Ep 182. *Series 18 Winner* S18 Ep.10

Hello and welcome to the Taskmaster podcast.

It's me, Ed Gamble, and the day has finally come.

We are here to talk about the finale of Taskmaster Series 18.

What a series it's been.

An absolute classic.

Some amazing contestants, all five absolutely brilliant.

But it has to come to an end and today was the day i hope you've seen that episode if you haven't go and watch it on channel4.com you've probably watched it live come on it's the finale cancel all plans to watch it because we have the winner on this episode.

We will be talking to the winner of Taskmaster Series 18.

If you do not know who that is, turn off now because I'm about to say their name.

And it's been a very close series, so this will be a surprise, whoever it is.

The winner of Taskmaster Series 18 and our guest today

is Andy Zaltzman.

Absolutely brilliant work from Mr.

Zultzmann.

Cannot wait to chat to him.

Stunning last episode from all concerned, but Andy won through in the end in a very tight race.

So we'll be talking to Andy about his time on Taskmaster, some of the things we've not spoken to him about since we last had him on.

This episode specifically, his outfits, etc.

Lots to talk to the champ about.

But firstly, let's all just congratulate the brilliant Andy Zultzman on being the new Taskmaster champion.

This is Taskmaster Series 18, episode 10, the finale, as discussed by Andy Zaltzman.

Well, here he is, the champion of Taskmaster Series 18.

All hail, Emperor Zaltzman.

Welcome back, Andy, to the Taskmaster podcast.

And he is holding his trophy aloft.

A beautiful thing.

Are you proud of it, Andy?

Well, I mean, you say it's a beautiful thing.

I guess beauty is

entirely subjective, but

you know, I guess it has an inner inner beauty of sorts.

The victory is a beautiful thing, though, surely.

Well, all victories are beautiful things.

That's why people like sport, I guess.

So,

yeah.

Do you see it

as a sporting victory?

Do you put it next to some of the great sporting victories that I'm sure you have in your head to reel off?

I'd put it right up there.

I put it up there with the 1981 ashes.

I put it up there with

Usain Bolt

sweeping the sprints in three successive Olympics.

I think it's

right up there,

McEnroy beating Borg and Wimbledon in 1981 as well.

I mean, these are, you know, I think it's going to be mentioned in those breaths.

Yeah.

Those same breaths.

The hushed tones.

Were you confident going into the series, Andy?

Because obviously, we've been talking about this.

It's been a very close series.

You know, certainly there was only three points between you and Jack at the end there.

Were you still confident?

Well, I wasn't confident at the start.

I wanted to, I mean, essentially, my goal at the start of the series was to avoid total humiliation.

And show one did not go particularly well on that front.

Right from the prize task, when I had to slightly change it about three minutes before we recorded,

when they said I couldn't pretend it was my actual lung

and did some quite bad, quite bad in that first couple of shows.

So then it was really about, you know, just trying to, you know, not get relegated, I guess.

guess I don't know if you can you get relegated from Taskmaster, surprisingly, it's not happened before, even even Nishkumar did not get relegated, and he was so bottom of the table.

Um, but yeah, by the time of the last

the last show, I was

just in front going into the last the last show, so at that point, I thought, well, it'd be quite nice to win it

to get that beautiful trophy to adorn our lives here for the rest of time.

Um,

So, yeah, I knew it was, but it was,

you know, like you say, it had a fluctuating narrative, which you want from a high-calibre sporting contest such as Taskmaster.

Well, exactly.

I mean, there's been series in the past where someone shoots out in front and there's sort of no catching them, but on this occasion, no, it was a real to and fro.

And my producer, my brilliant producer, has put on my notes here, has put your highlights and lowlights.

Shall we see if you agree with whether these were highlights or low lights?

Okay, yeah.

The highlights, Daisy, has written the Lemon and the Fiverr team task.

Would you consider that a highlight?

I mean, it was some great facial work from you, I think.

Oh, yes.

No, yeah.

That was, yeah.

I mean, that was probably the finest piece of acting I've done in my life, which is an extremely low bar.

Yeah, that...

Yeah, I mean, the team day was,

yeah, it was kind of interesting because we'd met, like I think I mentioned last time I was on, we'd never met before the first task we did together so that was uh that was clear

yeah

so it was yeah it was quite a fun um fun day I'm not sure I'd I'm not sure I'd have that right at the top of my uh

my series highlights but yeah I I mean I but in the lowlights um Pidgeor has been put in the lowlights which I I would not say is a lowlight that you know the the co-host of the horny hour the new children's television pu uh puppet character I'd say Pidgeor's a highlight for you Andy ab absolutely agree with you on that Ed I'd say it's a highlight for me, not just in Taskmaster, not just in my career, but in my life.

It's

one of the possibly the greatest thing I've ever created, to be honest.

Well,

it's one of your strings.

It's one of your strings to your many-stringed bow.

Because we get a lot of cricket in the series, of course, we do.

We get a lot of puns, and we get a lot of sort of very dark

sort of Victorian horror, would you say, that going around there, yeah?

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, that's where my career began, obviously, back in the

horror musicals of the 1870s.

But yeah, Pidgeor, I thought, was in fact, I remember being quite disappointed they didn't score higher.

I think, well, did I get three points for it, I think?

It wasn't good enough.

I love Pidgeot.

Yeah.

But then again, it came in the same task as Mr.

Pooh.

So, you know, I think I'd like to see it.

Yeah, hard to compete, obviously.

But, you know, I hope Pidgear will

I assume on the back of it, Pidgeot will get his own series and will become

a star of global television.

I can't see any reason why that would not happen.

And there's a lot of money in kids' TV these days, so that Pidgeor could go global, right?

I think all of the

conflicts, yeah.

Yeah, and too much of kids' TV doesn't really prepare them for the brutal realities of adult life.

And if you need more psychotic pigeons, warning them that fundamentally we're just dust in the wind of history and life is a is a veil of tears.

I think basically any time another children's TV series gets cancelled, the way the final episode should end would be Pidgeot flying in and ripping the lead character apart.

Yeah.

I mean, we'd all tune in for that.

It'd be great for viewing figures, wouldn't it?

Totally.

The end of Pepper Pig as a snout is strewn across the screen by Pidgey or

Pidgeot.

We should talk about this final episode, your victorious episode, which is, of course, episode 10 of series 18.

The prize task was the thing most likely to make your buttocks clench.

What a wonderful way to end a beautiful series.

Yes,

yeah, I mean, slightly,

yeah,

not my favorite of the prize tasks,

which I generally really enjoyed, and the sort of the lateral thinking that they allow and the sort of creativity you can do with them.

Yes, I didn't like it.

It wasn't

my best prize, the padlock with the lion enclosure.

Yeah, we did, yeah, throwing in the

lion threat to

well, this is I was hoping that might bump it up a bit.

Well, the threat was lovely.

I love the concept, absolutely,

the escape lions.

I just didn't feel like Greg's the sort of man who would worry about a broken padlock with lion enclosure written on it.

He just doesn't seem to, I don't think that would fuss him particularly.

No, well, I guess, you know, but lions generally, I don't know, I mean, they'd probably be quite scared of him, I imagine.

Even Greg Davies in a wildebeest outfit, I imagine, would be quite intimidating for a lion.

So you can see why he's so insouciant about the prospect of an escaped lion.

Yeah, even though he knows that the lion is saying, Gregory, I eat tall people till you meet for lunch.

I love the translation.

I'd say the voice did sound quite similar to Pidgeot.

Are you saying I don't have great range?

You know what?

I think I am saying that, Andy.

I think that's exactly what I'm saying.

You know, you don't need great range to be one of the great character actors, I'd say.

True, true, yeah.

You just need a couple of hits.

Well, Pidgeor and the Lion.

There you go.

There's the first children's book.

Pidgeor and the Lion.

I mean, that would be a...

We'd all tune in for that.

But they absolutely speak the same.

Baba brings in a frog.

I love this.

And again, Greg saying not a bad opener by Baba's standards.

I love that we're at this point of the series now where it's an open secret that Baba is bad at prize tasks.

Yes.

Yeah.

I mean, in many ways, this was one of his best ones, I think.

Put alongside, what is it, a paper plate that he had?

Yeah, so yeah, I think, you know, when yeah, when

the historians analyze this series,

I think they'll look at Baba's scores from the prize tasks and see that that's where it all went wrong for him.

Yeah, I think so.

I think so.

It's not his strongest suit.

And even though you are allowed to change the prizes during the series,

I think he opted not to do that.

I mean, if he opted to change them and this was his second effort,

it's even more worrying.

But he is genuinely afraid of frogs.

I remember filming something with him where he had to look around the room, and I was watching him look around the room, and he was terrified that we had organised as a production for a frog to be hiding behind some books.

Right.

Which there was no suggestion.

Yeah.

A bit of an odd thing to be afraid of in terms of the evolutionary progress of humanity.

There must be some

deep

shared species memory of when humans battled frogs for

survival.

I don't know.

It must be that, Andy.

Or

maybe a frog jumped out of him

when he was six.

Yeah, that is, I guess that's also possible.

Or, you know, there was a harrowing pantomime in which someone in a pantomime frog outfit

stage-dived.

I don't know.

Who knows?

I mean, that's classic pantomime stuff, though, isn't it?

You've got Widow Twanky, you've got Baron von Hardup, and the big frog.

The big frog.

We've all.

I mean,

it could just be as simple as

a Muppets thing.

Maybe Baba hated Muppets, and

I don't know.

Yeah, maybe he hates frogs because he loves pigs, and he doesn't like that Kermit was constantly rejecting Piggy.

But again, not a bad opener by BABA's standards.

Jack got up and acted this one out.

He's done a couple of these where he's actually got up and shown Greg how the price task works, which

I think is a very good technique, but he also has the gravitast

and status to approach Greg.

I don't think many people could get away with approaching Greg.

No.

Yeah, he did that pretty well, I thought.

Yeah, it was a pretty

strong effort.

Yeah, in terms of using

your presence in the studio to create live buttock clinching.

That was strategically very, very sound from Jack.

That key part of the series, every point was crucial by that stage.

So

there was genuine awkwardness in Greg's reaction to it as well.

So I think it was highly successful.

Well, yeah, the rubber glove being put on and the lube bottle being squeezed in and then a drill.

I mean, I think it may be Jack has hit the nail on the head with Greg age-wise as well.

Perhaps this is more of a fear when you get to Greg's age that you will have to go for some tests.

Yeah, true.

And what is it when Greg's in his what mid mid-50s and obviously growing up when he did drills were terrifying, just generally.

So

yeah, I mean, that was, you know, that was a common threat, wasn't it?

You had policemen just wandering around with drills, just like threateningly drilling to keep kids on the straight and narrow.

Yeah, and it would work.

He's not not afraid of lions, but absolutely if he found a broken padlock from a drill enclosure,

he'd be absolutely petrified, wouldn't he?

I particularly like this is the attention to detail that they have in the Taskmaster production.

That even the bottle of lube had a sticker on it that said lube in the Taskmaster font.

Yes.

Yeah.

Well, that's

sticklers.

Yeah, I mean, I do think in in terms of you know the philosophical theory of bullshit,

attention to detail and your bullshit is absolutely, absolutely key.

And that's something I've explored a lot

on the bugle over the years, my podcast.

If you're going to bullshit, you have to bullshit accurately.

And

that's, yeah, I think underrated.

In the philosophical area of bullshit, who were the main proponents?

I studied philosophy.

I don't think we ever got to

the bullshit philosophers.

Well, actually, it would be a lot more useful than a lot of branches of philosophy in terms of navigating your way through life to understand the philosophy of bullshit, probably.

But you know, more useful than philosophy of mind.

I don't know.

So, I'm not sure who the

key writers are.

I think Professor Drellard Butt Clark from the American Institute of Hogwash, he was right up.

Emma also gets up.

Emma also approaches Greg, but it is almost in the approach of Greg that the butt clenching happens.

Yes.

Because she has the tickle stick and just edging towards him and threatening to tickle him.

I don't think he's afraid of the tickling.

I think he's afraid of Emma.

Yes.

Yeah.

I mean, that's,

again,

you using

the physical awkwardness of

Greg Davies with human beings.

I mean, it's clearly,

they've found a point of weakness and they've mercilessly exploited it.

It was very, very funny, just the constant threats from her and the edging forward.

And even asking Alex if he wanted to go and alex going no no thank you he's very very nervous about the whole thing as well it was it was great work from emma um everyone's very nervous about rosie's option here because of course she's managed to make every prize task disgusting regardless of the category yeah um and she she lives up to it it's a you it's a used enema

yes um

yeah i mean yeah i mean to bring in your own worst enema to uh uh to to a live recording that's that's interesting i guess um keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

I mean, we could go on.

We could go on.

I know, you could.

It was absolutely, absolutely bang-on form from

Rosie, who, yeah, did, you know, I mean,

elevated the show and degraded humanity, I think, in a lot of her prize tasks.

So

it's a balance, isn't it?

It is a balance, and she's done very well on the prize tasks.

She's got a huge amount of points from the prize task, not quite beating Steve Pemberton from Series 17, but she managed to get 36 points in the prize task which is very very respectable indeed um i don't think there's been a contestant in taskmaster who's lived up to what i expected from a contestant more than rosie yeah you have ideas what people are going to do and i think she's done it yeah absolutely and right right from the

very start um yeah i can't remember that first i can't remember what it was now but i remember thinking her first prize task was absolutely hilarious um

it was the i mean i believe the letter the letter opener to dig around in her belly button, I think might have been the first prize task.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And saying she, you know, pulled out a bit of umbilical cord.

That's that sort of stuff.

That's the vibe.

Fantastic.

So it's a high scoring prize for Baba.

It's two points.

It's three points for you, Andy, four points for Rosie, and five points for both Emma and Jack.

It's a lovely start to this final episode, which feels celebratory.

Did it feel tense in the room, or did it feel like a sort of joyous lap of honor for everyone?

Well,

it was sort of more joyous, I think.

And also, it's kind of hard to keep track of the score, the series score,

while the show's on.

So, yeah, it was

very, obviously I was dressed like an

hacked up my various uniforms and put them all on.

Was this always the plan, Andy?

Because obviously for the final episode, you're wearing every single silly costume that you kept us on our toes because there was the snooker player, the centurion, the wizard, of course,

throughout the episodes.

But some days you'd just wear just some normal clothes.

Yeah,

yeah, I can't.

When you say what was, I don't know, what was the thinking?

I'm not sure there was a huge amount of thinking behind it, but I remember trying to think of what would be a good way to end the series, like something spectacular.

And I thought, I'll just just throw everything at it just for

and it's not mentioned from no no one's really no one's talks about it in this episode because they're like oh there's Andy again yeah I guess so but you know

gotta lay your costume cards on the table and yeah

look of course we will talk about it later but the fact you're wearing all of that and then wear the hot dog for the final task yes the hot dog on top of all of that is a master stroke

now

the person that I've been most afraid to ask this question.

How are you going to make my buttocks clutch?

My

attempt

to clench your buttocks

involved

opening

mine.

Let's talk about task one.

Say how many chairs there are in this cinema.

You may only give one answer.

You must not say any numbers until you give your answer and you must say the name of every object that appears on the screen.

If you miss an object, one minute will be added to your time.

For every chair you get wrong, one minute will be added to your time.

You have a maximum of 10 minutes.

Fastest correct answer wins.

Your time starts when Alex blows his whistle.

This is very hard.

Well,

you know, it was one of those tasks where I thought...

There's some hidden trick here that I've not spotted.

And it turned out the only hidden trick was the five little chairs the front of the on the front of the stage which didn't make that much difference given how many chairs there were in the room whether you spotted them or not I was sort of expecting there to be something that would totally skew the the results like you know a sort of secret stash of you know a thousand chairs or yes um

uh but there wasn't so it was really yeah I guess just you know counting the number of rows and the number the number of seats in each row working out a few random chairs dotted around the room as well and trying to you know keep an eye on on the screen.

So, I was constantly thinking, I'm missing something big here, and it turned out that

I was missing something small and that didn't have a huge effect on the.

Well, I mean, the thing you were all missing was the things on the screen, I suppose.

Yes, the first letter of each object spelled out the number of seats.

Yeah, but I reckon you could have a hundred thousand people do that task, and none of them would have spotted that clue.

I'm not sure that was a clue, just more than I don't know, a coincidence?

I don't know.

It was, yeah, it was, I mean, clearly not a coincidence because it was deliberate, but it wasn't, I don't think it was the kind of thing that even if you'd been looking for it, I'm not sure you'd have seen it.

No, I think it was just for Alex's, Alex's own self-satisfaction, really.

But I respect that.

Yeah, but yeah, your absolute disdain for the five small chairs at the front was perfect.

I think now and again in this series, Andy, I think Andy's really thrown himself into this.

He loves it.

Look at the costumes.

The creativity and the way he's reacting to the task and then sometimes you just go come on mate we just

we're not doing this i'm not playing this game when you found the workaround uh for one of the tasks as well uh when with the fortune cookies and alex said i think you have to do them in order and then you read it again and went no you do not and just carried on was perfect the disdain perfect

Were there days where you looked at the task and you just thought,

I'm not getting involved in this.

I'm going to do it myself.

Well, no, I

tried to commit to every task.

I mean, I did prefer the creative ones, and

because the first couple of puzzle ones that we recorded, I didn't do, I got, didn't do very well on.

And so for the rest of the series, I was constantly thinking, oh, what obvious thing am I missing here?

Having missed a couple of very obvious things, like the doorbell on the ring the bell thing.

So that, yeah, there was a sort of slight tension throughout those

sort of the problem-solving tasks, but I think I got a little bit better at them as the sit as the

recordings went on.

You've won the series, Andy, so you know, well,

yeah, you couldn't have done much better.

Um, I do want to pick up on the fact that when you're reading this task out, instead of minutes, you say wickets.

How

it does it every single time you do anything cricket-based, it bowls me over, pun intentionally.

But how obsessed you are with cricket and how it's at the forefront of your brain all of the time.

I didn't realise it was to the extent that you would read words as cricket words when they're not cricket words.

Oh, yeah, I just assumed that was normal.

Sure, everyone did that.

Yeah, I'd forgotten that until sort of watching the episode, I'd forgotten that I'd done that.

I'd done that.

So, yeah, it was,

yeah, I guess if some things that, you know, I guess it's worse things that have at the forefront of your mind that you might mistake words for on a family show.

So you're chucking in a bit of

cricket vocabulary.

I think we can all live with that.

Oh, definitely.

Initially, I thought Alex had deliberately written wickets in there for you, just as a little nod to you.

But no, it was genuinely the word minutes, and you read it out loud as wickets.

Yep.

I'm not ashamed.

No,

I am who I am, Ed.

Don't try and change me.

We would never change you.

You're a champ now, Andy.

We can't change you at all.

There's a variety of techniques here.

Some people just stay on the stage, which I think is crazy to stay on the stage and try and count them.

You've got to get in amongst it, I think.

Were you trying to count the one row and then the amount of rows and then

do that sum?

I think that's the way I would have gone.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, and I was quite, oh, yeah, I think I was.

If I'd spotted the five little chairs, I think I'd have been

I'd have got it dead right.

But so yeah,

I was quite pleased with that.

But again, I sort came out of the task thinking, well,

I have to wait to see how they edit this, but there must be something that I've missed, but there wasn't particularly.

Yeah, yeah, because your guess was 3-2-8, and then there were the little chairs at the front.

So if you'd found the little chairs,

you would have been bang on, I think.

But you said you saw the little chairs and you didn't want to stoop to Alex's fucking level.

Yeah, yeah.

I stand by that in life and as in Taskmaster.

Emma stays on the stage and points, but does very well with it, to be fair.

Gets 3-1-8.

Jack has an absolute disaster because he whispers 3 under his breath and ends up misses loads of the pictures, just stops caring about the pictures, just wants to get on with counting the chairs.

But it's difficult to argue with Jack.

Even when he deliberately throws a task, it's like

he's still Jack D.

But over five hours 38 is his eventual time.

Yeah, that's because

that's quite a lot, isn't it?

It's too long.

Even longer than Rosie, who gets 338 minutes, 39 seconds,

because instead of hedgehog, she shouts the word three.

We've all done it.

We've all accidentally shouted a number instead of an animal.

Well, some of us say wickets instead of minutes, you know?

We've all got different things going on in our head.

But it's totally heartbreaking.

She just whispers, oh, Alex.

Very, very sad, but look, screaming three at the top of your voice is quite the way to go out of this task.

Baba uses a calculator.

I love how proud Baba is of everything he thinks of.

He always proclaims that what he's done is the best thing in the world and that he's managed to outthink everyone.

His confidence cannot be dented.

And does very well, gets 3-2-6, remembers to shout out all of the things on the screen, so ends up with a score of 12 minutes, 36, meaning that Baba wins this task with five points.

You get the four points, Andy.

Emma on three points, Rosie on two points, and Jack on one point, of course, with this five hours 38.

I've got a small calculation to do in my head.

It's a Robin.

Yeah.

Hang on.

Three.

Three.

Three.

Three.

Now then, Greg.

Did the man say three out loud?

Of course I'm bloody.

All right, Ian.

task two

either throw five fives in a row or do 100 press-ups or eat a raw onion or find the needle in the haystack or sit silently for 10 minutes you may only attempt two of these things fastest wins your time starts now

this is classic stuff from you Andy it's the second time it's the second time this series we've seen you doctor something with a sharpie yep after the fish the fish task did this task come after the fish task or was the fish task first i can't remember actually.

I can't remember that.

Yeah, I can't remember which order we filmed them in.

But I did, that was, yeah.

I think I sort of thought of that.

That was my instant reaction to it.

And I think having had a few tasks where I've been wandering around the house looking for a thing that I couldn't find,

trying to find a haystack,

I thought, I'm not going to do that.

And it turned out that would have been...

the first place that I would have looked had had I done that.

But I thought, right, I can do this quickly.

I'll just write fives on on the dice try and scrub out the the sixth dot on the six which um cost me a few seconds when that uh that came up but yeah no that was uh and that you know just goes to show in you know in in life you know you you if you cheat you get um you get rewarded and that was about a very valuable lesson for any kids watching the show to to pick up

look i i absolutely loved it as soon as it came up um i i thought you'd do well at this because i don't think you're you don't seem to be a man who's going to be confused by all those choices you're not going to be sitting sitting around going, should I eat a raw onion?

No.

Well, I mean, Tony Abbott, former Prime Minister of Australia,

he ate a raw onion live on television in an effort to show his support for the Australian farming industry.

It was about 10 years ago he did this.

And I think he did it twice in a week.

Wow.

So, I mean, however tempting eating a raw and yeah, if it had been a pickled onion, I'd have been right in there, straight off.

But a raw onion,

you know, I think the the specter of tony abbot eating a raw onion put me off that and um so i went with the writing on the writing on and you know genuinely it's it's uh it's it's a fun game to play if you doctor a dice and make sure you win we all need a bit of success in life so if you artificially you know make it impossible to fail then you're guaranteed uh guaranteed a w a win how how long do you think you could sit there with the with the dice that had five on every side and just and just roll it and get five every time would you still fail that rush rush of victory every time

oh i don't know that's uh i mean i reckon i could probably do a solid hour and then um you know yeah maybe maybe get another dice and you know put sixes on that and see if i can you know roll sixes as efficiently so look if we ever go into another lockdown i think you can do a charity a charity stream of you just rolling a dice with five on every side for a solid hour i think people would watch it for sure um the the onion thing miriam margulies eats raw onions as well.

Really?

Like apples, yeah, she really enjoys that.

And that's not to prove anything to any farmers, to be honest.

But it does depend on the onion as well, because you get those quite mild white onions.

I reckon I could sit down one of them pretty easily, but that looked like quite a punchy onion, to be honest.

Yeah, they're not going to put a mild onion down, are they?

They want people in tears, is what they want.

And no one did it.

Very disappointing.

I think I might have done the onion.

I might have tried to do the whole onion, you know.

Yeah.

Just for a little bit.

Yes.

Yeah, but I mean, that's

yeah, I mean, I guess I reckon I reckon two and a half mouthfuls, and you'd just be overwhelmed with regret.

Yeah.

Again, a valuable lesson in life.

Yeah.

Rosie does eat the raw onion, but it's not within the confines of the task.

Yeah.

She chooses to do the sitting silently for 10 minutes, which is a crazy decision from her because there's absolutely no way she's sitting silently for 10 minutes.

Stands up during it, negating the whole attempt.

And I don't think she realizes that she's done that or cares,

and just decides to start doing the press-ups on the floor.

Very impressive.

She knocks out the 100, even though Alex is sat there delighting in telling her that she's not done some of them, like absolutely no repping her, which is incredible.

And then the laughing obviously ruins the silent attempt.

It was a joy to watch, and I think she absolutely smashed it.

Yeah, I mean, impressive, impressive.

I think that's more press-ups than I've done in my entire life.

That wasn't an option, was not an option for me.

There you go.

Yeah, let's let's rank them actually, Andy.

So the the onions coming towards the bottom, isn't it?

Is is the is are the press-ups the the thing you're least likely to do out of them?

Yes, I think I'd definitely eat a whole bag of raw onions before taking on a hundred press-ups, actually.

Um

I mean in doing Taskmaster, as a as as you well know, Ed, you have to embrace humiliation.

You have to accept it.

You have to welcome it.

But I think that would have been a level of humiliation too far.

Me attempting to do 100 press-ups.

I like my kids to still have, they're teenagers, I like them to still have at least a hint of respect for me still.

But if they saw me trying to do 100 press-ups on television, I think that would go up.

That would that would be gone.

Gone and you can't get it back.

Is that because it would be too embarrassing a site, or do you think that at the moment they live in a world where you could do 100 press-ups?

Uh, no, I think they're pretty well aware that that would not, not that's not in my skill set, uh, my extremely limited skill set in life.

Um, but no, just more the humiliation of seeing a

well, their sort of 50-odd-year-old father

just basically collapsing

in a heap

and in an absolute testament to

three decades of failing to look after himself physically.

And I think that would be, I think the most humiliating option is to try and do 100 press-ups, fail before 10, and then have to reach up and grab a raw onion.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

In fact, eating the raw onion might make you do the press-ups better.

Yeah.

Let's talk about Baba, who chooses to sit.

Again, he stands up during the attempt, gets bored, but there's a wonderful moment where he realizes in complete silence and his eyes just go really wide.

It's fancy why people love silent comedy so much.

You don't need words.

No, yeah.

And

in many ways, well, when people started being able to record sound, that was the death of true comedy, Ed.

Just pure silence and facial expressions.

It's really as good as it got.

Yeah, no,

that was quality effort from.

I mean, again, in terms of trying to win the task, I think that was,

you know, that was,

yeah, to just spend spend 10 minutes doing nothing, I don't think, you know, strategically, I know, I think, again, if he looks back with his, with his taskmaster coach

to a piece together where he dropped those, those, those points, that's, you know, he might remember that.

Yeah, if it's fast, it wins, and one of the options is do something for 10 minutes, you can't pick that one.

You cannot do it, especially if you're Bubba and Rosie who do like to talk.

Jack also picks the dice.

Now, I'd be interested to hear what you feel about this, Andy.

He decides to go with the technique of just rolling the dice, and whatever he gets, he tries to add it up to 25.

How did you feel about this as someone who also picked the dice and found a workaround?

Well, obviously, from a purely selfish point of view, I hope that they would discount his efforts because

he was up near the top of the leaderboard.

I quite admired the lateral thinking that went...

that went that went into that.

What was the exact wording of the task again, to say roll five fives?

Throw five fives in a row.

Ah, see, that's yeah, that's

in a row, really, is I think that's quite a load-bearing phrase there.

Yeah.

So I think they were probably right to

reject his efforts to just throw a total of 25.

So

I seem to remember there was a bit of

argument in the studio over whether or not it should stand or not.

There were a few bits during the series when, you know, the lawyers could easily have got involved

uh in some of the the uh the rulings but you've got to take what the ref gives you yeah well i think a lot of it was down to um

emma brings up uh alex's clear bias towards jack yeah uh and because alex has been quite positive about jack's attempt and i would argue i would argue that greg is correct when he calls it and i quote horseshit yes yeah I do feel that there is a whiff of horseshit about the whole thing.

But there's other lateral thinking things you could do there.

It doesn't say you have to throw five fives on a dice.

It doesn't say you have to use that dice.

Yeah, true.

You could write five times on small bits of paper and just throw them.

Yeah.

You could have

got the pot band five and

thrown them

off a ledge.

I don't know.

That might have also got legally problems.

Probably that would have taken more than 10 minutes.

What would be the chances that five are back together, walking past the Taskmaster house and being willing.

I reckon they'd be willing to be thrown off a ledge on telly.

But again, a good idea.

A bunch of fives.

Yeah, a bunch of five.

You could have just thrown five punches in a row.

Would that have counted?

More than Jack's, I would say.

Yeah.

Because that is still throwing five fives in a row, whereas he threw 25 with multiple throws on a dice.

It was not good, and I felt like he wanted to get out of the room, is what I think.

Emma is the only person to go and find the haystack.

She sort of spots that

it's the most interesting one.

You're thinking, where have they put a haystack?

Have they really brought a haystack into the garden while I've been in the house?

What's going on there?

And then I'm glad she did because the tiny haystack is so funny.

It's such a stupid idea.

Well, again, I mean,

you could get very argumentative and pedantic about this.

Is that a stack?

You know, what defines a haystack?

That's not a stack.

It's not meant stacked, Ed.

You know, to stack something, you've got to put quite a lot of things on top of each other.

That was just a little.

I don't know what it was.

A little

fluff of

hay.

You know, it was whiskers.

It wasn't a haystack.

But I guess that's what they had.

I thought the haystack was, right?

Yeah, if that had proved crucial in the series, then, you know,

that would have left a very bad taste

in the mouth of all Justice fans.

That, you know, that's not

a haystack.

Not a haystack.

Didn't even know if it was a needle or not.

We didn't didn't get the close-up could have been anything i think there's not much crossover between taskmaster fans and justice fans

i think they're i don't think they're watching that show i think they're watching you know uh

the 999 emergency show uh yeah csi miami yeah

border force things like that

But very good effort from Emma.

She's the only one.

I bet they were glad in production that someone actually went to find the haystack

after they planned that little joke.

But yeah, lovely work from her.

It was one point for Jack.

Again, very bad episode for Jack so far, much to your delight, I'd imagine.

Yeah, two points for Baba, three points for Rosie, four points for you, Andy, and five points for Emma.

I mean, what sort of sick weirdo would eat a raw onion is what you were saying.

But who would eat one recreationally?

Once in treat

by

onions.

Okay,

Let us talk about the final pre-recorded task on Taskmaster Series 18, and it's an absolute belter.

Task three is present the goose.

Best the goose wins.

You have a maximum of 30 minutes.

Your time starts now.

A beautiful, open-ended task.

So many ways to interpret it, and so many fantastic interpretations of it.

Let's talk about your nature dock, Andy.

Yes.

Actually,

there was a lot that ended up on the cutting room floor.

That could have been an absolute epic.

There were other things.

I remember making a multi-goose, which was lots of little rubber ducks glued together.

And

it was other types of goose, one of which was, I said, the most, yeah, the most famous type of goose, the chicken.

So there was quite a lot more there.

And as always, the production team did a great job with

filming it and editing it all together.

They did suggest they might put out a director's cut of the goose.

I don't know if that's happened or not with

the full stuff.

That was one of the things I enjoyed the most.

Actually,

when we showed the goose in flight, so I hurled that the

seagull

model of the seagull.

And what I hadn't realised was it was sort of made of porcelain and it just absolutely shattered everyone.

It landed

all over the place.

So I thought they had put in a sound effect, but that was the genuine sound effect.

Yeah, no, that did.

Yeah,

I loved it.

I mean, all of it was great.

It felt like you were really having a good time with this one.

This felt very, very up your street.

And also, you know,

I absolutely nailed the kick of the

feedback.

Well, I was going to say that almost looked like AI or something.

That was incredible.

How proud were you after that?

Oh, well.

Yeah, I mean, the last time I think I kicked a rugby ball like that, I used to take conversions in my school under 13B team.

But I'm not sure.

And, you know, in under 13 rugby, pretty much every try is score when someone runs around the edge and runs under the posts and puts it out there.

So they're generally not particular.

But I think that was pretty much the last time I kicked a rugby ball off a T like that.

So,

yeah, it was obviously, you know, that could have gone very, very badly wrong.

Yeah, it was outstanding.

It went out, it flew out of the property, didn't it?

It was over the 100%.

Not quite out of the property, no.

But, you know,

if if I did it again, I think I would try to clear the, just belt it out onto the

A-roll.

Onto the South Circuit.

No, it was stunning.

I mean,

of course, a real sign that it was going to go well that when you were filming the intro to the goose, a flock of geese flew over you.

Yeah, yeah.

And you told them they were imposters.

Yeah, I stand by that.

I stand by that.

I mean, you know, they'd obviously heard what was going on and were trying to sabotage it.

Yeah.

And the goose mating as well, of course the yeah the the mating ritual was was fantastic was it was an owl and owl and a owl and a seagull um

they were both geese

oh i'm sorry because they were labelled g i do remember that now in the font um no it was it was fantastic um let's talk about jack uh who

this is very well thought through but there's a couple of people on this series who don't realize that they can ask the production team to do a lot of things and I think the production team have taken it upon themselves to then put it on a green screen and have him flying around in his cardboard plane called the goose because otherwise you wouldn't see him walking around dispensing flyers yes yeah uh yeah i like that i thought uh yeah that was a nice bit of you know bit of bit of history bit of aviation history um

and uh yeah i mean it just you know jack d flying or yeah walking around in a cardboard aeroplane i think that's you know, it's it's it's funny to think, isn't it, that we used to live in a world where that had never happened.

And now it just seems like the most perfect right thing that that could ever be, Jack D in a in a cardboard aeroplane outfit.

And, you know, it's amazing, you know, how many thousands of years of civilization we had to wait before we got that.

Now it's one of those things where you just can't can't really imagine life without having seen Jack D in that in that cardboard plane.

I'd say there's a there's a few there's a few instances this series where now it just seems normal that Jack's done it particularly.

I mean, Jack in a cardboard airplane, yes, Jack as Van Gogh.

Jack's sticking his head through that captain's portrait and

completely fucking up that task, like just doing the opposite of what he was asked for.

And he was asked to do the opposite, so imagine how hard that is.

Yeah, marvellous stuff from Jack, but I always feel bad about these final tasks because in our series it was do something absurd with this chickpea.

chickpea.

And I think two or three of us have done something epic like that, like a big film sort of thing.

But there's always people, because you don't know it's going to be the last task.

So there's always a couple of people who've just done a normal reaction to a task and we're probably quite disappointed by it.

And one of those people has to be Babatunde Alasha.

Because he has such a panic and then it cuts to him after all of these amazing film tasks with edits and it's just him miming miming laying an egg and he's not even left the room

Yeah, I mean, yeah, he could have got more out of it, I think.

I think it's fair to say it.

I think he'd acknowledge that himself.

Even just the egg flopping out, and then him really half-heartedly saying, Golden egg.

Oh, it's incredible.

But he seemed very tired on that day.

I know he just had a kid when he was filming, hadn't he?

So he just looked like someone going, present the goose.

He was probably thinking, Fantastic.

You must be kidding me.

Yeah,

Can you feel that in the studio when there's one that's slightly

less well received or the air gets sort of let down a little bit?

No, no, no, I didn't really notice that because I mean there's there is a sort of humor in things being shit on Daskmaster.

So I mean it's quite a unique programme in that regard that actually

things can

work without working, can't they?

And obviously the way they sort of of balance them and present them in chunks,

it always feels like there's sort of enough funny stuff going on.

Yeah, for sure.

And he doesn't seem to care at this point anyway, to be honest.

I think

he's done with the goose.

Emma presents a one-act play about a mother and her son.

The son has bought a goose and the relationship with his mother has changed.

This is incredible.

I mean, Emma is so good.

The acting performance in this is top tier.

I wish we'd seen more stuff

like this from her, but I think there just wasn't the opportunity because she's such an amazing actor.

I'd watch a whole version of Emma Emerson as the goose.

Yeah, I mean, it felt like it was, you know, like a, should have been a, yeah, sort of 1950s, 1960s

T V drama of two and a half hours or maybe seven get Alis Alison I mean it's very sort of quite Alison Stedman-like I thought you know that that that uh that sort of characterisation.

It was an absolute masterpiece.

I assume it will be in the running for several Oscars.

It was a heart-rending exploration of the mother-son relationship and humanity's relationship with the natural world in the form of the goose.

But also the goose obviously is a metaphor for regret for what you lose as a parent as your children get older, how

you can love something but still regret the way it's changed.

There was

so much going on in it if you pretend there was so much going on in it.

And

that's the great thing about it.

So much restraint, I thought, from the playwright as well to keep the goose off stage.

The goose was merely spoken about.

Well, that's I mean, that was the way with with ancient Greek drama.

You know, most of the most of the most horrific stuff was reported rather than shown.

And it was interesting that you know, Emma tapped into the entire history of

drama, of theatre, to uh uh and managed to encapsulate the the the the creative journey of humanity as well as the essence of the human soul in a one-minute film in which she's complaining about a goose.

And also, Alex was there and he tried his very hardest,

as he always does in the acting challenges.

I mean, he's got arguably similar acting range to me

in his big jumper.

It was lovely to see him.

He, of course, also appears in Rosie's version of the goose, or legoose, as it was called.

I mean, I loved this.

Just where this came from with Rosie, I do not know.

Rosie speaking French is my new favourite thing.

This was one of the highlights of the entire series for me.

This was, I thought, absolutely magnificent in perception and execution.

Yeah, it was,

yeah, I mean, it was...

I mean, obviously Alex dressed as a goose, laying giant golden eggs.

That's enough for anyone.

But there was so much sort of going on around it, and

Rosie's French accent.

Yeah, I thought, I mean, I thought that was absolutely

outstanding.

Yeah,

the backstory of who this lady was, and you know, you really want to know more about her, you want to know whether this is a travelling show, are they going around town to town in rural France

performing the goose?

Is the goose being treated well?

You know, this is worried.

You know, the geese in France historically have not always had it their own way.

Um, you know, I mean, how the extent to which that goose is being force-fed grain to plump up its liver.

We didn't see that.

That was implied, more than explicit, was it not?

But you could see the look in Alex's eye.

I think that goose had been through some pretty heavy stuff.

Yeah.

I mean, if anything, if it's not being force-fed grain, then it's one of the lucky ones, right?

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

If you're a goose in France forced the dance, then you are, you've absolutely lucky.

You've done well.

Yeah, totally stunning.

Even the lighting of it, just the music, the whole presentation of it.

Yeah, I agree.

A series highlight and a well-deserved five points for Rosie Jones, four points for Emma.

Only three points for your documentary there, Andy.

Two points for Jack's Plane, and one point, of course, for Bubba.

But I think he's given up by this point.

Ready?

Okay.

Got an egg.

Thank you, Bubba.

Give up yourself, man-like.

Every day, all day.

Come on.

It didn't take him as long as the others.

I should say he overcome quite a lot to do that.

I did.

Bubba said, I don't want to be a goose on TV.

Everyone in Tottenham won't talk to me if I've been a goose.

Let's talk about the final live task of Series 18.

When Greg says eyes down, you must look down.

When Greg says eyes up, you must look at a fellow contestant.

If that contestant is also looking at you, you're both eliminated.

First to win twice wins.

A great game that everyone should be playing at home, I think.

Yeah.

I think they should all be wearing those headsets in the House of Commons at Prime Minister's questions and just bring a

bit of entertainment to to everyday life um yes that was uh now obviously the fact that i'd saved my hot dog outfit for double points to the last task of the series that was

you know i'd sort of that when they um on the first day of filming when the the hot dog um was revealed um

i thought you know i wouldn't use it on day one uh

while I was sort of getting used to the process of Taskmaster.

And then I thought, well, hang on, it'd be quite funny to just leave it right till the end of the series.

Yeah, so it was deliberate because

at the back of my mind, I did think, did Andy forget about the hot dog costume and he's just been reminded on the last task?

No,

it was, well, partly, I thought it would be funny and partly strategic.

Yeah.

Well, there you go.

Double points in the last task.

So then, Ed,

then, when it turns out it's

shit or bust on that task, five points or no points.

I thought I did quite well to stay as calm as I did, although I did obviously get quite annoyed.

On the contrary, I would say that it's the angriest I've seen you all series.

I maintain that I did well to hold it in, even if it was the most angry I've been.

Yeah, that must have been a very frustrating moment for you to find that out.

That you'd gone all in, it was the final, you knew you were in,

you know, it was close.

It was close.

Yeah, I didn't know quite the ex I didn't know the exact scores at that point.

So I was,

yeah,

I thought the hot dog might be needed to yeah

to get me over the line so um

yeah that was uh well that was a tough moment Ed that was you know

must have been because I think going into the final task of our series I was I knew I had a chance of winning but I didn't know if I definitely had because they keep it secret the the points in that last episode up until the end

And then I did what you did.

There wasn't a hot dog situation, but you lose very quickly in this task.

Yes, you go out quite quickly.

I did go out quite quickly, and I had a strategy which was that

I thought Emma Siddy was the closest to me, and I wanted to try and take her out.

So, you know, the end of task model, you've got to be ruthless, Ed.

It's a winner-takes all

sport.

So I just thought, I'll find, you know, as long as I look at Emma, then, you know, if we look at each other, then we're both out.

So then it doesn't matter if someone else wins.

So that was that strategy.

You weren't worried about Jack at this point.

And I thought I was, he'd had quite a bad show.

Yeah.

So

I thought I was probably

far enough ahead of him, but I thought Emma might be within

the five.

It was.

That's very interesting.

So even though you had the hot dog outfit on, you were willing to sacrifice all points and the point of the hot dog outfit just to take Emma City out.

There was a Formula One season, I think, in the 90s, when Michael Schumacher

took out Damon Hill, who was his big rival.

I deliberately,

I don't know if I can say this legally, but it appeared to be deliberate.

Yeah.

Took him out of the, and thus won the title.

And that was, you know, that was,

yeah, that was my strategy, Ed.

You know, it was, you know,

you could do whatever's needed at that point, that point of the series.

Ten shows in, wearing a hot dog outfit.

There's no hope of dignity.

It's all about result.

And the Sanooka outfit and the wizard and the...

Roy,

I think I'd have to take that off to fit the hot dog on.

So I think I was down to just the

cricket rights by that stage.

Well, it was a risky strategy because whilst Emma did not win this task, Jack did.

It's sort of the nightmare scenario for you where you're sure you'd taken Emma out the running, but you weren't sure about Jack going into the announcement of the winner.

Emma wins the episode, so you're probably getting nervous at that point when you find that out.

Another win for Emma, four episodes for Emma.

Rosie on 14 points, Jack on 14 points, you on 14 points as well.

Same as Jack in this episode by the end.

He'd had a bad episode, but the fact you didn't keep an eye on him in that last one

and Baba on 10 points.

But

it is revealed, Andy, that you win the series on 160 points, just three points ahead of Jack, who's on 157, Emma on 152, Bubba on 147, Rosie on 137 at the bottom there.

How did it feel, Andy, when they announced that you had indeed won the series?

Well, it felt like

a great moment for

not just me and my family,

but for

all humanity.

As a member of the human race,

I assume that everyone's celebrating with me,

great victory for the northern hemisphere.

I'm so proud to be from the northern hemisphere.

So, yeah, it was, I mean, it was quite,

it's, it's a kind of strange, a strange moment, isn't it?

Because it's the kind of show where it's not really competitive.

And then at the end,

I did think, well, it'd be quite nice to win this, but you get to do it again in the Champion of Champions.

But, you know, fundamentally, it's a comedy show with a strange competitive element.

But yeah, it was nice to

and to get this beautiful trophy of yeah,

treasure it, Andy.

Treasure it.

It's a wonderful thing.

It's literally hollow eyes.

I'm sure you'll find a lovely place for that in your shed.

Yes.

Andy, I wanted to ask you actually about Champion of Champions because, of course, that is something that you will be competing in.

You are the third person to be added to the lineup for Champion of Champions

4.

Champion of Champions 4.

The other champions, I'm sure you know, Sam Campbell and John Robbins, how do you fancy your chances against those two?

I'm going to destroy them.

I'm going to absolutely ruin them.

I'm going to take them apart.

There's been a lot of sort of mental disintegration, sledging,

learn from cricket.

They're going to be absolute gibbering wrecks by the end.

And

I've got to come out on top.

You've got to go in positive.

So

if you're listening to this, Campbell and Robbins, you guys are history.

Wow, absolutely incredible, eviscerating smack talk from Zeltzmann there to finish off the podcast.

That's what I'm all about, Ed.

Andy, we always ask our guests on the Taskmaster podcast to rate their experience on the podcast between one and five points.

We hope you've had a good time relivering your victory.

Give us a fair point score.

I'm going to give it four.

But

in that last show, I think I've got a couple of fours

on the rounds, a couple of threes.

You know, there's no point giving it five.

I can't give you five, Ed.

You've got to keep aiming.

Yeah.

You mustn't ever think anything is complete.

So

you can always do better.

Well,

I'm going to get more than 160 on the champion of champions.

That's

in one episode.

In one episode, yep.

Yep.

Look, when it comes to the Taskmaster podcast, there's something I've learnt as the host is that it is never over.

There will always be more versions to talk about.

There will always be new episodes.

And look, we'd love to have you on again in the future to talk about an episode you're not even on, Andy.

You're welcome back to absolutely tear apart some other contestants.

Thank you so much, Andy.

All hail,

The new king.

Good luck with your duties as Taskmaster champion in the next few months.

Yep.

I look forward to opening hundreds of supermarkets.

That's what happens, isn't it?

There's a lot of travel.

There's an open top bus.

It's sort of like you're an old beauty queen.

You're the sort of new, the new version of a beauty queen.

So good luck with that, Andy.

Thanks.

Well done, Andy.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Thank you so much to the champ Zaltzman for coming on the podcast.

Always fun to talk to Andy.

Love to hear some of that behind-the-scenes stuff, you know, about his outfits, the fact that they don't really mean anything, the fact that he just thought he'd throw them on, etc.

The hot dog decision.

Look, there's a lot to get stuck into there.

Go and listen to it again.

Series 18 has been brilliant.

Of course it has.

We do now have the lineup for New Year's treat.

If you stuck around to the end of the episode, you will have seen that.

It's a fantastic lineup.

We've got Professor Hannah Fry, David James, Melanie Blatt, Martin Lewis, and Sue Johnston.

That is an incredible lineup.

Those people would never be in a room together and now they will be in a room together discussing the tasks that they have done.

Very excited to see that.

And you can, of course, watch that on Channel 4 on New Year's Day.

Thank you so much for listening to the podcasts this series.

Keep listening, though.

Stay on the feed because we're still talking about Junior Taskmaster, which is currently on Channel 4.

That goes out Fridays, 8 p.m.

on Channel 4, with podcasts dropping into the feed soon after that.

I don't like to say exactly when, because in the past I've gone, oh, it's out now, and I haven't checked, and it's not out.

So it's just quite soon afterwards, really.

But keep listening to those, keep watching Junior Taskmaster, keep watching all Taskmaster products, and we will be doubtless talking about it very soon after you've watched it.

Thank you very much for listening.

Thank you to Andy for coming on and goodbye.