Taskmaster x English Heritage : A short history of games with Taskmaster’s Alex Horne

Hi there, I'm Amy Matthews.

Welcome to the English Heritage Podcast.

This week, we're talking about a really exciting collaboration between English Heritage and Taskmaster.

This summer we can all experience the fun of this iconic show through challenges and activities inspired by it across a range of English Heritage sites, including Beeston Castle, Stonehenge, and Rest Park.

But there are loads more too, 17 of them in total, in fact.

And that got us thinking about the history of games and some of the more unusual pastimes that would have been enjoyed at these sites by our bored, playful or otherwise mischievous ancestors over the centuries.

From classics like hide and seek and leapfrog to the more obscure like Living Wist.

We'll look at why some of these are still around today and why others might get a raised eyebrow if you rolled them out at your dinner party.

I'm really excited to say that my guests today are the wonderful Peter Moore.

How are you, Peter Moore?

You are a curator here at English Heritage.

I'm fantastic.

Thank you, Amy.

How are you today?

I'm really well, thank you.

It's so nice to be here.

And we are also joined by Alex Horne, comedian and creator of the Channel 4 show, Taskmaster.

How are you, Alex?

I am good.

Thank you, Amy.

And hello, Peter.

It's an honor to be on your podcast.

Thank you for having me.

It's a good team, isn't it?

It's a really, really nice bunch.

And we're going to delve into the history of games shortly.

But first, let's have a quick explainer from you, Alex, of what Taskmaster actually is for those new to it.

I mean, I feel like at this point, you have to slightly have lived under a rock to have not heard of it.

It's a global phenomenon, but for our rock-dwelling friends, tell us.

There are many rock dwellers, so I'm very happy to explain it.

It's a comedy program on English TV that is sort of shown around the world weirdly, where one comedian, who is a giant called Greg Davis, sets tasks to five other comedians whilst I sit next to Greg and

keep count of scores.

But the tasks are unusual things.

It's just an excuse for funny people to be funny, but it's things like who can get the most sweat in an egg cup in 20 minutes.

That's a good example.

They do the tasks in isolation.

They don't know how each other is done.

And then they come back to a studio in a sort of gladiatorial way where Greg passes judgment.

And people take it very seriously, even though it is a very silly programme.

It sums it up beautifully, absolutely beautifully.

And I think one of like the great attractions of the show is that obviously we're used to seeing comedians on stage for an hour or for 20 minutes if they're doing a compilation or on their podcast if they've got one.

But this puts them in an environment where they're out of their comfort zone.

And we really get to see them as people, don't we?

Because both you and I are comedians, Alex, and I don't think it's a secret anymore to say we're quite a deeply serious people.

And we get to see that, don't we, on Taskmaster?

People taking things incredibly seriously.

Yeah, absolutely.

I think comedians, I always say we're split into two camps.

We're either the class clown when we're at school or with a quiet child at the back taking notes and observing.

And I was definitely that one.

I think most of the comedians I know are quite serious.

And yeah, we like,

we're competitive as well.

I think we're nice, but we're competitive.

And the comedians want to win this thing, even though there is no real prize and there's no cash incentive.

But yeah, we are strange people.

We're weirdly driven.

A trophy of Greg's head is priceless, obviously.

Sorry, yes.

What was it about English Heritage that attracted you to working on this collaboration with them?

Well,

I

have

several children.

I have two too many children.

I've got three children.

And

we go to places around the UK and we like to play games.

We like to have fun.

And we have been to many English Heritage sites.

But also

In the show, in Taskmaster, every season or a series, we go to a different location to film tasks.

And it tends tends to be that the grander the location and the sillier the task, the better the chemistry.

Somehow, doing something really silly in an extraordinarily beautiful place works.

And do you have a favorite English heritage site?

I suppose I do.

There's a couple of sites that are, I think they're linked with English Heritage.

You might have to explain to me, Peter.

Berkhamstead Castle is very close to me, and we go there quite a bit with the kids.

And there's also something called Boxgrove Priory, which is where I grew up.

So those are my two English heritage sites of note.

Do they count as English heritage places?

Yeah, they, I mean, they all absolutely count as sites.

They're all part of the National Heritage Collection.

So, Peter, this must have been one of the most enjoyable research projects that we've asked you to undertake.

One of the locations that these amazing challenges are taking place at is Audley End House.

So, I've got this black and white photo in front of me, and I can see a quite grand, very well-kept lawn, and lots of people, men and women, in quite grand outfits of what looks like they're wearing playing cards.

And there's a lot of movement in this photo.

It looks like they're sort of having a little Bridgeton-esque dance moment, but outside on the lawn.

And then we've got some spectators sort of on the edge, having a look in the wallflowers, having a look at all this festivity.

It looks like chaos.

It looks like fun chaos, but it does look like chaos.

So what am I looking at here?

The photo that you're looking at is a really good place to start because, as you said, it's taken on the bowling green lawn at Audley End, which is somewhere that I spend a lot of time.

And we know that it was taken on Thursday, the 18th of June, 1931.

And this was on the occasion of something called the Pageant of the Living Wist.

And this was a form of entertainment that wasn't unique to Audley End, but it's one that was popular all across England, particularly in the 1930s.

And it involved the classic card game of Wist being brought to life, quite literally, by these players of all ages, though adults and children.

It was very much much a cross-generational kind of activity.

And this pageant of living whist would unfold a bit like a theatrical performance.

And there would be a narrator explaining the game.

So players in these, like you said, Alice in Wonderland type of costumes would act out the moves or hands.

And it combined a bit of amateur dramatics and music and humor.

And typically it was staged to raise money for charities or community causes.

And just finally, one thing I really like in the photo, I don't know if you spotted it, is this elderly man in an armchair who's kind of sitting there, hunched in a chair, almost looks like he's presiding over the event.

And this is total speculation on my part, but I just wonder if it might be elderly Lord Braybrook, who might have thought that kind of dressing up as a card and prancing about was just a step too far.

But beneath him, yeah, we don't really know, but I just love the kind of contrast of all this kind of jollity and then this man sitting in the chair.

I get it, though.

Sometimes in

a situation like that, if my social battery's been drained,

I'm the old man in the chair.

Like, I really am.

And I'm fine to spectate.

Yeah, I can relate to that too, I guess, sometimes.

Yeah.

So many of these games are for entertaining guests, not just family.

So

talk us through a figure called Lady Braybrook, who is apparently very creative in this area.

Is that right?

Yeah, well, the Lady Braybrook we're talking about is Jane, who was the third Lady Braybrook.

And so this is in the Victorian period.

It's Audienn's heyday in the 1850s, really.

And she was a really sociable woman who seemed to love having fun and games and dinner parties.

And she was particularly fond of serving up riddles after dinner and probably after several glasses of wine, too.

And her riddles were mostly reliant on puns and wordplay for their comic effect.

Some of them also contained topical references that you probably need an 1850s newspaper to understand today.

But luckily for us, or maybe you'll think unluckily when you hear some of these, one of the regular dinner guests at Audley End, who was a man called Joseph Romilly, wrote some of Lady Braybrook's riddles in his diary.

So for example, on the 9th of April 1849, he writes, we sat chatting around the table and a great number of riddles were proposed, most of them very bad.

And he lists 10 of them.

I won't make you endure all of them, but I wondered if you wanted to hear a choice selection.

Yes, please.

Absolutely.

Okay.

So the first one I selected is, if a clock were to describe the subject of its conversation to a parrot, what would it be?

Wow.

That's very taskmaster.

It is.

Let's hear it again.

Let's hear it again.

Let's give it a go.

If a clock were to describe the subject of its conversation to a parrot, what would it be?

To a parrot.

Can you give us a claim?

What's a

what does a parrot say?

Pretty

polly.

Ah, pretty poly, right?

And what does it ah, yeah, you've got the what does a clock do?

It talks ticks.

Ticks.

Polytics.

Yeah, yeah.

Oh, politics.

Oh, well, John.

Okay, okay.

Number two, I'm surprised you got that.

I'm really impressed.

Number two, what's it?

We're a competitive people.

Why is the nose in the middle of the face?

Think of other words for middle, and you'll get this one.

Yes.

Oh, it's the centre.

It's the centre.

It's the centre.

That's so fun, though.

I love that.

I'm going to take a leaf out of her book.

And the next time I've had one too many after a dinner party, I'm just going to rebrand my drunken ramblings as riddle time.

So

I want to sort of return for a moment to Taskmaster itself and

how it came about, Alex, basically.

I mean, what are your memories of playing games as a child?

Did you play as a family?

Is this the sort of thing that inspired you to create the format?

Well, I suppose so.

I mean, subliminally, really.

I mean, when we were kids at Christmas, we'd always play board games.

We'd always play things like Balder Dash, which I think is a really old-fashioned game, similar to those ones, really, where everyone has to write down a pretend meaning to a word,

a word that we've not heard of before, and you get points if people think your one is the correct one.

So we play a lot of balder dash, we play a lot of countdown, pictionary, charades,

and I loved it, and I always

looked forward to it.

So I suppose, yeah, it was always in me.

And I think part of the reason for doing the show is I wanted to get comedians outside from behind a desk where they've been for a while.

We had all these panel shows, which were great, but I'm not sure they properly displayed the wits of comedians.

So, yeah, probably it's because of these board games.

And lots of those board games were Victorian and older.

I really envy that because I feel like I didn't,

my family weren't interested at all.

They were all

that guy in the chair in the photo looking on at the people playing cards.

And it's meant that as an adult, I now have you seen that meme that's literally Scarlett Johansson sort of glazing over and looking slightly tearful as somebody explains the rules of a card game.

That's what happens every single time.

Well, the best games have that have the fewest rules, definitely.

And we find that with tasks themselves, we have to come up with these three brand new tasks every single episode.

So, if they've got loads of rules, the viewers glaze over.

Yeah.

So, you know, we something like Consequences we play a lot when we were kids, which is where someone writes two lines of a poem or it could be a story.

You fold over one so you only see the bottom line and the next person writes the next line.

And we have taken that onto the show and we've done consequences in Taskmaster.

Same with Mastermind, where you have to predict sequences.

And

yeah, it tends to be the simpler, the better, I'd say.

So you've touched there on fewest rules as possible, nice and simple.

Anything else that you think makes a great game?

Like, what are the ingredients of a great challenge?

As a comedian, I like it that you read out the instructions and think, okay, this is going to be fun.

So, so one

I stole from a kids' holiday camp.

My kids were, they were, they were in some kids' camp in a campsite, and they were running and screaming.

And my wife and I were watching, thinking, I hope they're all right.

But the game was run

as far as you can while screaming.

That's it.

As soon as you stop screaming, you have to stop running.

And that went straight in the show because it's instantly, you want to see an old comedian do that, but you're also thinking, how would I do that?

I think you always want to get involved.

And there are tactics in that one you don't want to scream too loud you don't want to run too fast you actually want to pace yourself so yeah something you want to do something you want to watch and have you ever taken any inspiration from history yes i think probably there's there's something i did a documentary for bbc4 years ago called uh cricket on horseback and other forgotten sports so there's we discovered all these various sports that either became obsolete or turned into things like cricket.

So the origins of cricket was, we think, was somebody sat on a milking stool

and in the break from milking they used they turned the milking stool into a wicket, which is why wickets have three legs, we think.

And in this documentary we discovered something called the jingling match.

And the jingling match was when maybe six people in some sort of boxing ring type situation with blindfolds on and one other person wearing a suit covered in bells.

And the people in blindfolds had to catch the person wearing bells.

And the person wearing bells would just run around.

So they would only use their sense of hearing and touch, I suppose.

And yeah, that is going to feature in a task next year.

We're filming it literally at the moment.

So,

yeah, that's a direct example of a historical game making it into the show, which I'm quite proud of.

Yeah, I love that, giving it a resurgence.

And in Taskmaster, obviously, the challenges often involve the comics putting on a little show for you, Alex.

It's all to impress you on the day.

So, we asked people.

I need to say it's to impress Greg, just so you know, otherwise, Greg will be furious.

Of course, of course.

I am merely.

But we asked Peter if there are any examples of amateur theatre that

he's found.

And I tell you what, you've delivered, Peter.

You really have.

Because I'm looking at a photo of two men dressed up in very elaborate costumes in a very grand setting, again, in front of a big, what looks like a stately home.

And it looks like they're about to commence some amdram.

So, Peter, what am I looking at here?

Yes, it is a a funny photo in the sense of being comic but it's also quite haunting i think it's it's really weird and it's a little bit creepy isn't it

just because it's in black and white i don't know i find it quite ghostly but um it's taken on the terrace at rest park in bedfordshire which of course is an english heritage site today and it's a photograph of private paddy kidney and private wally at rest park in 1914 and they're dressed for an amateur dramatic performance that was taking place at a time when the house was being used as a First World War hospital for injured soldiers coming back from the trenches.

And a staggering 1,600 patients passed through rest during this time.

And most of the men only stayed for a few weeks before moving on to convalescence.

But during their stay, they'd engage in all sorts of games and activities, including amateur dramatics.

I think the fact that both male and female parts are being played by these male soldiers would have heightened the amusement.

So Private Wally here is wearing this floor-length gown, kind of low-cut and looks really tight, like a corset around the waist.

And he holds this large fan and is wearing a voluptuous-looking wig.

And we get a bit of an insight into what was going on because Nan Herbert, who is the member of the family who decided to turn Rest into this military hospital, she recorded in her diary on September the 4th, 1914, that Paddy, dressed in a tabard of the grey coat of arms, that's the family associated with Rest Park, danced Irish jigs in a corner.

And Wally, in a very decollete dress with bulging front, pursued Dr.

Beetram to ask him him in ringing whispers about the baby.

And if you look closely in the photo, you can see there's this kind of quite creepy-looking doll sitting on the floor.

Yeah, okay, that is scary.

That is creepy.

So I think this must be the baby that he's running around asking after.

I mean, it does sound quite a bit like a Taskmaster type of thing.

It's all kind of a bit surreal humour with some slapstick thrown in, I think.

Yeah, and there have absolutely been times where it's been surreal and creepy on Taskmaster, hasn't it?

Yeah.

Well, I could see in 227 or 8 years' time, people looking at a picture from our show and having exactly the same reaction thinking.

It is a bit weird, a bit creepy.

Yeah, I think so.

And all the men are for it, actually.

So, I mean, we think of these stately homes as deeply serious, somber places, I think, because of their grandiosity and their history.

But actually, they've always hosted a bit of mischief, haven't they?

And I'm really interested in how we are documenting these moments and these challenges, these games all throughout history.

We've got photographic evidence here.

But Peter, how else are games documented throughout history?

I want to just kind of take you through some things in the collection, so forms of material culture we have in our collections that chart some of these games through time.

And I want to start by taking us back about 2,000 years to Richborough Roman Fort in Kent, where a number of gaming artefacts have been found, and mostly relating to games of chance, so using dice.

And we know that dice games were massively popular in Roman Britain.

And there were two main types of dice, both of which have been found at Richborough.

So the first are called tally and these are like long narrow like an elongated cuboid so they only have four scoring sides numbered one three four and six and then the other type are called tesserae and these are the more familiar cube shaped dice like ones we have today and they were normally made from carved bone or ivory.

And at Richborough, there have also been stone gaming boards found and these were used to play games such as tabula which is a bit like backgammon but yeah this wasn't just playing for fun.

Gambling was absolutely part of it, although it was officially banned, but in reality, gambling was happening in taverns, barracks, and markets all over the place.

And you can probably imagine that

this would often cause disagreements and arguments, especially if someone was accused of cheating.

So they'd often use an object called a turricula or dice tower.

And we have a really rare example of one of those from Richborough.

It's basically like a wooden box about 20 centimeters high,

open at the top, and you drop the dice in the top and they bounce around through a series of pegs inside and tumble out or the bottom into a tray.

So, it's basically like a random number generator.

So, it's designed to stop cheating.

I don't know if you, I certainly remember as a child, you know, my kids do this, playing dice games, and you're trying to roll a particular number, and you do the kind of careful placed dice to get the number you want.

Oh, yeah.

Um, so, um, yeah, so it's it's it's a great example of kind of how seriously the Romans took their games and tried to stop cheating.

It also made me think of the modern game frustration, where you've got the dice in the little poppy thing in the middle, which kind of stops you

fixing the role.

So some of these have their background in gambling.

That was their original very adult purpose.

So as these games have been passed down over time, they've obviously been tweaked and changed to be a little bit more family friendly, haven't they?

Could you give us some examples of those?

Well, yeah, one of the examples is a card game that was played at Audley End.

So circling back to Audley End in the 1930s.

And we know that Lord and Lady Brabrick's three children, Catherine, Dick and Robert, enjoyed playing games.

And one of their favourites was Old Maid.

And that was a game that first rose to popularity in the late 19th century.

And then in the 20th century, they started producing kind of mass-produced illustrated card sets that were designed specially for it.

So they weren't ordinary playing cards.

They were illustrated with kind of these wildly exaggerated caricatures.

And the rules were quite simple.

Players took turns drawing cards from each other's hands, trying to make and discard matching pairs of these characters with one twist that the infamous Old Maid card had no pair and whoever was left holding that was the loser.

So it's, you know, it's playing with these caricatures of fussy spinsters and bumbling bachelors and eccentric tradespeople and these kind of cultural stereotypes that would raise eyebrows today.

So there's one called, you know, different sets with different characters, but I found one that's Mr.

Italiano, the ice cream man, complete with a long moustache and cigarette, and Mrs.

Knockout, the boxer's wife, an intimidating looking figure with clenched fists.

And the stereotyping kind of didn't stop there.

These sets were made into the later 20th century.

I even came across one, I think, from the 1960s or 70s, featuring a character called Heap Big Talk, which was a caricatured representation of an indigenous North American figure.

So, continuing what seems now like a very troubling trend of using these

national and cultural identities for comic effect.

So, I think of games like we've got like Guess Who, you know, today, which I suppose are similar, but you kind of toning it down and making it a bit more appropriate.

You could still have caricatures for comic effects.

Sure, but being the old maid doesn't default make you the loser.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

Fair enough.

Absolutely.

I'm pleased to see that.

It's been revised, to be frank.

That's great.

Also, Alex, I mean, you've got three young boys, as you've mentioned.

So, you know, you understand how important it is to introduce play and the imagination, but also for the families more broadly.

I mean, one of the wonderful things about kids and families accessing this is it makes adults connect with their childhood as well, right?

And we've touched a little bit on this in our Stone Circles episode, that one of the things that really struck people is as soon as they're in stone circles, there's a there's a sort of, I mean, there's no other word for it, like a frolicking

that's induced by being in these playful sites.

So, you know, you know the importance of play and letting the imagination run wild.

I think I completely agree with you in, well, a few things I'm going to say.

First, I think Taskmaster is allowing grown-ups to behave like children again, because often we forget that we enjoy playing games.

And I think you're right when you go somewhere special, you do frolic.

And I think just going to the beach is a good example of that.

Suddenly, we play these games at the beach.

And I don't know why it takes the sand and the sea to make us do that.

So if we're prompted to do it in these wonderful English Heritage sites, that's only a good thing.

I guess you can sneak some learning through these games.

I mean, we've designed the task or the English Heritage team with the Taskmaster team have come up with these games where you might learn a little bit that you might take in a bit of information, but that's not really the point.

I think

reconnecting with your childhood, reconnecting with your kids, it's just fun and something we forget to do.

And yeah, my kids like football because all kids seem to be dominated by football nowadays.

In my world, anyway, because I've got three boys, but they also like traditional games.

They love computer games, and I don't think computer games are all bad.

They can really encourage the imagination.

But when we're on holiday and we make them go and do a treasure hunt or

join a kids' club, that is when they're at the happiest.

Even if sometimes they think, oh, we're not going to enjoy this,

they always do.

So

yeah, it's forced fun, but forced fun is still fun.

Absolutely.

And I think you've touched on something so important there as well, in that, as you say, we sort of have to give ourselves a special occasion in order to play games.

As you say, going to the beach, Christmas comes to mind as well.

And I'm just thinking there about different games that I've played over the years.

As I say, I'm not from a hugely game-playing family.

One staple when I went to stay with my Nana and granddad on the weekends would be we would pass a lot of time playing tiddlywinks.

And I didn't realise until I got much older that that is like, that's a Victorian game, is it?

That's like a really, really oldy, worldy game.

And we've got, we've still got so many Victorian games that survive today.

Peter, I wonder if you could tell me a little bit about children's games and the culture of gaming in the Victorian period.

Yeah, you're right.

There was a massive culture of gaming in that period, but it would have contrasted greatly depending on what kind of family you were from or what kind of background you were from.

So, for example, if you were from an incredibly wealthy family,

you would have expected to have a large nursery filled with expensive toys like rocking horses and elaborate dolls' houses, kind of luxuries that came with space and status and wealth.

And then on the other hand, if you were children of working parents, you might have to make do with simple homemade toys like peg dolls or skipping ropes, spinning tops.

And then, in obviously, in more urban areas where space was tight, street games like Hopscotch or Tag and football, Alex has mentioned, you know, these types of games that could be played in alleyways or courtyards or anywhere where you had a bit of open ground that you could find.

And it was a very different world, but I think children were no less playful, they just had to find different ways to make it happen.

Necessity is the mother of invention, isn't it?

So, like, actually, constraints on things forces you.

We see this on Taskmaster: putting a constraint on something, putting a limitation on something, actually means you have to engage your imagination.

Well, actually, we found during lockdown when we carried on filming, but we had to be two meters away from each other.

Actually, we came up with some great games where we had a team of contestants that had to hold a rope taut at all times, which was two meters long.

So they were forced to be two meters apart, and we got a lot of humour out of it.

So, yeah.

I mean, one of my favourite memories as a kid was just waiting endlessly for trains.

Where I lived, there was no

pretty poor public transportation, but me and my mates would always just make up games involving throwing a stone at a can or whatever it is.

And we would alleviate the boredom with very little.

And I think screens are a problem, aren't they?

Because screens are so easy.

But they're not always bad.

And you can watch Taskmaster on them.

And

there's a balance to be had, isn't there?

I think there's pros and cons for engaging with both.

And yeah, you're absolutely right.

I think obviously lockdown being the ultimate restriction on so many people.

It was also a way that loads of people re-engaged with having having to entertain themselves.

I mean, you know, everyone started buying jigsaw puzzles.

My weekly thing that I did in the flat that I was living in at the time, I was living with a few people.

I would every week turn the flat into a different themed escape room, which, I mean, on reflection is a little on the nose.

But yeah, every week there would be a different theme and you'd have to get from the kitchen to the bathroom.

There was no way I'd ever have done that or had time to do that had we not had this, you know, this constraint put on us.

Alex, what can people expect from the challenges at English Heritage Sites this summer?

Well, they are simple games that anyone of any age can do.

They're competitive, they're kind of as competitive as you want them to be.

So, if you if you're a family, you enjoy celebrating someone win and laughing at people losing, then you'll love it.

But you can also, anyone can take part.

They're as gentle or as

I'm going to use the word aggressive as you want them to be.

There's a bit of building, there's a bit of drawing.

So, in the show, we always have physical tasks and mental tasks.

And it's the same with this.

There's a bit of everything, a bit of history, but mainly a lot of mucking about.

And whilst Greg isn't here and we don't have the watchful eyes of the taskmaster on us, have you got any tips for us playing?

Well, you're actually going to have to appoint your own taskmaster on this one because Greg can't be everywhere despite his size.

So I think the tips that I would always give to my contestants are the taskmaster is always right and you must obey him and you must respect him.

him but sometimes you can make the taskmaster think they're right

and somehow wrap him around your finger there are ways of making the taskmaster award you the points so think latterly and bribe them yeah that sort of thing you heard it here first so Alex Horn's tips for playing games this summer is master manipulation there we go we'll take it Thank you so much to Peter and Alex for joining me.

You can take part in Taskmaster challenges at English Heritage Heritage sites across the country until the 31st of August.

The challenges have been especially designed in collaboration, so expect plenty of rubber ducks.

Alex and the team won't be there, but that means you'll be able to go wild with tasks without him following you with a stopwatch and a clipboard.

There are also lots of other fun family activities happening like den building, mini golf and archery.

Or just use some of these games as inspiration to go back to playing with family and friends and make your own fun.

Head to english-heritage.org.uk for a full list of the sites.

Thanks so much for supporting the show.

As you know, English Heritage is a charity.

They rely on your kind donations to keep looking after our heritage.

So go to english-heritage.org.uk forward slash membership.

Next week on the podcast, we meet the influential American heiresses who brought their wealth to England at the turn of the 20th century and set the gossip columns alive.

I'm Amy Matthews, and the English Heritage Podcast is a fresh air production.

Make sure you hit follow so that you never miss an episode and leave us a lovely review.

It really does make all the difference.

Thank you.