Ep 178. Ivo Graham - S18 Ep.7

Hello and welcome to the Taskmaster podcast with me, Ed Gamble.

And of course, we are still talking about Taskmaster Series 18.

We are on episode 7 now.

It goes so quickly.

But still, very, very close in the league table.

Very excited to see how these last few episodes play out.

But we will be talking about episode seven of course you should have watched that because it goes out on channel four at 9 p.m.

every thursday if you haven't get yourself to channel4.com before you listen to this because we have a very special guest today to talk about episode seven it is the fantastic the inimitable the wonderful ivo graham of course ivo graham from series 15 of taskmaster doesn't seem that long ago since that happened but it was three series ago uh absolutely amazing contestant cannot wait to pick ivo's brains about this particular episode of taskmaster I know he is a died-in-the-wool Taskmaster fan.

He will have watched it.

He will have watched all the other episodes.

So let's find out what he thinks of it.

Obviously, go and see Ivo on tour.

Pre-order Ivo's book.

Listen to Ivo's Radio 4 show.

I'm sure that will come up in the chat anyway, but thought I'd get it in there quickly.

But without further ado, this is Taskmaster Series 18, episode 7, as discussed by Ivo Graham.

Welcome back, Ivo Graham, to the the Taskmaster podcast.

Thanks for having me once more, Ed Gamble, on the Taskmaster podcast.

It's a delight to see you, as always, Ivo, to talk about series 18 of Taskmaster.

Obviously, you are an expert in the show now, having absolutely smashed it yourself, having been there, talked about it,

submerged yourself within the world of Taskmaster.

I have submerged myself in the world of Taskmaster.

I was not invited to the premiere of Taskmaster, the Live Experience.

That's fine, but I have recorded an episode of Taskmaster, my ultimate episode, and I do continue to consult my own Excel graph of my Taskmaster regrets.

So I am thinking about it all the time.

I think you probably were invited to the launch of Taskmaster the Live Experience, Ivo, but it may not have found its way to you somehow.

Ah, yes.

Sometimes things don't find their way to me, even though they have, if that makes sense.

It makes perfect sense, and I feel that that's exactly what happened on that occasion.

Yeah, I actually think, and I hope that even if I hadn't been invited, because obviously a lot of people have been on Taskmaster, and there has to be a degree of exclusivity about this, that that wouldn't have come across as a bitter comment because there was no bitterness at all.

But yes, actually, now that you point it out, I do think that is ringing a bell.

And there are a couple of nights of the week where, due to parenting commitments,

if it's not extremely well remunerated, it's just bouncing back, I'm afraid.

Is that not a that's not an event that you think, oh, I'm on dad, I'm on dad duties, maybe

do the double take the child to the Taskmaster the Live experience?

Thank you.

Well, I know that you're just treading carefully as an expert friend and broadcaster around whether I would want my child's name in the public realm, but it's still funny to hear you call her the child.

The child.

Yes, my daughter Edie

is five and she is not yet in the Taskmaster realm.

We had quite a weird thing.

I took her to the

Barnes Children's Literature Festival,

which a lot of people

referred to as being like sort of Glastonbury, the Glastonbury of Southwest London.

But I had been to Glastonbury the previous weekend, and it was more fun.

But

we had a fantastic time, and there was a Taskmaster event there.

Its tentacles spread across the land.

Truly.

And a couple of people came up to me and asked if I was something to do with the Taskmaster live event.

I said, no, once more, the invitation either has not been extended or I haven't seen it.

I'm just queuing for Rob Biddoff.

Well, look, you know your stuff when it comes to Taskmaster, despite the NFI.

I love it.

Of course, this lineup,

we all know this lineup by now, Ivo, but what was your initial reaction when you heard the current lineup?

Well, I just get depressed every time a new series is announced.

And that, you know, that really

transcends sort of individual members.

It's just, you know, I'm just watching Taskmaster Series 15 just sort of disappearing into the mist.

And that's fine.

But I do think it's a great line.

I mean,

I think I'd be insane to come on this podcast and say that I thought it was a weak lineup.

Yeah, there's no weak lineups.

We take the party line that there's never a weak lineup.

Well, and there isn't.

But there are different and interesting lineups, and they bring different flavours.

They bring different flavours, is what they bring.

And

I love the flavours of this lineup, Joel Joking Aside.

And I've watched it all.

I was watching it pretty much week in, week out, anyway.

And I've got a question for you about that, Ed.

But what I would also say is that I'm afraid, as much of a respect as I have for it as an institution, I haven't listened to any of this series episodes of the Taskmaster podcast.

That's okay.

So do

pick me up if I'm repeating anything that you've already discussed.

No, lause.

The thing is with you, Ivo, is even if you're repeating a general point someone has made, you will do it in a way that will be interesting.

So you just go for it.

The turn of

the unbearably long.

No one's used the Ivor Graham turner phrase yet this series.

So

we're excited to hear it, even if we are covering old ground.

Well, that's very good of you to say, Ed.

And I'm afraid my pathetic pride

in the turn of phrase front is that I named four episodes of series 15.

And that statistically, I think, is pretty strong.

I think it'll be.

There's a leaderboard online, and I'm looking at it now.

And where do you sit on the leaderboard?

This Taskmaster Wikipedia page is insane.

Like, to a task wiki.

It's so incredible.

Like,

you're like, I guess I'll just Google sort of ranking of all contestants ever by most named episodes named.

And there it is.

What's quite annoying, Ed, I'm afraid, is I've got so many tabs open of this Taskmaster Wikipedia page that I just can't find it anymore.

But I'm up there.

Anyway, I'm up there.

Yes.

So

series 18.

I'm watching it.

I'm watching it on Thursday nights when it comes out.

It's usually a parenting night.

So I've got a lovely, wholesome experience of putting the child to bed.

And then sitting down with Taskmaster.

And

I don't watch a lot of TV.

So I've developed sort of attachments to

things that, I don't know, like, have you even ever seen a Tesco Woosh advert?

Ed?

Because

when you do this podcast, you get sent a lovely

Vimeo password,

top secret,

and that's great.

But obviously, it's a super cut.

So, you know, I'm not getting my Tesco Woosh.

You know, I'm not getting my Michelle DeSwart-voiced Deliveroo adverts.

I'm not getting Rhys Darby running another bloody marathon for zero accounting software

in Quicksand.

And, you know, probably your work is probably cropping up hither and thither.

But also, you don't even get like the little Greg and Alex in and out of

bits either, which are a lovely part of it.

Do you miss that, Ed?

Do you miss that bit?

I do miss that.

And, you know, I will.

I'll obviously

have a lot of fun.

Avalon should make a super cut for you of all of those bits.

So you could just blast through them.

I'll log on to channel4.com.

I'll be skipping through the main content on channel4.com.

Getting straight to the adverts, please.

And the in-and-out adverts.

They did King Lear.

Alex and Greg did a bit of King Lear early in the series.

So, you know, it really continues to be such a complete package.

And I am a huge fan of all of the contestants.

Some are more familiar to me than others.

Obviously, I've discussed Jack D

with you on another of your podcasts at great length.

Yes.

The man hates me.

Because you had a curry to the side of stage when Jack D was on and the smell drifted on, yes.

Yes, and he thought it was cupper soup.

It was me.

It's me having a lovely curry.

And

curry continues to be a big part of my life.

I had one in a terrific hurry in Hampshire

in July.

And I had one last night with my father.

And I had so much that I'm currently feeling a bit sick.

So thank you for having me on the podcast.

What I will say to the listener is Ivo said before we started recording, I'll try and be a bit more succinct and get off track a little bit less this time on the podcast.

And it's when I heard the phrase, Curry continues to be a big part of my life that I feel like maybe you're not committed to that.

I'm so sorry.

No, no, we have to do a tight.

Yeah, because last time

I told a story about trying to make audience members run to Tesco's, which I think took up 10 minutes at the start of the podcast.

And that was disrespectful to the Taskmaster fans who listened to this podcast.

Although someone DM'd me on Twitter, on Instagram this morning about that very specific thing.

So I was very grateful to that person.

Anyway, so Jack D is a sort of of you know frowning treasure

and watching him like break

across the series has been one of the real great

it's joyous.

It's joyous, isn't it?

Because you come to expect a certain thing from Jack D,

but we've never seen him really on screen with Rosie Jones before.

And there's something about Rosie that absolutely gets Jack.

Just absolutely tickles him.

Well, she's a rude woman.

Yes.

She's an unprofessionally rude woman.

I wanted to talk to you about Rosie specifically, actually, because, of course, you have been a team with Rosie recently,

running the London Marathon, Rosie in the wheelchair, you pushing her the whole way.

So you know what it's like to spend an extended period of time in a team with Rosie Jones.

If you were doing Taskmaster with her, would you want to be on a team with her?

Well, I loved doing the marathon with her.

It was such an honor.

And she's just, you know,

all choking aside.

Such a brilliant person and presence and energy.

And she,

particularly on the marathon, you go over these little speed bumps

and Rosie shouted, fucking speed bumps every time we went over them, which is

so much more distressing than the actual quite small bump of

the Delishon Delta buggy going over the bumps.

I think on Taskmaster, would I want to be on a team with her?

Absolutely.

You know, I think it would be an easier power dynamic than the quote sort of frosty paternal energy I got from Frankie.

Obviously, all joking idea all there.

I loved being in a team with Frankie.

And I do think the twos,

yeah,

I think that, well, there are some great threes.

Loads of the twos are great, loads of the threes are great, but I think, yeah, me and Rosie in a two.

As I say, that's, or as you say, that's something we've done recently, and I'd love to work with her again.

And I don't think I'd be letting her down too much on Taskmaster, whereas with Frankie, that was just always

so immediately on the table as an option.

I think sort of emotionally.

I think if you'd made the mistakes that you made with Frankie, it would have been less sort of like, oh, oh, Ivo, and more just screaming in your face.

Yes, yes.

Why have you done that?

Which, yeah, would have it's a different energy, but still some disappointment knocking around, I think.

But I think the team of three, obviously, this series are fantastic.

Emma, Baba, and Andy, everyone is bringing so much to this series.

Yes,

it's an absolute joy.

I think it's great.

Well, let's get stuck into it.

Let's talk about the prize task of this episode seven.

The object that is bigger than your head that you would most like to carry with you for the rest of your life if you had to carry an object with you for the rest of your life now again i'm going to say before we started recording ivo told me he has some potential things that he might have brought in actually with him uh where he is recording so is this

would you like to let us know what you might have brought in ivo i thought about this and you know i i'd spent i'd say about

10 minutes sort of pacing around my home uh and even though i had an entire summer to pick my prize tasks for S15,

and I really did get myself into a right old tiz about pretty much all of them, still feels like I've sort of put in more effort just for this on the podcast than I did for any of them.

Perfect.

That's what we like to hear.

Quite sort of damning priorities-wise.

And I obviously the prizes and a lot of the tasks themselves are getting more complicated or more wordy, series in and series out.

And I feel we were victim to a couple of real

sort of nasty.

nasty we had the one you would carry around with you everywhere but struggle to fit in your bag yes that's true which which I'm afraid that I hated that and everyone involved in devising it whereas this is more just like that you would like to you know that you wouldn't you know that would be nice to sort of theoretically so I wouldn't say this is going to get a lot of points but I think this probably is like just in terms of practicality and fun it's obviously it's an aeroby frisbee oh lovely that's bigger than my head a perfect demonstration that it's bigger than your head as well your Your head can fit through it.

There you go.

There's no quibbling over that.

Well, I had to choose between two frisbees in my home and the other one's a plate.

So I just can hide behind it.

Whereas this one, I'm just popping through.

And also, I think rings fly better than plates.

So particularly aerobi.

So that's, I think that would just be a lovely tab.

And it's very light, and I love frisbee.

So there we go.

Then it's just a bottle of my favourite drink

that someone on a stag to accused me of always having with me because I brought it to two different stags and it's Bailey's Irish Cream.

I'm having a lovely Baileys time of it at the moment.

The idea of turning up to a stag to, and you're there, and you've brought your own Baileys with you.

That is incredible.

Twice, yeah, twice.

Less surprising the second time, I'd imagine.

It became your thing.

Yes, people are starting to actively anticipate and resent the Baileys.

But

I do, yes, I was told to stop swigging it on the golf course.

So, hang on,

you're swigging Baileys directly out the bottle, are you?

You're not in a glass with ice or anything like that.

Have you ever been on a stag to head?

I've actually not.

I've only been on one.

Well, I've been on two.

I know we're both squads by Bailey's.

So then we're getting into slightly

more delicate territory, by which I mean things are further away from my chair.

Yes.

So then we've got this.

Now this I'm actually looking to get rid of.

I got my daughter a ball, the child, a ball pit, and the balls are a nightmare.

But this individual part of the structure, it's a big old, it's a big tube.

So you can

the things you can flatten and then pop them up.

You can pull it up, lovely ring, you tie it up the sides.

And my head's popping through it again.

Once more, Ed has the supreme visual of my head popping through an item, but then obviously let it go.

And you could just, you could just hide in it or you know, maybe use it as a social distancing device.

Now, we need to crack through this a little bit.

So, item four is it's my schoolroom map of the british isles i just i love this and i do think that people don't know their geography so i think they're always just happiness with you yes um i've started putting um little stickers on it to try and teach my the child a little bit about some of the places i'm going so much an homage to ed burns um where's daddy content yeah and then number five is um a drawing i did recently of all the characters from inside out right well that that for me that's the winner ivo i think it probably is actually because obviously they are or they do represent actual emotions, which I'm carrying with me around all the time.

Yes.

Actually, we talked to the child.

I mean, she loves Inside Out.

She was a bit disappointed by the sequel, but

that's how she refers to sort of emotions.

She understands joy, sadness, etc.

Anger.

That's beautiful.

Did you do that drawing

when she was in the room?

Or

was that a separate project?

She was doing her own, but she lost interest in hers quite quickly.

And then there was then quite a sort of awkward moment where she was just watching Telly and I was furiously finishing my character.

Well, that's lovely.

I think that's a very sweet one.

Five points for all of them.

Thanks very much, Ed.

Let's talk about the real prizes, though.

Yes, we should do.

Let's talk about Rosie Jones.

She brought in Greg's head.

Now, when she said Greg's head, I assumed that maybe there was going to be a sort of replica Taskmaster trophy knocking around.

Ooh.

But no, I much preferred what she actually brought in, which was a giant sort of cartoon-ish paper-mâché head.

and the addition of her wearing it the picture of her wearing it was absolutely fantastic i thought yes and it did i yes i thought that was that was great and um you know

i

have to admit that i did get a little bit of help with a couple of my uh prize tasks from the um fantastic art department um

people uh like amy and luke were very helpful so with this you're like has that you sort of wonder could that have already existed in the taskmaster universe, a big Papiomashi head of Greg Davis?

It'll probably pop up in the house somewhere, like May's Greg Puppet

from my series.

I thought it was good.

I thought it was scary.

I don't think I've had as much fun with it as an Arobi Pro Frisbee, but I respect it as an homage.

Absolutely.

It was a solid, good prize from Rosie, who throughout the series has either been transcendently brilliant or utterly brilliant.

Yeah, just brought in a saxophone, Yes.

Talking of just bringing in a saxophone, Baba just brings in a subwoofer speaker.

And

I mean, I love Baba, and he's just so sincere with the price tasks.

He's just really tried to bring in things that he likes.

I do get that.

And

I have a smaller speaker

which was actually a thank you gift for doing backstage with Catherine Ryan.

Thanks, Catherine.

Which

I

bring with me pretty much much everywhere because frequently at sort of child-orientated events,

it's quite helpful to be able to play a song for a game of musical chairs, etc.

So

I love that.

I love having my speaker with me all of the time.

So apart from the fact that mine is smaller than my head,

I get it completely.

But yeah,

it's just an item.

And in some ways, you know,

being just an item is a bit more in the sort of traditional spirit of the old taskmaster.

But now you've got, we're entering this slightly more hypothetical high-concept realm

where like just bringing in an item that actually fits the brief is sort of a bit like, oh.

So

I feel for Bubba there a little bit.

And I do, you know, I'd much rather...

If, you know, if I'm pushing Rosie for another marathon, I'd much rather we have a big speaker to play music than Rosie's just wearing a big Papio-Mashi Greg head in the chair.

I know which I'd prefer.

Yeah, you know, of course.

Imagine the wind drag on that as well.

Oh no.

Having to say that the

reason we didn't get sub 330 was because of the wind drag on the Greg head.

Another fucking speed bump.

So who's next?

Jack, who brings in his small guitar and sings

a lovely song.

about the prize.

I mean, it's always nice to get a song in the studio, I think.

It's always nice to get a song in the studio, and an original song,

unlike the unfortunate time when he had to

say I Feel Good by James Brown.

Yeah,

I found the chords actually before he started actually singing,

quit moving.

He's a very talented guitarist.

And then obviously just the dead pancharma the lyrics.

Again, that's that's a prize.

You'd actually that's that's of course you'd like to have that with you.

Yeah.

A small light guitar.

I mean, I know people people roll their eyes a bit at you know wonder wall twats at parties.

But

you know in theory, yes, that's a great versatile item.

But you know, is it

does it fit in in the Tasmaster world?

It got about three or something.

Got three, exactly, yeah.

And the thing is, I think the object was not the thing that I was impressed by.

It was the demonstration of the object.

So the song was the thing that I enjoyed, which

you can't win as a prize.

You'd just have a guitar, wouldn't you?

And if you can't play the guitar, it's not a particularly exciting thing to win.

But it was lovely to see Jack play.

Yeah, I see.

Yes,

that is very.

Those are the kind of specifics I would expect from such a dedicated historian and podcaster of this show.

Thank you.

You don't win the song.

The song is tantalizing, if anything.

Yeah, fine.

But you probably could learn to play the guitar and get to a competent.

You know, we've all seen the ukuleles of the Trottle Student Comedy comedy final you know go and see it yes

shout out to Phil Wagg.

No, not just Phil, of course.

Do go and watch that, by the way, listener.

If you didn't know, Phil used to play a ukulele as part of his act.

Do go and watch the Trortal Student Final.

When are we saying, Ivo?

What year?

Well, I'm saying with near certainty, 2010.

Yes.

And he's,

Phil, by contrast, I would say, the chords and the picking is not very elaborate, much less less so than Jack's.

But he's obviously got his beautiful singing voice, which looks stunned.

I'm created.

So, yes, he sings a song called Doom to Failure, which, you know, for me, and I've already watched his latest Netflix special, and it's great, but it's still his best work.

Bring the ukulele back, Phil, for the next Netflix special.

That's what we all want.

Andy, in an episode which, even for Andy, is preoccupied with cricket, brings in a rhinoceros head that fires a cricket ball out of its mouth.

Yes.

Yeah.

Did he bring this in?

Do you think he, because the video was clearly from

the internet.

I didn't feel like that that video was filmed by a member of production.

Yeah,

as soon as we go to kind of really any video content at all in a prize task,

I wince a little.

We drift away from the purity of Taskmaster.

But I mean, obviously you do have to see how it works.

I mean, I don't know.

I've now forgotten.

We must have seen the rhino on the stage at the end.

Yes, I've forgotten as well.

So, but if they had the rhino there, maybe we could have seen Andy using it, perhaps.

Yeah.

I think we haven't mentioned quickly enough that Andy's dressed as a centurion in this episode.

No.

What?

So we're in episode seven.

How many

sort of what would you say, sort of non

non-standard costumes have there been?

And that's not even including like the beautiful cricketers shirt that he was wearing last week.

I think that was standard.

Yeah, that's standard ultimate, yeah.

I think this might be the third because we had the wizard and we had the snooker player, yeah.

And now we've got the centurion.

This one, I think, more than any, didn't have any link to anything he was doing.

So the wizard, I think it was to do with the prize task he claimed.

The snooker player was to keep himself calm in the studio.

And then there's not really any mention of this.

No.

Yeah, but it's lovely to look at.

Yes, it's a good thing.

And

I sort of feel it's part of this sort of ongoing one-upmanship of just Taskmaster.

Like, the fact that it's now entering

the studio as well.

Yeah.

Where, like, I mean, yeah,

I loved...

when we all wore Sergeant Pepper's outfits for our final episode.

And I loved when your series all wore black tie for your last episode.

Yes.

And obviously, it'd be great if for one episode everyone was wearing what Andy was wearing.

But

I can see that you know, it'd be quite a tough ask to be like,

Would you all mind being snooker players?

That is fine.

And here's your chalk, which you just sort of use occasionally.

Often, it's not even commented upon.

You're just chucking away.

And you'll be holding the snooker cue throughout the prize, throughout the live task, even though it makes things a little bit more unwieldy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, I really like that.

I like the rhinoceros head, and I'm not sure how useful it would be to carry it around all of the time, but

I enjoyed it as a thing.

Not at all.

No, I mean, I like cricket, and

I would like to practice my batting.

And in the absence of a friend, you know, it'd be great to have a machine to bowl at me.

So I, you know, and you know, no truck with the rhino as a as a as a you know, as a beast.

So, you know,

it's all good, but I'm still still more picturing it sort of stationary in a private garden

than

sort of coming around all the time.

Um, finally, Emma, who got the five points, uh, brings in a hat, which is, of course, bigger than her head, um, with moisturizer hidden in it.

Yeah, absolutely.

I loved this.

I absolutely loved this.

I loved the uh, the idea behind it.

I loved the way Emma presented it, and I absolutely loved the video.

I'm proudly dry.

I'm a dry woman, and I like to be moist.

Absolutely fantastic.

And we all need to moisturize.

Emma's been brilliant in the studio from episode one, but it seems like she's letting more and more of herself come through, especially in this episode.

There's some very odd monologues from Emma that really made me laugh.

Oh, it's absolutely fantastic.

And at one point, she says, I think to Greg Davis, you need to wake up, mate.

Yeah, it is.

It's a different kind of sort of abusive to the Rosie Jones abusive, not to just lazily pair the girls together.

but

it's so great and it's so sort of firm and sort of English and mad.

Yeah, I love it.

Well, my favourite bit in this whole price task was her saying about Andy's that if anyone on her street had that, she'd move Burroughs.

Burroughs, she'd move Burroughs.

Yeah, lovely.

Sometimes you worry that Taskmasters or

TV is a bit London-centric.

But I loved her in London.

Burrows.

Bubba got two points.

Jack got three points.

Rosie and Andy both got four points, and Emma gets the five points.

Is moisturising very important to you?

Absolutely.

I'm proudly.

No, I'm proud to say that I suffer with.

You say it.

You're proudly what?

I'm proudly dry.

I'm a dry woman, and I like to be moist.

Someone's over.

That's it.

Task one, ring the bell.

You may not look up.

Fewest ropes pulled wins.

You have a maximum of 10 minutes.

Your time starts now.

Now, I think we can sort of speak about generally what everyone did here without diving into

too many specifics of each person because we should talk about the task as a whole, Ivo.

What did you think of this task?

How would have you reacted to it?

Well, you know, I think I am very...

I hope you'd agree that I am a fair, if sometimes quite aggressively critical, sort of assessor of my own hypothetical performance.

And there's a couple

tasks in this episode where I'm like, hmm, there is a, you know, there is a shortcut.

Yeah.

And in this one, it's it's sort of almost like mad that the the level to which like

none of the ropes, as far as I can recall or had observed, like help at all.

No, they don't.

It's all red herrings.

I mean, there's even in the task it says your time start five now.

So everything is a clue to a rope

that is not helpful.

So it's almost as if it's like it's a big honey trap for people who think they can find workarounds in Taskmaster.

Yeah.

I love the use of the phrase honey trap.

Thank you.

Not because of any of my own personal experience, if I just use it.

But the bell's like, yeah, because when you compare it to.

What did they have to do with that poor robot?

Sort of just to stop it stop it exploding yes and they were just cut the wires everywhere yes I got quite um

I sort of excited at the thought of doing that task and how I might well have messed it up but there was sort of

everything meant something yeah

and of course the taskmaster should be like across a series and indeed sort of across the whole taskmaster universe a constant series of rug pulls so there should like it you almost get a sense that you know just at about the point when there had been enough taskmaster Taskmaster series that people started, like, you know, looking under tables every time or whatever, like, that was pulled back a little bit, or there were more twists within that.

And so just having a task where it's like, none of these matter.

You pull any of them, something funny's going to fall on you.

Just go and find a bell from the what, ten?

There were so many bells.

There's bells everywhere.

Yeah.

So I've, you know, I thought it was a bit

sort of disappointing from a logic perspective, but you know, visually very pleasing.

You know, sorry to the team for all the tidying up, of course.

I I was sort of

often thinking, particularly having had the experience of having to go back to that little room, the sad anxiety room, like between tasks.

Sorry, I've just knocked over my schoolroom map of the British Isles and it's come out the frame.

Anyway,

no, I observed pre-record that the frame was loose.

So, you know,

that was going to have to be sorted anyway.

Oh, this is great.

Leave that to the edit.

So, you think about,

so like, I i don't know if the taskmaster wikipedia page has a list of um length of tasks to set up slash tidy up particularly proportional to how that important anything is where it's just all of this stuff going on the floor and none of it matters is none of it matters uh i presumably they did it very quickly some of them i mean andy was just yanking yanking ropes all through the task i mean i i wonder whether I think I would have yanked most of the ropes, personally, because I would have spotted that five in the task, and I I would have been like, oh, I'm so clever.

I've spotted that it must be five.

And then you pull five.

I don't know when you would have cottoned on that no rope is going to make a difference.

You just need to go and find a bell.

Yes.

Yeah, I mean, I don't know whether I'd even have spotted the five in the task.

You know, it would all come down to whether I'd taken my black market ADHD meds that morning.

But

I think that I probably would have turned around and been like, well, how about this doorbell?

Almost as kind of like, I'd have been a bit embarrassed to do it.

But I think I probably would have done it at some point.

I don't know where I'd have stood up time-wise compared to everyone else.

And then I pulled the ropes for fun.

Yes, yeah, that's the thing.

You do want to pull the ropes because it's exciting, isn't it?

Pull the rope and a thing comes out.

It was ring the bell.

What would have thrown me about that was that it was ring the bell.

Now, a lot of people were ringing a bell.

I would say

the doorbell to me, you can refer to as the bell because you would say ring the bell.

The doorbell makes sense to me.

The other bells don't.

The other bells are not the bell.

They are a bell.

Well,

you can only speak for your own family home, Ed.

Yes.

But when I was growing up, my mother had a bell that she shook to indicate that tea was ready, and that did become the bell.

Less people were coming to the door of the house, and we needed to be alerted to tea, as it were.

I mean, the revelation that you had a dinner bell at home is obviously not a shock, but

I can't believe how many stereotypes you fit into.

Well, I've often been at the other end of the garden playing cricket on my own, you see.

So I really went.

Just you and the rhino.

Just me and the rhino.

So, yes, sorry about that, but yes, we certainly didn't have 10 bells or however many there were in the house at this moment in time.

So

that's lovely.

So if we were on the series together, we were doing this task, that would have been a lovely back and forth.

I, you know, stomp around getting annoyed about the bell and a bell and a doorbell being the bell.

Then you come back with a lovely Ivo Graham story about your mother's dinner bell.

Right.

Well,

that's very nice of you to suggest that the nostalgic charm of my storytelling would pull us out of another gamble funk.

It's a tragedy.

We didn't task together.

Of course, Andy does not spot it, just pulls all the ropes.

There have been a couple of tasks now that Andy has not finished.

Yeah.

Just because he sort of gets annoyed that they're too complicated.

He really finds his home within the creative tasks or the tasks where he can layer puns on each other.

But when it's a task where

the aim is a little bit obfuscated, it's a little bit trickier, he does sort of give up a little bit.

Yeah, well, you know, I was guilty of that myself a couple of times, and I'm afraid I am, and I've not been planning this, but it has occurred to me that this would be a good time to plug my already once-delayed book, Yardsticks for Failure, please.

Because it's, which is the name of a Taskmaster episode, because of something I said in another intense moment of self-laceration.

But

the I could have done with a dinner bell then.

So one of the chapters

which I've written and probably going to be the first chapter because I think then the most people will read it before they sort of peter out during some of the more personal stuff is about my top 10 Taskmaster regrets.

Yes.

And so it's going into quite a lot of needless detail about

you know running into the kitchen to get try and get more spoons or sitting in the shed instead of the caravan or the other way around and I never know.

But one of them that my editor Richard has said is maybe just a bit too sad is me writing that I regret being petulant with the potatoes on the head task where when we were at Frogmore Paper Mill, a lovely location, although it's no Thorpe Park.

So jealous of Thorpe Park.

Not as jealous as I was of Gatwick.

Yeah, I think

for me it goes Gatwick Thought Park.

Gatwick is still.

Gatwick's the only way to do it.

I've spent lots of my life talking, particularly to my brother, about how great it would be to

run around an airport unsupervised.

I've never done that with Thought Park or Frogmore Paper Mill.

But when we had the Potatoes Fall Our Head, I just got a bit cross with that task and was like, oh, why bother?

And I was a bit charmless.

So I regret that.

But

that's so rare for you, Ivo, that I think you're allowed one or two occasions of charmlessness.

Well, that's nice of you to say it.

Giving up on a taskmaster task is an art in and of itself.

Yeah.

And you know, maybe Andy's not

the most, maybe that's not the art at which he is king, but that is partly because he's just doing so many other incredibly creative things.

Totally.

Like I think some of Andy's video,

you know, the tasks where you have to make me know make it make a video story or something

and you know you've got to do it in 10 minutes, but actually you've probably got quite a bit longer.

And you get a lot of help, but it doesn't mean you can create beautiful.

Now,

a single example is deserting me, which is insane, but like they've been so good.

Andy's French Bubbles film, of course, a wonderful example of that.

That's a true example.

Truly beautiful.

I mean,

particular highlights from this.

I love Jack just absolutely taking the whole concept of Taskmaster down by using the phrase, what am I supposed to do?

React.

Oh, yeah, that was just line of the episode for me.

What am I supposed to to do?

React.

Just pulls all the ropes, then finds a bell.

Yeah.

Rings the bell.

Done.

He looked at those ropes like he could smell cup of soup, if you know what I mean.

It was so good.

Bubba, of course, gets to the house bell eventually, very proud of himself.

And just saying life is about the now.

Just so positive.

You can imagine him in the park with his Bluetooth speaker.

Just loving life.

Emma, we need to talk about Emma's zooming in and zooming zooming out.

And I think mainly how happy she was with it as a concept, like she just discovered that moving away from something means it's in the distance.

Yeah, I mean, you know,

I dare say the purest thrill for that was in the doing it rather than in the watching it.

But, you know,

it brings more color to the varied universe of doing a, in this case, you know, sort of

non-classic task.

To be honest, I just felt embarrassed at my own lack of sort of perspective on perspective, as it were, because when she was stood on the chair, I was like, I don't, I,

would she now be able to see the top of the like

thing?

I was, you know, do you want to say?

I felt like she was trying to see a pattern, right?

Maybe she's, you know, how some tasks, the tasks have been arranged in a big arrow, or there might be a number.

I feel like she was looking for maybe a pattern,

you know, like the cameraman for the channel four idents.

He's got to stand in the right place so all of the lines line up.

To say channel four, example.

Not that you've ever actually seen that, because you're just getting Taskmaster DM'd your food.

No, I'm assuming they're the same.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But

yeah, I thought that she was trying to see what was on top, maybe, but whereas actually there was, apart from one little thing, which was the maybe the noise that went, oh no, like they were all hidden.

Yeah.

So I don't know.

But

I think absolutely no harm in it as a technique.

I mean, pulls one rope.

A very, very good, very good result for her.

But not as good as Rosie, who wiggles all the ropes and then just rings the front doorbell.

I mean, I was expecting Rosie to have far too much curiosity to not pull any of the ropes.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

She smashed that.

Naught ropes pulled.

Absolutely incredible.

Yes,

Naught Ropes Pulled is like the sort of sequel to Zero Fucks Given.

But of course, Andy walks away with zero points, Bubba three points, Jack three points, Emma four points, and the world deserve five points for Rosie.

There might be a bell in

the music.

Yeah.

Great, yeah.

Happy?

Yeah, I stole the clock.

Yeah, are you happy?

Yeah, I found the bell.

Yeah, I found the bell.

I'll go and get dry now.

I'll just, yeah.

Yeah.

It's great fun.

Isn't it?

Let's talk about task two, which is a team task.

Work out what is in this box.

You must not look, feel, or inspect the box in any way.

Your teammate must not show the contents of the box.

Sorry, it's so long.

I've got to maximise my notes.

Your teammate.

Why don't you walk away from your notes?

Your teammate must not show you the contents of the box.

Your teammate may only make silent facial expressions unless answering Alex's questions.

Your teammate must not nod or shake their head.

Fast is to work out what is in the box wins.

Your time starts and ends on Alex's whistle.

And then, of course, we are shown a separate VT

where both Jack and Andy are presented with this.

You must lie throughout the next task.

Every time you tell the truth, everyone in your team will lose an actual taskmaster point.

Your time starts when you walk into the task room and ends when you leave after the task is complete.

Tricky one this I vote.

There's a a little bit to discuss, certainly in the way that the points were divvied out, I think.

But, you know

at its heart, it's a it's charades with your head through a portrait.

Um

but

with the added thing of the fact that people who were trying to get over what was in the box were lying.

We should talk about Emma, Babba, and Andy first because I think this is possibly Emma's most impressive moment of the whole series so far.

Can we talk about the lying

caveat or stipulation, though?

Yes.

Because when

we got the presentation of the task, you know, as

the initial on-the-surface presentation of the rules, and then we sort of went back in time to to to to to Andy and Jack getting their separate secret instructions.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood up because it was so reminiscent of my I think my favourite ever moment in Taskmaster and the thing I've watched over and over again which is John Kearns getting his instructions in the in the caravan that he has to sabotage his team.

Yes.

And I and also I should credit the fact that that was previously done in New Zealand, I think.

New Zealand, it was, yes.

For such a fan, I've still not watched the NZ original of that one, but it's very shameful.

But anyway, John, I just love John so much, and him, particularly with that beautiful little sort of tinkling version of the Taskmaster music, as his world collapses around him.

And he's saying, like, that is nasty.

And even Alex looks ashamed to be giving the instructions.

It's like, it's the, and then obviously, knowing, having watched it so many times, the

joy to come,

it's as good as the show gets.

So being like, oh, we're going to have another one of those

was delightful.

And I think it's people who are, it's given to people who are less awkward about that sort of thing.

I don't think Andy or Jack really care about having to lie

or take points off other people.

I think, if anything, I think it really jazzes things up for both of them.

Yep.

Yeah, it was good jazz.

And I...

Yes, and also, yeah, it took points off their oppose.

This is the thing I do find it hard even to keep up with.

So if they lied.

Yeah.

Who would lose points?

Everyone in their team.

So them.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, if they told the truth, sorry,

everyone in their team, so including them,

would lose points.

So, I mean, Andy sticks to it so rigidly.

It is absolutely textbook.

This is how you should play it.

He lies to everything, every question Alex asks him, everything that

Emma's asking him.

She just gets it.

She straight away, she's like, he would know what velvet is.

He has to lie for every single question.

He's Andy Zaltzman.

He's Andy Zaltzmann.

And then they're on the right track.

I like to think that I don't take any

pride

in the privileges I've enjoyed in my life.

Just sort of awkward,

muttered gratitude.

But I would like to be identified as being forced to lie by having said that I didn't know what velvet was.

I too would be doing a disservice to some of my favourite jackets.

She absolutely smashed it.

And then from that point on,

they knew what tack to take, and they were straight back to food, and then they got to lemon, and then they got to the Fiverr eventually.

To Fiverr eventually.

They did cut, and there was some lovely

editing to suggest the many, many guesses and a bit of passage of time because they were saying things like lemons and reams of data

before money.

Yeah.

And then even the money, we had a few different goes at what it was.

And then it was a Fiverr with the Queen on, which

I thought

was odd because surely it would have been filmed under Charles.

But it took a while for the money to switch over, didn't it?

Yes, yes, I suppose so.

The last dance.

Emma did incredibly well here.

Andy did incredibly well.

And Bubba was also there, I would say, for this one.

Yeah, I think.

And again, that is in a team of of three occasionally you can be a passenger yes uh my my favorite moment of bubba's was was when ebba was saying is it a lemon and some fivers and alex said you're halfway there and bubba said lemons and two pound fifty

fantastic

i miss that that's absolutely fantastic pig up yourself all day every day

now Jack and Rosie, this is the interesting one for me because Rosie is, of course, dressed as the hot dog, meaning she has played her Joker,

which is a new addition to the format that I'd imagine you absolutely love, Ivo.

Yes, I do love it.

And I love that meme,

of course, the Tim Robinson meme.

So I enjoy being reminded of that.

And

I saw someone say somewhere that

they'd hoped, and obviously you don't want to just ungratefully go into the um uh even more generous hypothetical realm of what you'd hoped for, but that it would be a different costume every time.

Yes, um, but I don't mind five hot dogs, not at all, and it's a great addition.

I got I laughed so much when Jack D just wore his immediately

a few episodes ago.

Um,

and then we've seen Bubba in it as well.

Yes, we've seen Bubba in it, so running around illegally in the maze.

Yes,

Rosie is the third person to play the hot dog joker.

Great, great, great phrase.

Even that is like, because sometimes the tasks are complicated.

And it was so funny in a way when

there was a live task a couple of episodes ago that was so complicated.

And then it just the one with all the animal legs, and then it just ended immediately before I'd even understood what it was.

It was over.

Which was what happened with our Feet in Ice live task in the last episode.

Oh, yeah.

Done.

But if you imagine, explain this, what's happening here.

They've got to explain what's in the box.

Can't see it.

But also,

they have to lie, but they can't.

If they tell the truth, their team will lose points.

But also, Rosie is getting double points.

And I had actually thought, I had thought even before it came up later on, what's that going to do to double points?

Double negatives.

Double negatives, but they decide, they'd obviously not even thought about that as

a possibility because when Greg says, well, we've never said that.

So, and I kind of

like the fact that it's not been written down anywhere, so they can't go and take double points off Rosie.

Well, absolutely.

I think more points should have been docked because they said he lied three times.

I don't think that's true.

He was lying all the time.

Sorry, he was telling the truth all the time because every guess he was guiding Rosie more towards

more towards the lemon and the fiver in some ways he was sort of smiling and laughing so you know it's not really possible for Jack D to be more disingenuous than smiling and laughing

but

but yes it

but he never he never lied he just played the game normally to me he was telling the truth all the way through I see your point of like, can it be a lie or a truth with a facial expression?

But every facial expression was designed to push Rosie towards the truth.

Zoltzmann presented a clear binary.

Yes, absolutely.

Tongue in or out.

Yeah.

And yeah, Jack, it was, yeah, it was, well, no, you're right.

It was a disgrace.

And

Ed did make a bit of a mockery of it.

So.

It should have been 50 points off.

50 points off for both of them.

Wow.

Well, my series, not to keep banging on it, 15, just keep on people's minds.

But

it was, you know, beset by, is one word, ruined by, is another word.

A couple of big point swings, which me and Frankie are on the receiving end of.

So, and particularly with how fantastically close this series is, you don't want to be upsetting that just by going mad with punishing people.

But yeah,

this task belonged to, and again, sorry to remove a third of the team, but it belonged to Andy and Emma.

Yes.

Yeah, they did incredibly well, and they all got five points, Emma, Andy, and Bubba.

And Jack and Rosie, minus three points.

So still, still a bit gutting, I think.

Especially for Jack, who

was riding high at the top of the table.

Andy, did you actually know what velvet is?

Oh, no.

Andy is lying.

Everything that Andy says is a lie.

Are you lying, Andy?

No.

This guy doesn't know what velvet is.

Look at him.

He's Andy's Altsman.

He knows what velvet is.

Right, is it something you can eat?

Stick out your tongue.

So it is something you can eat.

Is it cheese?

Is it canned fish?

Is it fish?

Is it baked beans?

Is it old bread?

Is it something that a prepper would have in their house?

What's a prepper?

You know, so the end of the world is coming.

You stock up all your cans.

The end of the world isn't coming.

Alex!

What do we do?

Task three, eat and obey five Fortune cookies.

Fastest wins, your time starts now.

Well, well, well.

I'm going to refer you back to the bingo task that

I did in Taskmaster, which contained some humiliating individual failures, but where I did decide to basically get all of the options on the table and then decide what order to do them in.

And I think that I would have done that in this, and I think it was a good decision by those who did do that.

Yes, and Andy did this from the beginning.

Wonderful moment where he gets one out, and Alex says, Are you going to do that?

And he says, No, I'm not going to do that order.

I'm going to get them all out.

He says, I think you you have to do them in the order you see them he reads the task again and says nope no you do not uh and yes it stuns Alex into silence I absolutely loved it so he takes

I mean it is it is fastest wins so even if you have worked that out it may save you some gross moments where you don't have to eat hot sauce or vinegar

fortune cookies but it doesn't help you in the long run because he still takes 13 minutes 44.

That's interesting.

Yes.

Well, there we go.

All he's done is saved himself some spice.

Yes.

And not even all of that, just enough that the hot water could wash off, as it were.

But yeah, I didn't, you know, the eating aspect was a delicate part of this.

And obviously, Jack, we got a great shot of Jack D

eating,

which to me calls to mind there's a great shot of Dennis Quaid eating shrimps in a new film called The Substance, which is sort of fantastically grotesque.

Or the classic Denithor eating tomatoes in Lord of the Rings

and

Jack D munching

on the fortune cookies was great.

Yeah, that Dennis Quaid bit in The Substance is early doors and you think, ooh, that's a bit gross.

And then you watch the rest of the film.

If it's too gross for you, you should leave the cinema.

Lovely moment with Andy where he takes quite a long time doing this, actually, phoning Daniel Kitson to tell him that he's in the bath.

Yep.

Yep.

Well, I spent longer on my phone calls, so no judgment there.

Yeah.

And also good use of the old, did I call you, did you call me, sort of accident.

Whereas I think my mistake with my long phone calls was I made no pretense that I hadn't called them, but then had no plan.

So, but it was pretty good from, I mean, I have forgotten who took the longest, but I thought it was good from, I mean, everyone had their great moments.

I enjoyed Emma winking and then saying, stop the clock in the South African accent very much.

Yeah.

Lovely to get Daniel Kitson his first television appearance since Phoenix Nights as well.

Actually, very disrespectful of Andy to have done that.

Baba takes the longest actually.

He's just straight in with the bad stuff, having to put it in vinegar.

Baba's indignance at these sorts of tasks makes me laugh so much because you really think, what did you think this show is going to be?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, he gets quite, he gets quite excited occasionally, like

the fishing task,

he seemed to enjoy, but there's a lot of great, like, and in the fight, in the live task which we're coming to, they present an extra hole in the wall and he just goes, What are we going to do with that?

He's such a nice man, which makes his little angry outbursts even funnier, I think.

Just like really almost i impotently angry outbursts.

So he's very, very, very sweet man.

But yes, he takes a long time, 20 minutes, and he takes 13 minutes.

Jack has a technique, uses the technique well, and does it in five minutes, 33.

Rosie, again, just this is the only time I've seen Rosie not enjoy a task, I think.

Yeah, well, and it's as close as we've seen her to almost stunned silence.

Yes.

She does manage to summon up a, you're a dickhead, I hate you all.

Bye, at the end of that video.

So back and forth.

It's when the hot sauce kicks in and she's not smiling for the first time in the whole series.

And then it cuts her and all her mascara's running.

So sad.

But yeah, once the spice has sort of subsided, she still manages to call Alex a dickhead, which we appreciated very much.

Emma, of course, very good at this sort of task.

The easy win for Emma, four minutes, 23.

And at the end,

a lovely South African accent for some reason that she didn't realise she was doing.

Yep, perfect.

Stop deck.

Yeah, that was great.

I really enjoyed that task, and I would have enjoyed it.

I would have loved to have done it myself.

Yes, me too.

I think, you know, Scotch bonnet, I could probably take that on, I reckon.

I've won a chili, chili, chicken challenge back in the day, but I won't tell you about it now.

You come on again, Ivo.

Make sure you tell us about the chili, chili, chicken challenge.

Thank you.

What's really annoying is I've got a ball-throwing anecdote for this next bit, but that's that.

We could do it, we could do that.

Let me see.

It was one point for Bubba, two points for Randy, three points for Rosie, four points for Jack, and five points for Emma.

Good episode for Emma.

I put all of the fortune cookies in their bowl, little pot.

Shosh.

I swear, this just gets worse and worse and worse.

Yo.

You like him?

You're taking the piss.

Three to go, Rosie.

Okay.

No!

I'm about to ruin the toilet.

Live task, throw a beanbag onto the island.

If you knock over a can, you are disqualified.

If If you miss the island, you are disqualified.

Last player standing wins.

Now, tricky task.

Obviously, the wall gets higher every round.

There's a slot at the bottom to look through, which is useless, as Bob points out.

Always a funny visual of someone walking behind a wall and they're not quite tall enough to see over it.

Now, please, Ivo, in the next three minutes, please tell us your ball throwing anecdote.

Well, I'm sorry to be so London-centric again, but have you ever been to the Islington Academy in the borough of Camden?

Yes.

It's a small music venue inside what's a pretty ugly mall.

And basically,

I love

throwing things and throwing bass tasks and challenges.

And we always really enjoyed getting to do it on Taskmaster and betrayed Kyle.

But to my own cost, in my very first episode, with some ball throwing.

And my friend Tom and I went to a Charlie XEX themed club night where we were significantly older than everyone else there

this mall and we were having such fun and I had my favourite bouncy ball with me and we were deciding whether or not to

keep stay out or go home and we agreed that we would go out onto the mall and we would throw and catch the ball between the two balconies and we'd have only one throw slash catch and I said to Tom Do you want to be thrower or catcher and he chose catcher although truthfully he's probably better than me at both disciplines he actually does have a cricket ball machine at his family home and

and a small crowd gathered to watch this fateful throw and catch it was so exciting we made we made clear the terms and

and I'd actually did I'm I've got to say I'm quite pleased with my throw and Tom dropped it and we went home done so did you did you left the club night because you felt too old No, no, no, we were having a great time.

You had a great time.

We were discreetly enjoying the music of Charlie XEX and adjacent artists while reveling in our own, the longevity of our own male friendship.

And we talked to people if they talked to us, but

we didn't bother anyone else

clubbing and enjoying their 20s or indeed teens.

Some people were waving around brat green glow sticks, and we both discussed at length how much we wanted to get a brat green glow stick.

But we didn't, again, we didn't bother anyone else until quite late on the night when I wrote, Can I have your green stick, please?

on an iPhone note and started just waving it at people.

I wanted to take it over my daughter, who said to no one else in the nightclub.

This was a good task, though.

This is the sort of thing I can imagine you setting up backstage at your show, Ivo.

Which is not to say that I would have been any good at this, but I did love to watch it and think about, you know,

myself doing it, of course.

Yeah,

it's a tricky one as well.

I don't think I would have been very good at this.

I think I would have been

overconfident or underconfident.

And you need just the right amount of confidence for this, I think, to

not knock over a can and keep it on the island um we want to say there's a lot of luck in it really but then it was sort of um and cricketer andy zaltzman did did do quite well and he did serial non-thrower Emma Siddi did not do that well.

No, but Bubba didn't learn throwing at school, of course,

because he's a comedian and he still got four points.

So he did do very well.

Jack, Emma, and Rosie all disqualified.

Not that Jack cared.

He can't even pretend to care at this point.

And yes, Andy gets the five points.

Very impressive indeed.

Meaning, this is another victory for Emma.

Everyone's won one.

And now, so we're on the second way round now.

Emma on 22 points, Andy on 16 points, Bubba on 15 points, Rosie on 12, and Jack on 10.

I mean, look at that points grouping again.

I mean, quite a distance between Emma and Jack, top and bottom.

And this was probably a pretty crucial episode for Jack if he wanted to extend his lead, but he didn't, and it remains very close.

Jack on all the ones, 111.

Andy on 107.

Emma very close behind on 106.

Bubba very close behind on 105.

Rosie sadly trailing now on 93.

A little bit of sunlight between those now.

Ivo, thank you so much for coming back on the Taskmaster podcast.

You're of course welcome any time.

Oh, it's very kind of you to say it.

We've briefly talked about your book.

Oh, never mind that.

Yardsticks are failure, which will be coming out next year, correct?

Yes, the current revised date is May 2025.

And I think another delay would prove fatal.

I mean,

it sticks with the theme of the book, though.

Yeah, sort of.

But I think quite a few of my people are actually asking for a bit less on-brand disorganization,

actually.

The brand is strong enough, they say.

Yes.

But I do think that it's going to be a well-written book with a lot of Taskmaster content.

So, you know, if that doesn't sort of scream, pre-order it now, you bastards in the subtext, then I don't know what will.

Also, we need to say that you have a Radio 4 show called Obsessions.

I've had a lovely time doing that, and it's on Wednesday nights, and there's only

three more weeks of it, or maybe two when this comes out.

So, that is obviously very proud of it and would like to do more of it.

And very grateful, particularly to Producer Gwyn,

and has had some Taskmaster alumna in the guests, and it's all available on BBC Sounds.

But, you know, if I,

you know, it is as a live radio experience, it is soon to be over, actually.

Well, catch up on BBC Sounds.

I will be catching up on BBC Sounds because you've had Sue Pollard on, and I cannot wait to listen to that episode.

She's absolutely fantastic with Wang.

Pollard and Wang together at last.

Pollard and Wang, finally.

I mean, Pollard, surely, surely for New Year's treat one year.

Oh, it's absolutely a crime that it hasn't happened already.

At one point, I present her with some tomatoes, and she says, Oh, they're on the vine.

Oh, Jeremy.

And finally,

if not most importantly, you are on tour throughout November and January with your show Grand Designs, Ivo.

Ivo Graham.com for tickets.

Yes, with Grand Designs, we're just doing a few southern boroughs between now and the end of November.

And then in the new year, I'm doing some of my sad theatre show, Carousel, which I'm actually very proud of.

But it's what my editor would call pure regret at the point.

You're a busy boy, Ivo.

We will, of course, ask you to rate your experience on the Taskmaster podcast between one and five points, please.

Well, may I say the grass isn't growing under your feet either, Ed.

You're an inspiration to us all, and talking to you on this format has been once more a five-point delight.

Thank you very much, Ivo.

Goodbye.

Goodbye.

Thank you so much to Ivo for coming on the show.

You are welcome back anytime, of course.

Turned into a bit of a rush there.

I had a certain amount of time before I needed to leave to go on tour.

I'm on tour, Ed Gamble, Hot Diggity Dog.

Fair few dates remaining up until the end of November.

Feel free to come to that.

But we had an hour and then you realise Ivo's the guest and he's got more than an hour's worth of content to discuss.

But Ivo must come back on and chat a little bit more.

You know, when he's brought 10 items with him that he would bring for the prize task.

I think no other guest does that.

The guy is dedicated, but too dedicated for such a slim time window.

Go and check out all of Ivo's stuff that you mentioned.

We will be back next week.

Come back after the show's been out on channel 4 at 9pm and we will talk more about Taskmaster Series 18.

Bye-bye.

So here you go.

This is my prize.

It's bigger than my head.

This is my prize.

I brought him for break.

It's not for Alex.

Nothing rhymes with his name.

That's not his fault.

He's got his parents to blame.

This is the good bit, right?

Oh,

can you believe your eyes?

It's my task, Master Prime.

There you go.

How about that?