll take three points.

Yeah? Feels like a three-er, does it?

I'm thinking three. Well, there might be people who've done worse.

If anyone's just brought a jelly in, I'm going to attack them.

LAUGHTER Right.

Who's next? Lee, you like a wobble, what have you brought in?

My daughter. She's eight and she loves you guys, you know that,

and every night she puts her head on my belly.

She nuzzles up and she says,

"Can I just say, Daddy, your belly's so wobbly and lovely,"

and I said, "Funny enough, I have to take a wobbly thing

"in to Taskmaster."

And she said, "Take your belly in."

I said, "I can't take my belly in to Taskmaster."

She said, "Why don't you make it out of jelly?" And...

LAUGHTER

And so I have, and there it is.

It's a jelly belly.

Why does your jelly of your belly have abs?

Yeah, it is a fair point that that...

There's absolutely no way that that's your belly.

I'm not gonna lie, I didn't make a cast because I didn't have time.

I shaped it with my hands and, in a way,

I do see myself not too dissimilar to that.

So, so far, after me slagging anyone who brought in jelly,

we've had two jellies. Next.

Charlotte.

Hm. LAUGHTER

Gulp!

So, it's a bit personal this but, obviously, this show

has taken its toll on my ego, my self-esteem.

Yeah, I can imagine. Um, yeah, and...

Sorry, Charlotte, you've brought a jelly in, haven't you?

Yeah, inside is a letter from my therapist

commenting on my wobbly sense of self-esteem.

Right. Oh. Here it is, the letter from her therapist in a jelly.

Yeah.

I have to say, that is more like my belly than my belly.

It is. Isn't it? Oh, God.

This is so heart-breaking.

100% jelly so far, Greg. Hm.

100% jelly across the board.

Did you know they found jelly on the moon? Moon jelly.

They didn't find moon jelly, Alex. They did.

They said it's exactly the same as Earth jelly, but it's on the moon.

Probably the astronauts left it up there. So they didn't find jelly on the moon?

Later astronauts did.

Sorry, are you saying that someone found Neil Armstrong's jelly on the moon?

That's what's written here.

It's written there on a document that you typed?

Very much so. Very much so. LAUGHTER

Who's, um... Who's brought the next jelly in? Mike?

I've not gone for jelly.

Huh! Aw! Oh, well, congratulations, five points.

I've got an old-school classic. I've gone for a milk tooth. Tooth?

A milk tooth. Here is the milk tooth.

Which is surely the most satisfying wobbly thing of all.

You get a wobble, it's satisfying already. Yes.

If your six-years-old, it's the best chat fuel in the business.

It's chat fuel? Yeah, big time chat fuel time.

It's chap... Chat fuel.

Chap? Chat, chat, chat. Chat.

How you feel and what you talk about in the playground,

"Good old Martha's got a wobbly tooth, let's go, let's talk about it, let's have a wobble,

"let's talk about how we're going to get it out." Ain't that the truth.

I hated having loose teeth as a child.

I found it a disturbing sensation.

But was it satisfying when they came out?

I don't know. You don't know?

I don't know if I find it satisfying. Oh. Right.

Sarah, what wobbly object have you brought?

Um, I brought in a sausage of chicken meat.

A what? LAUGHTER

A sausage of chicken meat. A sausage of chicken meat?

A sausage of chicken meat.

It really is a sausage of chicken meat. Do you want to see it?

Yeah. Here is the sausage of chicken meat.

Did you buy it with a view to eat...

..having a sausage of chicken meat in your home?

I bought it to wobble it. I was sitting in my lounge and I thought,

"Is it satisfyingly wobbly?"

And then I started really wanging it in the lounge room.

I'm like, "This is really..." like, to the point where I was surprised

by how wobbly it was and I wanged it so hard the end came off,

I had to gaffer it back on. LAUGHTER

What's your technique to get the wobble?

Uh, it's a lot of elbow work. OK.

I mean, I don't want to... I don't want to boast,

but I've got pretty good upper body strength at the moment.

Cool. LAUGHTER Are you going to mark the wobblers?

Here's your decision, it's the first time I've ever done it.

I'm giving everybody here three points. What, everyone?

Yeah. That's how I feel.

They're all as wobbly and as satisfying as each other.

So, they're either all good or they're all shit. It doesn't matter.

That was a waste of everyone's time.

In that case, everyone gets three points. Well done, everybody. Yay!

APPLAUSE

OK, on with the show. What's the first task proper?

Inflation, some wrapping, a little bit of munch-munch

and quite a lot of TikTok.

EERIE DISCORDANT MUSIC

KNOCK ON DOOR Come in.

Hello, Alex. Oh, hello, Mike.

Feeling all right?

Yeah, how are you?

Excited. You're excited?

Yeah.

Here we go.

Say the word "metronome" between every tick of this metronome.

You may not touch or stop the metronome.

Also, you must blow up and tie a balloon

so it's bigger than your head.

Neatly gift wrap the balloon.

And eat three whole poppadoms.

You have five minutes.

The person who accomplishes the most things

within the fewest missed metronomes wins.

Your time starts when the metronome starts. OK.

Also, you must blow up and tie a balloon

so it's bigger than your head, neatly gift...

That's a bit unfair actually cos I have got a massive head.

It is big. So, you know, I bet someone like Sarah Kendall,