Ep 193. Matt Heath - TM NZ S2 Ep.3

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Speaker 2 Hello, and welcome to the Taskmaster podcast. It's me, Ed Gamble.
Welcome back to another Taskmaster podcast where we're talking about Taskmaster New Zealand Series 2.

Speaker 2 And today, we're talking about Taskmaster New Zealand Series 2, specifically episode 3.

Speaker 2 Another belting episode of a fantastic series. And today, our special guest to guide us through these tasks is the wonderful Matt Heath.
Matt Heath, of course, a competitor on Taskmaster Series 2.

Speaker 2 It's his first time on the Taskmaster podcast. Can't wait to meet him.
Can't wait to chat to him about this episode and his experience on Taskmaster in general.

Speaker 2 So I think we should just get straight into it. This is Taskmaster New Zealand Series 2, Episode 3, as discussed by Matt Heath.

Speaker 2 Welcome, Matt, to the Taskmaster Podcast.

Speaker 3 Yeah, great to be here. Thank you for having me.

Speaker 2 We are delighted to have you. It is, of course, your first time on the Taskmaster podcast to talk about Taskmaster New Zealand Series 2, which you were, of course, a competitor on.

Speaker 2 Would you class yourself as a competitor?

Speaker 3 I was on it.

Speaker 3 I don't know if I was ever in the competition. I won one episode, I think.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 I didn't actually really know when I started it that it was a competition.

Speaker 2 I'd never thought about it.

Speaker 3 I was talking about that with Ursula afterwards. Like neither of us really got our heads around the idea that you were trying to win.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it just seemed like a bunch of fun things that were set up that I was led out of

Speaker 3 a dressing room out into

Speaker 3 this. It was like something you pay to do.

Speaker 3 that people have set up these fun little challenges and you do and I never really thought about it in terms of I don't know winning the head of Jeremy Wells the New Zealand Taskmaster.

Speaker 2 Well, I mean, I think that's a good thing. I think you went into it to have fun and enjoy yourself.

Speaker 2 Had you seen a lot of Taskmaster beforehand? You sort of mentioned in this episode you might not have watched too much in advance.

Speaker 3 I hadn't watched any of it at all. I'd seen a little bit of Taskmaster season one in New Zealand.

Speaker 3 It was one of those shows that everyone had told me was the greatest show in the world for the longest time. And so I got one of those sort of contrarian mental blocks about it.
So I didn't watch it.

Speaker 3 And then I had one of those stupid ideas where you go, like, like you're going onto a TV show and you go, I should come fresh, so I don't know anything about it.

Speaker 3 So kind of like, you know, when, you know, the Office US started.

Speaker 3 And if I don't look at Ricky Gervase's performance, because it might ruin your performance kind of thing, which

Speaker 3 in retrospect was a really stupid idea because I didn't know that you could get Paul as our taskmaster's assistant. I didn't know you could send him to get things or do anything.

Speaker 3 I didn't know anything about the rules of what was going on. So I should have watched more episodes, to be fair.

Speaker 2 Well, I think with, because that's what happens in this episode, when you finally meet your teammate, Ursula, for the first team task, she sends Paul to get stuff, and you are absolutely blown away by this.

Speaker 2 You're like, I didn't know we could use him in that way. I think he decides

Speaker 2 when he wants to do that. I suspect if you tried to use him in tasks, he would have said no just to get on your nerves.

Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah,

Speaker 3 that could be true. And Ursula's quite a forceful person, and I think Paul was reasonably terrified of her throughout the series and actually throughout life and all around New Zealand in general.

Speaker 3 So I think that

Speaker 3 she had more mana than I did, you know.

Speaker 2 So obviously, you are the contestant going into the series who has a lot of history with Jeremy.

Speaker 2 How do you feel this sort of changed your performance on the show?

Speaker 2 Do you think there was any bias from Jeremy coming towards you?

Speaker 3 Massively so, because we did, up until recently, a breakfast radio show together for 11 years. So we were the Matt and Jerry show.

Speaker 3 So it was kind of odd to be on that and him to be elevated above me in some kind of way, which I didn't really accept.

Speaker 3 But also, I think it was a release valve to just be able to always slam me like he does every day on breakfast. And then, because I think, you know, it was the second season of Taskmaster.

Speaker 3 It's quite hard, I think, in a way, to just really,

Speaker 3 you know, crush someone's dreams and insult them about something that they've tried to do. But if it was with me, he found it really easy.

Speaker 3 In fact, we talked about it beforehand, and he said, I'm just going to go for you.

Speaker 3 So I was actually.

Speaker 3 I'm just trying to insult you. So, so much of the on-stage stuff that didn't make it into the show, you know, the studio record, was Jeremy just really going me and me going him a little bit.

Speaker 3 But it was cut out, a lot of it, because I think it was really boring for everyone else to just hear our back and forth breakfast radio band really playing to the Taskmaster world.

Speaker 2 Of course, in the UK, we've seen that relationship with Greg, our Taskmaster, and Rod Gilbert in Series 7.

Speaker 2 And a lot of people were saying that maybe Greg was giving Rod extra points or, you know, there was

Speaker 2 a bit of preferential treatment there. But I did not see one

Speaker 2 iota of that in yours and Jeremy's relationship. It was pure negative for you, that relationship on Taskmaster.

Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah, it was. I think, yeah, he used me as this whipping boy.
But I actually told him a total lie.

Speaker 3 I said, objectively, you can go through and all the tasks where you could actually quantify, you know, it's a matter of time or a number of objects or whatever, that I did very well.

Speaker 3 And anytime it was objective, I did really badly on that episode.

Speaker 3 I haven't seen those stats, but I keep going at him that he voted me down and that I would have probably won the series if he hadn't been biased.

Speaker 3 But Jeremy's not a great stats man, so he believes that. In fact, I was at his house till about

Speaker 3 uh, he had a party a couple of nights ago. It was a big party, actually, a big pool party.
And um, and uh,

Speaker 3 he, I was still pushing that line to him then.

Speaker 3 I said I was going on this and I was going to rip him a new one on this part.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I'm not, I'm not sure. I mean, I obviously're re-watching the series now.

Speaker 2 I'm not sure you can claim to have been the best at all the objective tasks.

Speaker 3 No, i i made a fool of myself on a on a number of them there was what there's one bit on i w well i think we're going to get to this i won't won't talk about it i won't jump ahead to the to the discussion of this but there was a number of times when i thought i was really clever on the show and i was just so dumb to the point where where where i you know people would go they questioned me there was lots of like um you know psychologists and even a psychiatrist that got hold of me because and tried to diagnose me with various sort of mental problems after that show.

Speaker 3 And I can kind of see why, because there'd be things that I'd get that were quite complicated and things that were very obvious that I just didn't get at all.

Speaker 3 And you don't really normally see yourself in that light. You don't see yourself failing that badly, you know, for all the world to see.

Speaker 2 It's a wonderful show if you want a diagnosis of some kind, I think.

Speaker 2 You know, there's 10 episodes of a character study. It's fantastic.

Speaker 2 Let's get into this episode, though, Matt. Let's talk about the prize task.
The prize task, which is the most New Zealand thing.

Speaker 2 Now, I'm going to need some real help from you here for some of these prizes

Speaker 2 because I'm a terrible interviewer. I've not done my research when these things came up.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Let's first talk about yours,

Speaker 2 which is dirt from a rescue center in a lunchbox.

Speaker 3 Yeah, that one really backfired on me because I thought I was being very clever because what's the most New Zealand thing? It was some of New Zealand, you know?

Speaker 3 And on one level, that's very clever. On another level, it's just a lunchbox full of dirt.

Speaker 2 And immediately

Speaker 3 it was one of those things that popped up. And I said, I actually thought this is just a lunchbox full of dirt.
I thought, you know, our native birds, the kiwi, this is from a kiwi sanctuary.

Speaker 3 You're picking up. You've got some kiwi droppings in there.
You've got the roots and leaves that it

Speaker 3 messes around in. It's in a Sistema lunchbox, which is a New Zealand type of Tupperware.
There were so many elements of New Zealand in there, but in the end, it was just some dirt in a lunchbox.

Speaker 2 But it's representative, right? It's what it represents. I actually thought this was a good prize, as in it was like compound.
There were multiple levels to it.

Speaker 2 And one of the levels was literally New Zealand. There was literally New Zealand in it.
I thought it was very good, Matt, but that might say more about what I consider to be good.

Speaker 3 Yeah, and then but then it was up against laura who had bought peter duck peter jackson's you know uh you know special effects company and well yeah

Speaker 2 look what what i'll say about this is um the the foil animals that she'd done she said she work went to you know worked with wetter workshops on it as if she'd hired someone to do it I went to wetter workshops two years ago.

Speaker 2 That is part of the experience is you watch videos of people making animals and they give you you some tin foil and you shape them into animals.

Speaker 2 She paid for a ticket and she did the thing that the kids are allowed to do.

Speaker 3 So she was just a tourist.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 3 This is great intel.

Speaker 2 Can we go back and get a recount?

Speaker 3 I mean, how many years ago was this show?

Speaker 3 I was trying to work out when I was watching it last night when it actually happened, whether it was pre-COVID or post-COVID or it was during.

Speaker 2 There's a lot of challenges during. So it's 2021 because everyone's talking about vaccines and stuff as well later on in the series.

Speaker 3 Right. Yeah,

Speaker 3 I don't have no memory of that.

Speaker 3 But yeah, so either way, it's too late to go back and strip her of her prize

Speaker 3 of that particular task.

Speaker 2 But she got the beer cans that were left outside of her house after a 660 concert. Could you tell us about 660, please, Matt?

Speaker 3 Well,

Speaker 3 660,

Speaker 3 New Zealand's biggest band, but only in New Zealand. We've got a saying in New Zealand, world famous in New Zealand, and there's some things that are just bigger than anything.

Speaker 3 They can pack out whatever size stadium in New Zealand, 50,000 people,

Speaker 3 but that's it. Outside of the country, they don't really exist.
And 660, actually, from my hometown, Dunedin, which is at the other end of the country, they're named after

Speaker 3 a house, 660 Castle Street. Castle Street's rural, it's the most scummy street in New Zealand where students just defecate on each other and such.

Speaker 3 And so during the middle of the sort of COVID, the pandemic, New Zealand opened up briefly and smugly decided to put on this huge concert just to give the finger to the rest of the world that we'd had some great response to it, and now we were open.

Speaker 3 And so, we put on in the most disgusting example of hubris you've ever seen.

Speaker 3 We put on this huge concert, and we were like, People around the world are looking at us, and we're out and about, and we've got this concert of 50,000 people, and we're all gone to the 660 concert.

Speaker 3 And then, you know, we ended up getting shut down again for record amounts of time, not long after that. And we bloody deserved it for

Speaker 3 trying to rub that in people's faces that we were going to this add that no one in the rest of the world cares about.

Speaker 2 Well, Laura did a great job. That goes down very well with Jeremy, and she gets the five points for that.

Speaker 2 Let's talk about Guy's attempt.

Speaker 2 A rare sort of lazy prize for Guy, I think,

Speaker 2 an NZ cushion. He's just clearly gone into a souvenir shop and bought an NZ cushion.

Speaker 3 Yeah, that's a good point, Athley. Guy normally operates at such a high level just in every aspect of life.
I've been friends with that guy for a long time, and everything's quite thought out. Yeah.

Speaker 3 And so

Speaker 3 it's, and, you know, clever. You know, even just, even just the way he says hello, if you're walking down the street and you see him, he'll say hello in a cleverer way than you would say hello.

Speaker 3 And his first response back to hello will be quite a good observation of what's going on or what you're doing. So it's odd that he just turned up with a pillow, actually.
That was massively...

Speaker 2 There must have been some significance behind that pillow they didn't impart it's probably cleverer than anyone else can work out well yeah exactly yeah he's beat all of us intelligence wise i i think he also um says at the beginning it's most likely made in asia so he completely undermines his own prize immediately

Speaker 2 and uh spends quite a lot of time explaining that if you look the other way it also says nz but if it felt like he couldn't think of anything for this one so he just sort of torpedoed it

Speaker 3 yeah because i heard that our year compared to the first year on taskmaster one

Speaker 3 uh on taskmaster new zealand really lent into those prizes just all you know that that that part part of it so um you know i think things things really across across the series ramped up in in that region i i saw it myself as normally as a way that i could sort of control things

Speaker 3 and try and actually get some point points on on on the board um but obviously not in this case that didn't that didn't that that that lunchbox of dirt wasn't one of those examples when i excelled in that in that in that area of the show but i think you're right i think it's a good opportunity especially if you suspect you haven't done that well in the in the pre-recorded tasks to just get finally get some points in

Speaker 3 yeah

Speaker 3 oddly though i thought i'd done really really well i was snugly just walking around i i couldn't wait to just show people what i'd done And

Speaker 3 yeah, it ended up to be a bit of a mess.

Speaker 2 What I really like about your vibe on the whole series, though, Matt, is when they show a task alongside everyone else's, and it's clearly not done as well as everyone else, you will still maintain that it's the best.

Speaker 2 Quite often you will just be like, yep, that deserves the five.

Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah, that was an unsuccessful tactic throughout the series. What I notice when I'm watching the show back is I make this weird, sort of, almost vagina shape with my hand.

Speaker 2 Really?

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 On the set, I'm sitting there.

Speaker 3 That's the thing, because you know, when you're watching a TV show back, you think you claim to be watching the whole thing, that's something that you're on, but all you're doing is watching yourself.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 3 It's like right now I'm on the Zoom call and I'm just looking at my own reflection.

Speaker 2 Yeah, of course. Yeah, yeah.
Just checking over. But I noticed that

Speaker 3 I hold my hands like this in front of my

Speaker 3 genitals for the whole series, like some kind of joke.

Speaker 3 Some kind of

Speaker 3 completely involuntarily, I'm sort of making a

Speaker 3 vagina sign the whole time.

Speaker 2 I mean, no wonder these psychologists got in contact, Matt.

Speaker 2 There's clearly something going on there. Well, it's quite obvious what's going on.
There is

Speaker 3 watchful thinking.

Speaker 2 David brought in a bag of fejoas,

Speaker 2 which I assume, I mean, it's said by Paul that they're not from New Zealand, but

Speaker 2 is it true to say that they've been adopted by New Zealand?

Speaker 3 They're everywhere in New Zealand. They're just they're like littering the streets.
I've got um some Fajoa trees on the front of my house and they're there's just the amount of Fajoas.

Speaker 3 It's Fajoa get in. Everyone's trying to give bags to each other.
Like people come to work and they've got sacks of Fajoas. You're just trying to get rid of the Fajoas.

Speaker 3 They're worth absolutely nothing around a certain type of year. They just attract rat for rats.

Speaker 3 You know, the fad joas, as people call them.

Speaker 3 yeah so so that was actually really very clever of uh david as everything is with him as well i'll compliment his smartness as well but yeah i thought that was actually brilliant because yeah we're at that point we're right in the middle of the joe get him so right but yeah as it was pointed out it's not actually a you know a fruit from new zealand it's just one that plagues us so do do you do you use them a lot do they get do they get put in stuff or are they just too are they just too many to even handle?

Speaker 3 There's just so many of them. One year I decided to just skin them and freeze, just put heaps of them in a deep freeze, just hundreds of them.

Speaker 3 Because I had this idea that they could be like cubes for a drink or something. So I spent ages chopping them up.
And then when they came out, I don't know, they don't freeze very well.

Speaker 3 So, I don't know, I mean, they're all right.

Speaker 3 I mean, after you've had about the first 250 of the season, you're pretty done.

Speaker 3 And then your lawn and the berm in front of your house is covered just absolutely covered in them

Speaker 2 and even as I say everyone's trying to drop them off at each other's houses put them in bags bring them to work take them to school you're giving your kids 25 for Joas for lunch yeah well observed didn't go down well with Jeremy even though David did quite a somehow connected it with quite a touching monologue about inclusion in New Zealand society about how New Zealanders he's he's he's not necessarily from New Zealand and inverted commas, but you know, he's been adopted into New Zealand society.

Speaker 2 And Jeremy completely ignored that and gave him one point.

Speaker 3 Well, it didn't ignore it or he didn't understand it. It's kind of a complex.

Speaker 3 Jerry offers opera, he can only hold one layer of thought.

Speaker 3 So for Joe is not from New Zealand, you add,

Speaker 3 you know, David Coraus

Speaker 3 is an immigrant to New Zealand.

Speaker 3 It's too much for Jerry, so he just marked him down.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 he's never gonna. Paul would have been able to work that out, but Jerry can't work that kind of stuff.

Speaker 3 He can't operate on two planes at the same time.

Speaker 2 Finally, Ursula brings in

Speaker 2 another

Speaker 2 Fajoa, herself, of course, adopted into New Zealand society.

Speaker 2 Ursula brings in a rugby ball held together by a temp peg that she bought from a man in Fielding.

Speaker 2 See, this feels very New Zealand to me, even as a non-New Zealander.

Speaker 2 I can see why this is New Zealand-based.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Fielding's kind of

Speaker 3 a very bland, sort of small town in New Zealand, but it's very quintessentially New Zealand, very quintessential sort of rugby club, rural situation. So it was grassroots.

Speaker 3 It was grassroots soul of the earth.

Speaker 3 Potentially lazy move by Ursula in that

Speaker 3 she really just grabbed a rugby ball and they're everywhere here. There's more rugby balls lying around than there are for Joas in New Zealand.

Speaker 3 I think she just grabbed a rugby ball and tried to, you know, that was from Fielding. You know, that's what I admire about Isla.
She's lazy.

Speaker 2 Yes, yeah, yeah. And very proud of it and very funny with it as well.
Yes.

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 2 Have you ever tried freezing the rugby balls to use in drinks?

Speaker 3 I haven't, actually.

Speaker 3 I will do that if it's the rugby ball season.

Speaker 2 Well, it was one point point for David, two points for Ursula, three points for Guy. It was four points for you, Matt.
So actually, it went down pretty well this one.

Speaker 3 It is. Yeah.
With the box of dirt.

Speaker 2 The box of dirt went down well. It was a clever one.
Okay.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 See, once again, that's Jerry not working out his scoring.

Speaker 2 He would have started.

Speaker 3 He would have started to go, oh no, I've messed this up. Now Matt's got to get four because he would have forgotten to give me one.
So you can't really take it as a compliment. It's just incompetence.

Speaker 2 We had to swear to not go in to depth on his scoring because once you start unpicking it, it sends you mad.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I know. And so much of the studio records that ended up on the cutting room floor were just

Speaker 3 recriminations about his scoring.

Speaker 3 Half an hour of arguments on the stage about it that, you know, a producer would come out and go, just so you know, none of this can will ever make this show. It's so boring.

Speaker 3 You know,

Speaker 3 the audience is leaving. Just stop with the judging of the scoring.

Speaker 3 It's like a ref. You're never going to overturn it.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And it was five points for Laura. I've got a question about, and I've definitely mentioned this on the podcast before.
I just want to know if it happened at the Taskmaster recordings.

Speaker 2 I filmed one show in New Zealand a few years ago. I did seven days.
And we stopped halfway through and had a break and went to the dressing room and they gave the audience a pie.

Speaker 2 Now, oh, yeah, this is not something that we do in the UK. Did that happen at the Taskmaster recordings? Was there a break halfway through and everyone had a pie?

Speaker 3 Um, I didn't get a pie, but I think there was a break where everyone got a packet of chips. Pies are very important to New Zealand culture.

Speaker 3 You know, our biggest awards night every year is the Bakel Supreme Pie Awards, which is the equivalent of our Oscars. It's the flash, this isn't a joke, the flashist awards ceremony.

Speaker 3 It's the night of nights. The Glitterati is awarding the Bacle Supreme Pie Award, which is the the best pie of the year.
And I attend every year

Speaker 3 and

Speaker 3 it's it's just so quintessentially important to us. So we try and express ourselves with pies.
And we believe we make the best pies in the in the in the world and arguably we do.

Speaker 3 So so we're always trying to make pie-like statements. and

Speaker 3 saying we're going to have a pie here, a pie there, and that makes us feel very good about ourselves, like we're better than everyone else.

Speaker 2 I love that. Have you ever hosted the Pie Awards?

Speaker 3 I have not. I've actually

Speaker 3 made the vagina sign with my hand on stage as the Pie Awards. So I've given away awards.
Most years I go on stage to give away an award,

Speaker 3 but I haven't actually done the full hosting of it. The last one I saw,

Speaker 3 I've seen Lee Art from Series 1 of Taskmaster. He's hosted it.

Speaker 3 I'm not sure why I haven't been asked to host it, actually. Maybe it's because...
Oh, I know what happened. I humiliated myself.

Speaker 3 I absolutely humiliated myself at a Pie Awards because you're supposed to go out on stage with this prize facing towards you and upside down so you can turn it around and reveal it at the time.

Speaker 3 But when the lovely lady, as I was going on stage, handed it to me before I went out into the lights, I went,

Speaker 3 this woman's an idiot.

Speaker 2 She's given it to me upside down and around the wrong way. So I went, oh.

Speaker 3 Turn it around. And then the whole crowd's going, you can see it before they announce it.
Oh, no. And I go, What are you talking about? And I've got like, you know,

Speaker 3 a thousand people yelling at me. And then I look down and go, oh, right, well, I've given that one away, hasn't they? That's a massive spoiler.

Speaker 2 That's it.

Speaker 2 I've never used to host now.

Speaker 3 Yeah, no, I haven't hosted, but I have humiliated myself at the baked New Zealand Pie Supreme Pie Awards.

Speaker 2 It was the La La Land of the New Zealand Pie industry.

Speaker 2 What a gaff.

Speaker 2 It's not in season right now. Do you know how hard it was to find a bag of Fijoas?

Speaker 2 Where does the Fijoa come from?

Speaker 2 The Fijoa is native to the highlands of southern Brazil, eastern Paraguay, Uruguay, northern Argentina, and Colombia.

Speaker 2 As a New Zealand import myself,

Speaker 2 I feel like we should include this because

Speaker 2 it's like what I'm hoping New Zealand will do for me. We have embraced the Fijoa

Speaker 2 and it is now part of our culture.

Speaker 2 Let's talk about task one.

Speaker 2 Star in a one-minute multi-character film, you must play all the characters. Each character must be distinctive.
Most characters wins.

Speaker 2 You have 30 minutes to write and plan your scene and 30 minutes to film it. Your time starts now.

Speaker 2 This is the sort of thing that when I was doing Taskmaster, I would have found this very daunting and immediately terrifying.

Speaker 2 How did you feel about this one, Matt?

Speaker 3 I felt exactly the same way. It seemed huge.
I didn't have any ideas.

Speaker 3 I mean, generally, when I finish reading a task, then have a complete blank, but that one I was like, geez, this is a real tough one.

Speaker 3 And I messed around for ages before I started, and the time was ticking down. And then,

Speaker 3 and I just

Speaker 3 had to sort of go for it, you know.

Speaker 2 Yeah. I mean, you really planned in the studio when this task was announced that this was the next one, you looked absolutely gutted.
You looked so worried about it, about it being played. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Yeah, because actually, like, with about 15 minutes to go, or 10 minutes to go, or something, I had quite a good idea.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 so

Speaker 3 I was gutted that it hadn't really worked out. And I figured that I might have humiliated myself.

Speaker 3 Also, I think I might have been confusing that with a different task as well, because it was quite a while before we got it.

Speaker 3 Because I was looking at that, actually, when I was watching this show in preparation for this, I was going, I do seem really, really gutted.

Speaker 2 And then what came out the other end wasn't as bad as my fears, I guess it was great there were so many great characters in there um business boy was probably my my favorite my personal favorite but of course uh the detective reginald bathgate um apparently you spent a long time paul says you spent a long time working on reginald bathgate and his catchphrase

Speaker 3 because i thought i want to do some kind of agatha christine mystery yeah none of this got on there but i was talking to paul for about ages and so i was like i have to come up with my herkle pow you know i have to come up with my miss Marples.

Speaker 3 And so I was doing it for ages and then working on it and, you know, workshopping it with him. And

Speaker 3 so that was most of the time. And then what was he going to do?

Speaker 3 And then I was gutted that I didn't have enough time through him arriving and sort of doing the investigation. He just sort of turned up at the end.
It's a pretty bad sort of mystery, murder mystery.

Speaker 3 If, you know, Herkul Pwawo just turns up right at the end and goes, actually kills the

Speaker 2 kills the murderer.

Speaker 3 yeah, and then wanders off. Yeah, I would have liked to have been able to develop it a little bit more.
So he arrived to investigate after the crime had been done, but I didn't quite get that right.

Speaker 3 So, yeah, I was pretty happy. And out of all the things in Taskmaster,

Speaker 3 that people come up to me, like I'll be on the street, and

Speaker 3 people will come up to me, especially if they've got an umbrella, and they'll go, Reginald Basque, at your service. For some reason, that

Speaker 3 and in the recorder, I say to to Guy

Speaker 3 Montgomery, you know, what did he say? And Guy Montgomery says the whole catchphrase and everything.

Speaker 3 It was instantly iconic. I knew at that point.

Speaker 2 Guy could remember it straight after that.

Speaker 3 It was going to stick. Yeah, so I don't know.
Maybe like Knives Out season,

Speaker 3 the fourth Knives Out movie, maybe it could be a sort of collab with Reginald Bathgate.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I feel like Reginald Bathgate needs to make a return. I do want to know, I mean, how did you get to the idea of the murder mystery? You say murder mystery, Agatha Christie.

Speaker 2 I don't remember an Agatha Christie where the killer romps around the woods with cling film on their face at a second annual Smoking Weed in the Bush party.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 You're right what you know, I guess.

Speaker 3 But the pencil sharpener was such a weak name for that bad guy with the

Speaker 3 glad rat, you know, wrapped around his head. Like, I was watching last night.
It should have been called the pencil. I don't know.
There's something. It should have been called the pencil.

Speaker 3 I thought of my last night that it would have been better.

Speaker 3 But yeah, there was just these big pencils that were around the Staskmaster mansion. So I was always looking to use them for something.

Speaker 2 You didn't need to kill the dog, though. I thought that was harsh.

Speaker 2 Sad to see the dog go.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Laura also does a detective story. Is this more the sort of thing that you wanted to do?

Speaker 3 Yeah, well, she's got the chops,

Speaker 3 She's got like one of New Zealand's biggest student loans to go to our premier acting school.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 3 she's a very funny lady. She's a fantastic human being.
And

Speaker 3 she's always looking for an opportunity to get her acting chops out just to like pay back the student loan. Just every time she uses that, that just makes, you know.

Speaker 3 the $150,000 she's still paying back just worth it. And so it was great to see her actually leaning into some characters.

Speaker 3 because you know like my character's you know grunge man okay you know there's no real accent or

Speaker 3 or mannerisms but you know she went she went deep into that character and now yeah as i say it's good for her to finally finally get some kind of value from her from her student life

Speaker 2 i do think especially in this series and it it's you know in some other series of taskmaster there might be when acting things pop up or musical things pop up there might be a couple of people who are slightly better at it than the rest.

Speaker 2 In this series, every time an acting or a a musical thing pops up, I do think Laura's got this.

Speaker 2 This is Laura's wing now.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Well, I was actually in quite a successful New Zealand band, so you think I'd do

Speaker 3 a bit more than I did in the music channels. Yeah.

Speaker 3 But she can sing, you know. That's a huge advantage when it comes to a musical challenge.
And she's got her. Yeah,

Speaker 3 her live performance is phenomenal. Yeah.
She's all singing, all dancing, all acting.

Speaker 3 And that's an advantage.

Speaker 2 We don't get a chance to talk about any musical tasks from you this week, but next week I will be discussing your Christmas song, your festive song you had to do, where you went allowed to say tree, and you said tree as your second word.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 3 I mean, let's not go into that, but I wrote lists of the words I wasn't allowed to say and the ones I were, and they got mixed up.

Speaker 2 But this is good info. This is

Speaker 3 good info for next week.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 3 So I purposely got it sorted out. These are the words you're not allowed to say.
And then I'm writing the song. I'm looking down, singing it.

Speaker 3 See, and then I, yeah, throw in the word that you're not supposed to say. I was quite happy with the melody on that one.

Speaker 2 Guy has,

Speaker 2 he decides to do a big race,

Speaker 2 which I think is a good way of getting multiple characters in with lots of different athletes and the lovely reveal of their wives are there as well, which is doubling up on the characters straight away.

Speaker 3 Yeah, well, this is an example of guy Montgomery being clever. I think he's very smart.
So I tried to get him on the putting woman in subservient roles. I

Speaker 3 tried to turn the audience and the castmaster against him by saying, Oh, so just so it's only men that compete in this particular tournament.

Speaker 3 And he goes, I didn't know we were making the most progressive film.

Speaker 3 It came in so sharp, shut me down so quickly.

Speaker 2 It is funny when everyone starts going at Guy for not having any diversity in his film. And you just think, imagine the backlash if he had.

Speaker 3 He isn't lying about that.

Speaker 3 Yeah, he could have really

Speaker 3 truncated his career there.

Speaker 2 It was very good. You're right.
That was a really

Speaker 2 clever effort from Guy to use

Speaker 2 the big running race.

Speaker 3 Yeah, he went from volume, didn't he?

Speaker 2 And you had 10 characters, which, you know, I would have thought would have been good enough to get up to the top points, but unfortunately, uh, David.

Speaker 3 I'm also hoping Reginald Bathgate was Reginald Bathgate was such a good character that he'd be with more than one character, but yeah, that was a pipe, that was a pipe drink.

Speaker 2 There's so much to him, Reginald Bathgate. You know,

Speaker 2 he has so many character traits, he's almost like more than one person.

Speaker 3 He's he's he's the Sherlock Holmes of New Zealand.

Speaker 2 Um, David does a drink driving PSA, uh, and the characters are basically puts googly eyes on objects.

Speaker 3 David exerts so much energy for anything to happen, which is one of the reasons why he's such a fantastic human being.

Speaker 3 But you know, just the amount of energy he puts into something, putting googly eyes on everything. It's just, it's like, you know, it's like a nuclear power plant.

Speaker 3 Just anything he puts, anything, even if you're out for dinner with him.

Speaker 2 Just

Speaker 3 he'll put so much energy into what you're eating.

Speaker 3 I was out for dinner with him not so long ago and he insisted on ordering my food and then telling me about it and then getting, just being right on my case whether I was enjoying it.

Speaker 3 It's just so much energy. So much energy.

Speaker 3 He treats you dining with him as a task to make sure that you're the happiest person and the food is exactly what you want and you're trying new things.

Speaker 2 Oh,

Speaker 2 such a sweetheart. And this was very, very good.
I mean, this one, he had 19 characters, but some fantastic little characters in there.

Speaker 2 You know, there's, you know,

Speaker 2 the sexy bust of a lady who says she doesn't fancy men who are drink driving. Just so much going on.
It was really fun.

Speaker 2 A proper little Pixar film from him.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 It was good stuff.

Speaker 2 So from someone who exerts a lot of energy to the complete opposite, Ursula does a drama in a salon.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 two of them were played by Paul.

Speaker 2 Yeah,

Speaker 3 I've talked to Paul about this

Speaker 3 afterwards and how long he was sitting in that room being tortured by that performer.

Speaker 3 And that wasn't a mistake. She just kept going to torture Paul with no interest in how it was going to end up on film or whether there are any cameras there.
The fact she was still going and

Speaker 3 he was thinking it was lame.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 that's her in a nutshell.

Speaker 2 Yeah,

Speaker 2 I mean, it was supposed to be multiple characters. I think she played three.
Paul played two, but they don't count because you're supposed to play every character. And she did not care, did she?

Speaker 3 He doesn't care. He doesn't care.
That's why it's so good when we teamed up to have someone that doesn't care.

Speaker 2 Yes,

Speaker 2 we will get onto that very shortly because you are delighted to find out that Ursula is your teammate.

Speaker 2 I believe the quote is, I can take things at a slower pace.

Speaker 3 It really took the pressure off.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Ursula gets one point. You get two points in this one, Matt.
Three points for Laura, four points for Guy, and a well-deserved five points for David.

Speaker 2 Detective, thank God you're here. I came as quick as I heard.
Show me where the suspects.

Speaker 2 Please hurry, detectives. All the suspects are upstairs in the dining room.

Speaker 2 Oh, Detective, thank God.

Speaker 2 There's Toby Tolman, the town clerk. Woody Hanman, the one-handed wood carpenter.
Francisco.

Speaker 2 One more time, boys. The violinist from Titanic.

Speaker 2 Godzilla. The old gentleman, Gerald, Robert.
Sup. The pink lady.

Speaker 2 Ocean Queen. Rob Anhood.
Oh, I was innocent. I was out from Nepal.
Jason Murray. And how could I forget? Our poor victim, Mrs.
Well, Well Wells.

Speaker 2 Well, you all look very suspicious, but I think I've solved the crime.

Speaker 2 Fake tan sheep, and someone that likes to read the news.

Speaker 2 Jeremy Wells.

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Speaker 2 Task two.

Speaker 2 Build a castle out of wheat biscuits. You may not leave the room.
For every dry wheat biscuit you eat, you'll be given 15 additional wheat biscuits. That's for you and Usla.

Speaker 2 Or seven additional wheat biscuits. That's for the team of three.
Grandest castle wins. You have 30 minutes.
Your time starts now

Speaker 2 lovely i mean this is it's nice to always nice to see an energetic team of three delighted that they're all on the same team and then just the quiet greeting between you and osula not expending any energy just hello nice to see you

Speaker 3 yeah it was a real it was the difference between i guess millennials and gen x's uh you know

Speaker 3 sort of slight lightly tap her I was actually so pleased to see her. And

Speaker 3 I think it was unfair.

Speaker 3 I think she was too close to the table for me to go on for the full huddle, and then it got awkward for a second, and then it just turned into a tap on the shoulder, and then a very awkward moment.

Speaker 3 But I was so

Speaker 3 ecstatic.

Speaker 3 When you see, because you've got your experience in the Arsmosis

Speaker 3 solo operation. And so when you actually spend some time with someone else, it's exhilarating.

Speaker 3 Exhilarating to have someone to bounce off that doesn't go what Paul always says, all the information you need is in the task. You know, you've got someone to you can actually talk through it with.

Speaker 2 So it's your first team task. You are happy to see Ursula.
You obviously want to support your team. You want to do well together as a team.

Speaker 2 So what possessed you, Matt, on the first team task of the series to cheat, to openly cheat and put half-eaten wheat biscuits in your pocket? What was going through your mind?

Speaker 3 I don't know, Ashley. I was watching that back and I was was thinking, why did I just choose to cheat? I think that's the amount of wheat pics I was having to eat.

Speaker 3 I think it was just a genuine piece of dishonesty. Like, it wasn't a bit or anything.

Speaker 3 It was just, I was just rumbled trying to cheat. And I mean, there's about 10 cameras on you, so it's the stupidest thing you can possibly do.

Speaker 3 I also didn't know that you weren't.

Speaker 3 This sounds stupid, right? This sounds really silly.

Speaker 3 I didn't really know that you couldn't cheat because,

Speaker 3 you know, it's sort of in the realms of

Speaker 3 Asmas, you know, just do what you do.

Speaker 3 Sure.

Speaker 3 So I just thought, oh, cheat, maybe cheating is something that you can do.

Speaker 2 I don't know.

Speaker 3 I mean, as we were saying before, the revelation for me is that you could send all to go and get some milk to go with your wheat biscuits.

Speaker 3 I mean, the hardest part for me in that task is we were calling them wheat biscuits, which is something I'd never heard before.

Speaker 3 I don't know if you have the, that's not the brand, that's not what we call them in New Zealand.

Speaker 3 They've got a different name, but we were told, they were told for legal reasons they were going to be called wheat biscuits. So, so, so I was constantly calling them not wheat biscuits.

Speaker 3 I'm not sure if this, I'm not sure if the, you know, that the rules of Taskmaster New Zealand continue on to this podcast.

Speaker 2 No, you can

Speaker 2 even use the brand name here. We don't mind.
You can use the brand name.

Speaker 3 They're called wheat bics. Yeah.
And the song goes, Kiwi kids, ah, wheat bix kids. Kiwi kids.
awiet pix kids, which was such a big part of my childhood.

Speaker 3 And there's a whole campaign on how many wheat pics you can eat. You try and, you know, all blacks can eat 25 wheat pics.

Speaker 3 And then I was in Australia and I was watching TV and an ad came on and it went, Aussie kids, ah wheat pix kids, Aussie kids, awake picks kids. And it had never been a New Zealand thing.

Speaker 3 They'd just taken the Aussie ad, changed it to Kiwi, and we'd made it try to construct an entire national personality around eating wheat pics.

Speaker 2 Devin's.

Speaker 3 And it was just, it was just a product that had been copied and pasted into New Zealand.

Speaker 2 Unbelievable.

Speaker 3 Anyway, you kept saying that, and they kept saying, you can't say that.

Speaker 3 They're not.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 that was playing on my mind a lot more than building the castle or stealing or putting the wheat pics in my back pocket.

Speaker 2 In the UK, they are wheaterbix. They're wheater bits.

Speaker 3 Wheaterbix.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. So if you were doing a task,

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 3 So if you were doing a task

Speaker 3 on your season and they told you that they clearly put a week of in front of you and they tell you it's a wheat biscuit, you know,

Speaker 3 that's going to put you off your game. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I think so. I don't think it would put me off my game to the extent that I'd openly cheat.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 3 David Kraus was so angry in the studio about that. Yeah.
Cheating. Yeah, he really fired up.

Speaker 2 He's an honourable guy.

Speaker 3 I know he would never cheat.

Speaker 3 He would never cheat. He would do the stupidest thing you've ever seen.
He would strip naked. He would cover himself in feces.

Speaker 3 He would do anything to himself, but

Speaker 3 he would never, ever cheat.

Speaker 3 Anything. No,

Speaker 3 he's a better man than me.

Speaker 2 I mean, he ate

Speaker 2 12 wheat biscuits. He ate 12 dry wheat biscuits.
You worked out that you could get milk and water and you you still cheated

Speaker 2 and you only had nine and you didn't you hide half of them

Speaker 3 no i know i lost i lost the new zealand public on that move

Speaker 3 they had nothing more antex at that point

Speaker 2 but your castle was the castle you built was excellent it was really beautiful

Speaker 2 you had a tower a crest it was wonderful I was lucky I was with hers because she didn't care.

Speaker 3 Like, if I'd been with one of the competitors, you know, the other three that were trying to win, they would have been furious at me for cheating and losing us the points. She couldn't give a shit.

Speaker 3 She was like, okay, you cheated, I don't care. We get no points.
Okay,

Speaker 2 yeah, I don't think you even discuss it when it's revealed. I think she's absolutely fine with it.
There's no argument.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 3 It was repercussions from

Speaker 3 David, who only gained from it.

Speaker 3 No repercussions from her, who

Speaker 3 got

Speaker 3 heavily censured for it.

Speaker 2 I mean, you say they gained from it. They still only got two points.
This was an interesting bit. Yeah, what was that? I was just thinking,

Speaker 3 what was his problem with them that they only got two points?

Speaker 2 I guess he was going to give me two points and give you guys five. So rather than reallocate the points,

Speaker 2 he just took your points away and just once again,

Speaker 3 he can't think of, he'd already allocated some points. He's not smart enough to think about two things.

Speaker 3 You know, that's too many moving parts for him. So it's like, I've already allocated them two points.
You know, like, I've already, they're zero.

Speaker 3 He wouldn't have been able to work that out, you know, without getting out of abacus.

Speaker 2 Well, look,

Speaker 2 I'm not going to comment on that because we still want him to come on the podcast. So

Speaker 2 right of reply, if he wants to come on, he's welcome to come on and absolutely tear you apart.

Speaker 3 Well, I'm sure he would.

Speaker 2 But it was a good

Speaker 2 castle was good. It was nowhere near as good as yours.
It didn't have the details, you know. But of course, you could build a better castle because you were flagrantly cheating during the task.

Speaker 3 Yeah, but cheats never prosper. No,

Speaker 3 as they say.

Speaker 2 I'm from the UK. We've cheated throughout history and we've got wonderful castles to show for it.
So I completely...

Speaker 3 You have grey castles. We have no castles.
We've got two castles. Actually, they're not real castles.

Speaker 3 In my hometown, there's a thing called Lionett Castle. which is just someone's put some turrets on the front of a normal house and

Speaker 3 we try and use it as a tourist attraction. I'm so embarrassed for anyone that's coming from Europe, if they ever drive out there to see Lane's Castle, they're like,

Speaker 3 What are you doing?

Speaker 3 It's built in

Speaker 3 1890, and then you've just hammered some turrets to the front of a reasonable-sized house.

Speaker 2 You do not need castles, you've got plenty of other things.

Speaker 2 Leave the castles to us. It's all we've got.
All we've got is

Speaker 2 Joas, you've got a 660.

Speaker 2 It was two points for Laura Guy and David. And of course,

Speaker 2 as deserved, nought points for you and Ursula. What are castles have turrets?

Speaker 2 The only castles I'm super familiar with are the Disneyland ones. Can we glue the biscuits? Yeah, that's what this is for.
Beautifully presented wheat biscuits.

Speaker 2 These other older contestants, I feel, will be more handy than us. Yeah, because they all own houses.
You keep going, David. You're doing great.
Thank you. So we're going to make an entranceway.

Speaker 2 You've got to say that the twine is also of value. Yeah, it's extra decoration.
Yeah, I'll eat one for you.

Speaker 2 Oh, what about a pub? No, no, the key has to go small and steady like a turtle. We could have a functional door guys.
A drawbridge is cool. Yep, I can do that.
Excellent work, guys.

Speaker 2 David, how many wheat biscuits have you eaten? Out to my number seven. I'm on for my chicken.
Well, I feel I should eat one out of solidarity. Oh my god, David.
You don't know what.

Speaker 2 hey guys, maybe just start building blocks for the back. I'll go lay, David.
Nice.

Speaker 2 Do you guys ever sweat in this room? I have sweated so much in this room. I don't have sweat glands.

Speaker 2 That's why I was quite glad when Prince Andrew spoke out on behalf of people who don't have sweat glands. Task three, hop the scotch along the hop scotch and pop it in the pail.

Speaker 2 The most scotch successfully popped in the pail wins. You have five minutes.
Your time starts now. A classic task that's based on a pun, of course.

Speaker 2 Someone stored of hopscotch and then built out from there.

Speaker 2 This is a victorious moment for you, Matt. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it is. But it was also a sort of a lost opportunity for me because I think out of the five of us, I probably enjoy drinking more than the rest of them.

Speaker 3 I mean, they all enjoy drinking, and I've drunk excessively with all of them, but just seeing Laura's approach of just drinking makes a lot more sense.

Speaker 3 So I was sort of watching that and go, why didn't I just drink them? And then I could have been drunk for the rest of the day on set,

Speaker 3 which, you know, like with health and safety, you've got to jump on those opportunities when they pop up. You know, they're supplying alcohol rather than, you know, normally

Speaker 3 on set these days, they're trying to take the alcohol off you.

Speaker 3 But yeah, it was one of those ones as well. And I think early on in the task, I was thought, I was kind of looking to solve them as quickly as I could,

Speaker 3 like they were puzzles, like you were being given. And you kind of are, but you were, but I was like,

Speaker 2 that is exactly what it is. I love you're going, I was trying to solve them quickly like they were puzzles.

Speaker 2 They are like puzzles, and you do have to solve them quickly.

Speaker 2 You finally understood what Taskmaster is.

Speaker 3 You're right. Yeah, I guess you're right.

Speaker 2 Okay, well, then I got that one right. No.
But I don't think that they thought that you could do what I did.

Speaker 3 I think they didn't think that you could pick up the table and hop scotch and just dump them all in the bucket. I think when they made that task, they didn't.

Speaker 3 In fact, I think I've talked to producers and they thought, oh, yeah, we didn't think that was possible.

Speaker 2 I think they were probably hoping way more to do it.

Speaker 2 And Messenger. Yeah, right.

Speaker 3 I think they didn't. I think, yeah, I think they thought that someone would try.
Yeah. But the hot

Speaker 3 would mean that you would drop it on the way. But just out of pure dumb luck, I managed to dump all of them into

Speaker 3 the bucket, which was, and yeah, I felt really good about that until, yeah, sort of sort of Laura drinking so much.

Speaker 3 And I was thinking, boy, I wonder how the rest of the tasks would have gone if I'd just laid into the whiskey.

Speaker 2 Well, my only other thought, I think you did it in the best way you possibly could. You did it extremely quickly and got all of it in, essentially.

Speaker 2 My only other thought was if you had extra time is to go and find where they had the scotch, where they were pouring the scotch from, the bottles, and dump those in as well.

Speaker 3 Oh.

Speaker 3 Jesus, that would have been clever. Yeah.

Speaker 2 But you won anyway. You won anyway.
So it doesn't, you know, it doesn't matter, but, you know, it's.

Speaker 3 yeah, no, but that would be brilliant, but you would have to, because in that mansion, because I went back there for a reason to do something.

Speaker 3 Oh, I had, was I out there for an appearance in another season or something?

Speaker 3 And I went out and I was showing all the bits of the mansion that are hidden from you as a contestant and where they kept all the props and stuff.

Speaker 3 And it was kind of like, you know, Lion the Witch in the wardrobe. I was kind of going through and seeing this magical land where they had everything laid out.

Speaker 3 So that would have been a real fourth wall. I guess that's not really a fourth wall breaking.

Speaker 3 It would have been to actually take the cameras through to where they keep all the props and put everything together in their sort of art department and storage area would be amazing.

Speaker 3 So you'd come through and you'd see stuff from

Speaker 3 tasks that were coming up.

Speaker 3 It would have been a real Easter egg for people going back and you saw that. Oh, that's what that was.
Yeah, that would have been, man.

Speaker 3 There's no way I'd be that smart.

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 you didn't need to be.

Speaker 2 I think part of this task was you went completely like, bang, I need to do this quickly and just get it done. And that's, and sometimes that really helps with

Speaker 2 tasks and you smashed it. So that was, you know, five points.
David also tried to pick up the table

Speaker 2 and did really well, got it all the way to the end. And this seems to me classic David Karaos.

Speaker 2 It just slips through his fingers just at the last second and he's devastated. He somehow knocks half of them off.

Speaker 3 I think that was the happiest I was on the entire show was when he dropped that because it was what I had done.

Speaker 3 And it looked like two of us were going to do it.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 3 And then just and being him, just immediately to try and get every millilitre of it off the ground to put it in the

Speaker 3 thing. Yeah.

Speaker 2 That's when he's at his funniest, though, isn't it? When

Speaker 2 things are going wrong and he's just desperately and purely trying to make things come back to him. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Yeah, he cares. He really cares.
He's the opposite of us.

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 I don't hop, mate, is a direct quote from Angela Carlson.

Speaker 2 And I mean, she doesn't.

Speaker 2 She does not hop. She just sort of walks in a rhythmic way,

Speaker 2 drinks a lot of whiskey.

Speaker 2 She drinks five shots

Speaker 2 and comes bottom at one point, but again, doesn't seem to mind.

Speaker 3 No.

Speaker 3 No,

Speaker 3 it certainly hasn't dented her ego.

Speaker 2 No. She's so funny, isn't she? I mean, like everything that's thrown at her, she seems to be able to come out with a perfectly turned joke.

Speaker 3 Yeah,

Speaker 3 when we

Speaker 3 first

Speaker 3 got together and on the tasks and stuff,

Speaker 3 I've just laughed so much. You know,

Speaker 3 it's New Zealand, so you know people, you know, and I've done a couple of things with her. I've been on a...

Speaker 3 Another TV show, we hadn't really talked, and

Speaker 3 I think we did a gig together at one point.

Speaker 3 but I

Speaker 3 didn't really,

Speaker 3 you know, and I interviewed her a few times. This is New Zealand, I don't really know her, but then I'm describing

Speaker 3 10 interactions. But, um, so I sort of seen her professional side, but all the stuff outside of that just shares like that all the time.
So, it's just a full comedy show the whole on here with her.

Speaker 3 Like, I did the cliche thing of hurting my rib just laughing so much at what a yeah,

Speaker 3 you know,

Speaker 3 time spent together on that show. It was brilliant.

Speaker 2 Guy and Laura both work out eventually to get something to transport the Scotch in, which is clever,

Speaker 2 but it feels like on a task like this, they're wasting time. They need to go the Matt Heathrow, you know.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And Guy does well.
He gets a pan, he gets it all in. Laura sort of has a bit of a nightmare and gets a paddling pool and drinks seven shots, but it works, but

Speaker 2 she's taken quite a lot of time with it.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I was surprised Guy didn't go for the just dump it all approach because he's quite coordinated he's a decent cricket player and you know he's um

Speaker 3 quite sporty so you know i i'd i'd beh him to be able to hop scotch old table of of scotch better than i did

Speaker 2 i think you need if you're doing the whole table you need to either not really care about it going terribly wrong or you need to have

Speaker 2 something loose in your head like david does like a bit of chaos like a chaos demon. Yeah, and I think a guy wanted to win.
Yeah, guy wanted to win, so I think he wasn't going to risk that.

Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's all enough. And it's much more likely you get none than you get all of.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 Sort of binary situation there.

Speaker 2 But he does very well anyway with the pan 4.14 litres, meaning one point for Ursula, two points for Laura, three points for David, four points for Guy, and the big five for you, Matt.

Speaker 3 Is that the second time I got five, innit?

Speaker 2 On this episode,

Speaker 2 no, no, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 2 You got naught on the last one, uh, and two, two on the previous one. Uh,

Speaker 3 so, so, not five.

Speaker 2 Oh, that is definitely Scotch. Look how I'm doing it, Paul.
Shit, balls.

Speaker 2 I think you're supposed to hop on the same foot, or else it's just this kind of step, isn't it? I've got a prosthetic leg, Paul.

Speaker 2 Do you?

Speaker 2 Don't look, Paul. Okay.

Speaker 2 It's rude to look at a woman who could have been your mother bouncing around.

Speaker 2 It's just a Scotch talking man. It seems to just use apple juice.

Speaker 2 I can't do it.

Speaker 2 I'm Uncle as fuck, Paul. You're nearly halfway.
Oh, God. That's some frozen.

Speaker 2 Do you want some, Paul? I'm fine, thank you.

Speaker 2 That was a skip, not a hop. You've got 50 seconds.
It's getting easier the more whiskey I drink.

Speaker 2 Let's talk about a rare task for

Speaker 2 get a photo of a person in the most extraordinary location. The person must be doing a thumbs up with one hand, pointing to their thumbs up with the other hand, and wearing a bowl on their head.

Speaker 2 Most extraordinary photo wins. You have until the studio record.
Your time starts now.

Speaker 2 Lovely little extra task here.

Speaker 2 Let's talk about yours, Matt, because

Speaker 2 this is reminiscent of something that happened on Series 7 with Rod Gilbert and Greg Davis. It was the creepiest thing, and Rod snuck into Greg's room, hid in his wardrobe while Greg was asleep.
So

Speaker 2 there are some parallels here. You'd been on a night out with Jeremy.
Is that fair to say? And then when he was past that work, you got the photo. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Yeah, well, that's basically it. I mean, you know, I headed in into the house.
It wasn't like I snuck in.

Speaker 2 And also

Speaker 3 I had a willing accomplice and his lovely partner, Olsie.

Speaker 3 So she was on board. And, you know, it's a little bit less, it's actually, that was actually half-assed that because I actually only thought of it, but didn't plan it.

Speaker 3 I just thought, oh, God, that thing's been hanging over my head that I've got to do this kind of task. I thought, Jerry's asleep right now.
This is the, it just came to me in the moment

Speaker 3 in a haze. It was just, it just, it was all just that opportunity just,

Speaker 3 you know, presented itself. So it wasn't like a, you know, I snuck in through the gardens past his, his staff and, you know, climbed, you know,

Speaker 2 cat burglar up the wall and got in there and did it.

Speaker 3 It was like he was in bed. I was drinking in the lounge, so I just got a grab a bowl and went to his room.

Speaker 2 It was perfect, though. It worked out absolutely perfectly.

Speaker 2 sometimes you've got to take these opportunities um it was very very very good i'm surprised you got the four points for it though i thought he would punish you very harshly

Speaker 3 yeah once again i think he must have lost his way in this in in that yeah you know

Speaker 3 because i mean the difference in effort across that challenge

Speaker 2 you know you know you've literally got david jumping out of a plane you know that is incredible though isn't it i mean that's that's the five points

Speaker 2 To jump out of a plane, have I mean, I don't know whether he was jumping out of the plane for the task specifically or whether he had that booked in.

Speaker 3 Oh, you see, that's interesting. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Yeah, no, maybe he got it for his birthday. That would be interesting to know that.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3 But even so, they had to go through a whole lot of health and safety, as he says, to get the bowl attached to

Speaker 3 the head.

Speaker 3 It's brilliant. It's almost too good that.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 3 It's almost because I think Jerry resents if you put a little bit, if it's too much effort put in.

Speaker 2 If you're showing off.

Speaker 3 Yeah,

Speaker 3 he kind of sees it as being just a little bit,

Speaker 3 what's the word, gauche.

Speaker 3 Put too much effort in.

Speaker 2 Is that the

Speaker 2 tall poppies thing of like, come on, you know,

Speaker 2 come here, but come here with a bit of humility, please? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 That's a very New Zealand thing. It's called a try-hard, yeah.
You've tried too hard.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Is that a saying

Speaker 3 over there to say something like an insult's a tryhard?

Speaker 2 Yeah, you've tried too hard.

Speaker 3 Which should be a compliment. It shouldn't actually be you've tried hard.

Speaker 3 No, it's like you've tried hard, so you suck because you tried too hard.

Speaker 2 That's it. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Yeah. And the people, only people, only like losers like me that have got drunk and stood on their mate's bed with a pole on their head are the people that yell out the tryhard insult.

Speaker 3 Because, you know, it's just a cover up. I didn't care.

Speaker 3 I could have jumped out of a plane. I'd still,

Speaker 3 I just wanted to do a shit version of it, you know?

Speaker 2 That's what I wanted to do.

Speaker 3 I wanted to try hard.

Speaker 2 Yeah, Ursula's not a tryhard.

Speaker 2 She gets

Speaker 2 her friend to take a photo at Mandela's house in Soweto. I mean, look, it's a great photo.
I mean, as she says, as she says, if, you know, it doesn't get good points, then Jeremy's racist.

Speaker 2 Yeah. It is pointing.
Yeah, that was quite a gambit. Yeah.
It's actually interesting.

Speaker 3 Did he give a good points?

Speaker 2 Three points. So no one got one or two.
So Guy, Laura, and Ezekiel all got three points.

Speaker 3 So what's Jerry? Yeah, Jerry's racist status having three points.

Speaker 2 He's alright.

Speaker 2 I guess, yeah, like

Speaker 2 not top racist. A foot soldier.

Speaker 3 He's not a clan member.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 I don't know.

Speaker 3 One of the least racist person is not that either.

Speaker 2 Laura brings in a photo of a vaccine worker in the US doing this, which is how we can date the... Oh, yes.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Yes.

Speaker 3 That's the moment I realized when this was shot.

Speaker 2 Yeah. So we're sort of, I guess, you know, into...
It's so difficult to remember now, isn't it? But I guess heading into the vaccine era. So, you know,

Speaker 2 coming out the back end of COVID eventually there.

Speaker 2 But yeah, poignant.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's poignant.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 2 But you know, it's no skydiving, is it? It's no skydiving. No.

Speaker 2 And compare it to Guy who also got three points. He photoshopped himself into a photo of the JFK assassination.

Speaker 3 Yeah. I didn't know you were allowed to use special effects on Taskmaster.

Speaker 2 Of course you didn't.

Speaker 2 You didn't know you could send balls against stuff.

Speaker 3 I would have used special effects on everything if I'd known that.

Speaker 2 I would have done nothing but green screen. The flying challenge and all of that people are using that.

Speaker 3 Yeah, well, that's the first time I saw that you could use green screen. Yeah.
Was that one called Fly? Because I think,

Speaker 3 was that in one of the first episodes?

Speaker 3 Because

Speaker 3 at that point, I was very straight up thinking. I was like, fly.
So I got a bike and tried to jump into the lake, but the bike crashed. And then I'm watching that episode and I'm like, oh, you could.

Speaker 3 It was, you know, way after the event. Oh, there's a much bigger scope of.

Speaker 3 of things you could do

Speaker 3 rather than if it says fly just throwing a fly you know what what I mean? Yeah. You know what I'm saying?

Speaker 2 Well, I can't, but I kind of agree with you. I'm against the overuse of special effects in Taskmaster.
I feel like it should all always be practical.

Speaker 3 Like Nosferatu.

Speaker 2 Like Nosferatu, exactly.

Speaker 3 There's the beauty in practical effects.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 But on this occasion, it was very, very good. I really like it.
I mean, it's a very Guy Montgomery joke, isn't it? Yeah.

Speaker 3 No, it was a good gag.

Speaker 2 It was three points for Osla, three points for Laura, three points for Guy, four points for you matt and five points for david first of all just take a look at this photo of an incredible day in history

Speaker 2 this

Speaker 2 was the best day of my life until it wasn't

Speaker 2 Thank you so much for coming on the Taskmaster podcast, Matt. I hear you have a book out, do you?

Speaker 3 I do actually

Speaker 3 a book out. It's called A Lifeless Punishing by Matt Heath.
I'm sure you could probably buy it over there on Amazon or something.

Speaker 3 It's not a biography.

Speaker 3 It's a book on philosophy and history, science and such. A number one New Zealand bestseller that's like 616, you know, world famous in New Zealand.
It's

Speaker 3 available, I imagine. Yeah, a lifeless punishing, Matt Heath.
There you go, Bern.

Speaker 2 Fantastic.

Speaker 3 Thanks for allowing me to plug myself.

Speaker 2 Of course. well, thank you very much for coming on the Taskmaster podcast.
We always get our guests to rate their experience on the podcast between one and five points in the style of the Taskmaster.

Speaker 2 We hope you've had a good time, but please, Matt, give us a point score for today.

Speaker 3 Well, geez, that's that's a sort of tough one. I think your performance is exemplary.
Thank you.

Speaker 3 I think you've led me through the task. Your research was on point.

Speaker 3 So, so, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Um, but there's just

Speaker 3 there's just a sort of streak of shame that goes right through me when I think of some of my performances. So, I'm going to take a point off you for that and give you a four.

Speaker 2 Fair enough. I think that's fine.
Shame must always play a part, I think.

Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a 20% shame discount.

Speaker 3 Thank you. Thank you, Amy, because it was actually really good.
It was great to go

Speaker 3 to watch the episode. It was like going back in time.
And I don't know if you know, people might have said that, but the five of us became fantastic friends after that

Speaker 3 shooting taskmaster. And so we've still got a WhatsApp group, the five of us, the five friends, and we still punish each other with whatever we're doing.

Speaker 3 In fact, yesterday I was walking outside my house and someone started yelling at me and it was Laura. And she's just back from the UK.
Even after all the competition, we still love each other.

Speaker 2 Thank you so much. We'll see you soon.
You're welcome back on anytime. Thank you, Matt Heath.

Speaker 3 Thank you. Cheers.
Bye.

Speaker 2 Thank you so much to Matt for coming on the podcast. Go and get Matt's book.
Give that a read.

Speaker 2 Just, I mean, look, Matt's brilliant. It was so good having him on.
Hopefully, we can have him on for a future episode to discuss another series, perhaps.

Speaker 2 But, you know, once we pin him down, it's difficult to pin some of these guys down. You know, they live out in the wilds of New Zealand.
They're hacking around.

Speaker 2 None of them have phones in New Zealand. They just all live in the wilderness.

Speaker 2 That's a joke. Don't come for me.
Thank you very much for listening.

Speaker 2 We will see you again next week where we'll be discussing Taskmaster New Zealand Series 2, episode 4, with the brilliant Guy Williams.

Speaker 2 Of course, we've had Guy Montgomery on already to discuss this series. We're getting Guy Williams on Series 1, contestant brother of the Taskmaster's assistant, Paul Williams.

Speaker 2 Always fun to talk to Guy. We will see you next week.
Bye-bye.

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