I spoke to Guz Khan about it. Guz doesn’t really get excited by anything. He’s equally happy being the main person in the biggest show of all time as he would chilling at home watching TV. But he was like, “Bruh, you’re gonna smash it. You’ve got to do it.” I told Katy because we were filming when I found out I was going to do it, and all she said was, “Of course.” Charlotte came to watch me in the studio record. She’s like me: as an actor, you sometimes don’t really want to see yourself in that scenario, especially with a bunch of comedians. It can be daunting, and you worry whether you haven’t said enough, or you’ve said too much. A: Yes, all of them, by the way, were really good at the prize tasks, which is huge for us. They were all thinking about it, which was great. That doesn’t mean they did well. I think I’m coming to terms with the fact that when you start to do more stuff in the public eye, the full extent of your character is out there. When you’re doing stand-up, which has been the bulk of my career, you have a degree of control over what you’re putting out – and obviously, you’re slightly massaging your own character to make it more likeable or whimsical or whatever. I think I’m coming to terms with the fact that when you start to do more stuff in the public eye, the full extent of your character is out there.

I found this a lot with being disorganised and late for things, which is something that I still really would like to think at the age of 32 that I am going to get on top of, but I haven’t yet.

Other comedians have a kind of gung-ho attitude – and that’s something that initially made Horne quite wary. “In series past, I wasn’t completely sure we’d be able to cope with Johnny Vegas. I’ve done shows with him before, and he’s always the funniest person – I was always worried about having a flavour that’s too strong in the mix over 10 episodes.” Equally though, the varied tasks in the show means that you get to see a different aspect of the personalities of normally bombastic comics. “My mum had seen Vegas before and wasn’t his greatest fan. But now she is, because she saw how artistic and fragile he is. So we do try to show all the different sides of people. They can’t help but show all their colours.” The problem is those two key moments overshadow most of the rest of the series. We will give serious bonus points to Katherine Ryan’s genius method of extracting answers from a Swedish person and Doc Brown’s hiphop reimagining of ‘1, 2, 3, 4, 5, once I caught a fish alive.’ LVG 8. Series One A: Yes. There aren’t that many sitcoms out there that are just nonsense. Actually, Man Down was quite a good influence on me. You were mainly trying to be really funny on that show. Is that fair enough?

On the subject of Edinburgh, series 11 isn’t Mike Wozniak’s first Taskmasterexperience. Before he developed the format for television, Alex Horne performed a version of it with comedian contestants as a live Edinburgh Fringe show in 2010. The winner of the stage version? Mr Mike Wozniak. A: If you say to her, “What do you think of the Nissan Micra?” she’ll have a story about it, in the same way Greg often has a story for most occasions. She’s got an amazing memory for details. This is up to you and your needs. The events can be run on simple video conferencing platforms such as Zoom, Webex or MS Teams. Oh, yes. I went into it thinking, “Don’t worry about anyone else, just focus on yourself.” But when you feel like someone has transgressed some rule or something, it’s so hard not to call them out, and then you feel like you’re ten years old. I know the worst thing in the world to be is a snitch, but you’ve GOT to get those points. The task where the contestants have to make a “hilarious blooper”. Tim Key and Frank Skinner invent a home movie where a man falls off a ladder so hard his entire torso gets embedded in the ground. Chilling. 83 Vanishing actThis might be showing a slightly different side of you than perhaps other TV shows that you’ve done before. Do you agree? The subject of how different comedians take different approaches is an interesting one – the key is authenticity. “Andy [Devonshire, the director]’s main advice is always ‘You don’t have to try to be funny when you’re doing the tasks because that’s not funny.’” We’ll send you bespoke tasks for your event, devised and put together by Taskmaster creator, Alex Horne. The official offering will guarantee a unique and truly unforgettable experience for your group. The Horne Sectiongave me occasional guest spots at the Fringe years ago, so I felt like I had a little role in there. It’s a slightly eccentric universe. G: And publicly slagged their them off. Which is always fun – it adds a frisson of danger to the room.

Yep. Because their job is being funny by themselves and the only time I’ve ever been funny is if someone else has written something good for me to put in my mouth. Without that I’m an empty vessel that needs to be filled with genius. The proof will be in the tweets following the show so I’m looking forward to learning who I am on the internet. When I ask Horne if he ever disagrees with Davies’s judgment, the answer is instant. “Yes. Most tasks. It’s frustrating, really, because I know that if he scored it in a certain way, then the episode might unravel in a certain way. Quite often he’ll score it completely wrong, so someone has already won with two tasks to spare.” Despite this, Horne wouldn’t have it any other way – “I’m always pleased that Greg is invested. I’m more interested in him caring about who wins, rather than him churning out scores that we’ve told him to say.” In fact, I was late for a gig in Bristol a few weeks ago and they had to stretch out the interval before I came on. After the gig, I was looking at my tweets and someone had posted just before the show started: ‘Waiting in a long interval for the latest man in comedy.’ That’s not a title that I’ve ever put out into the world, but that’s something that has been now baked in beyond my control. There’s a good correlation that the more I’m laughing, the more I’m in hell, but I think that’s fine because there are two options: you could either wallow in something or you really over-compensate in the other direction. That tends to work out better in life so that’s how I’ve gone.

3. Alex never wanted to be the Taskmaster

Yes, I was really nervous all the way through all of the tasks. I find being creative or entertaining on demand impossible. Really well, considering it’s just a job. You don’t see each other during the tasks, apart from the occasional group one, so mainly you just get to know each other at the studio. So considering that, we got on really well.

Taskmaster is an international hit TV show which sees Greg Davies as the all-powerful ‘Taskmaster’, alongside Alex Horne as his loyal assistant. The pair set out to test the wiles, wit and wisdom of five hyper competitive comedians through a series of strange and surreal challenges. The task where the contestants have to eat an egg the fastest. I know what you’re thinking, and yes, Osman shots it like tequila. I feel ill thinking about it. 88 What do you do? A: It does a bit, yes. My poor band, putting in a load of effort, and in the press it’s all about Greg. It’s been a lot of fun though. Very silly. All the special guests we had – we’ve had some great names including Martin Kemp and Anneka Rice, and Imogen Heap – really odd. We just wanted to be unpredictable. Exclusively designed and created by Little Alex Horne for the corporate world, they are the perfect blend of interactivity and entertainment which is the key to any successful online event.The task where two teams have to come up with the best soap opera cliffhanger. Kerry Godliman and Jessica Knappett star in Cul de Sac, a harrowing tale of a mother in love with her son, while Gilbert plays a man in a bath who can only say “rub a dub dub”. Gilbert wins. 50 Beermat towers All you need to do it nominate your Taskmaster who will set and judge the challenges, choose your virtual platform and gather the troops for a guaranteed fun-filled event. The task where the contestants have to slide for the longest. Mel Giedroyc is dragged about in a sleeping bag by crew members like a confused but delighted worm, and I could watch it for the rest of my life and be happy. 79 Sing the theme tune It’s the whimsy. It’s his word play, and the surrealness of it. And just the total silliness. It’s so nice for me. I’d just come off doing Feel Good, which was a hyper-personal comedy drama, you know, trauma parade. This experience was absolutely the antithesis to that, in the best way. At the start, I decided I was almost certainly going to be playingTaskmasterfor laughs, going for some sort of wooden spoon, and that was a nice thing to come to terms with.