Taskmaster The Podcast - Ep 3. Jo Brand

Episode Date: October 29, 2020

On the podcast this week Ed is joined by comedy royalty and fellow Series 9 contestant, Jo Brand. The pair get forensic over the latest episode and reflect on their own Taskmaster experience. Jo reveals a task that never made the cut and Alex Horne returns with the regular feature BFF.Taskmaster is on Channel 4 Thursdays at 9pm and you can catch the family friendly version Sundays on E4 at 6pm. Taskmaster the Podcast is produced by Daisy Knight for Avalon Television LtdGet in touch with Ed and future guests:[e-mail] Visit the Taskmaster Youtube channelwww.youtube.com/taskmaster For all your Taskmaster goodies visit www.taskmasterstore.com  Sales, advertising and general enquiries:[e-mail]   Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's winter, and you can get anything you need delivered with Uber Eats. Well, almost almost anything. So no, you can't get snowballs on Uber Eats. But meatballs, mozzarella balls, and arancini balls? Yes, we deliver those. Moose? No. But moose head? Yes. Because that's alcohol, and we deliver that too.

Along with your favorite restaurant food, groceries, and other everyday essentials. Order Uber Eats now. For alcohol, you must be legal drinking age. Please enjoy responsibly. Product availability varies by region. See app for details. Hello and welcome to episode three of the Taskmaster podcast. My name's Ed Gamble. I am the current champion of Taskmaster. Don't go calling me the former champion of Taskmaster. I am the current champion of Taskmaster until one of these five wins the series. And until then, I will cling on to that crown with bloody bloody fingers but anyway it was a good episode I cannot wait to chat through it uh dissect discuss with

my special guest how it went what we thought the highlights and lowlights were who we thought the stars were who had a bad episode who had a good episode all all of that lovely stuff, as well as reminiscing about our time on Taskmaster together. Yes, that's right. Today's Taskmaster podcast guest is Series 9 alum Joe Brand. Very excited that Joe said yes to this. I like Joe a lot. We got on very well during the series, and it was just lovely to catch up.

Remember, if you haven't seen episode 3 series 10 of Taskmaster do not listen to this episode of the podcast. That's what we're going to be chatting about. Major spoiler warnings. Go away, watch the episode, then come back, listen to this and you can experience it in its full glory. Taskmaster is obviously on channel 4 at 9pm every Thursday. That's when it goes out. Don't miss an episode. Then don't miss an episode of this, which comes out straight after that. But if you've got kids and you're worried that there might be some rude bits,

I'm worried if the task is going to be like, who has the most naked bum, then watch the E4 broadcast 6pm Sundays. That's when that goes out. They'll cover up the bums. I mean, the task of a most naked bum won't be as good because you won't see any naked bums. So no one should really get five points. I don't think that's a task, by the way.

I've not seen episodes four to ten, but I'm fairly sure most naked bum doesn't come up. Alex has got some brilliant ideas, but he's not had that one yet but Alex if you're listening to this how about most naked bomb so let's crack on and chat to the wonderful Joe Brand about episode 3 series 10 of Taskmaster here we go welcome Joe Brand to the Taskmaster podcast. Thank you very much, Ed Gamble. How are you? Very well, thank you. You are our first Season 9 alumni on the Taskmaster podcast. Oh, good.

You were the only person we wanted when we thought, who are we getting from Season 9? It's got to be Jo Brand. The lazy one with no creativity in her bones at all. Well you say the lazy one but you lent into the lazy thing so perfectly that it was you know it it didn't feel lazy you actually put a lot into the effort of being lazy which renders it not lazy I think. Well yeah I hope not I mean I I kind of weighed things up and I thought there's no way that I'm going to win this because I'm because I have like such a weird life. Sometimes I have like really brilliant days, but I'm very inconsistent. So I knew I was going to have one day where I just went totally all wrong, probably started crying. And I think it was that one where there's loads of stuff hanging on the ceiling and I didn't even notice it.

And then Alex went, can you name as many things that stuff hanging on the ceiling and I didn't even notice it. And then Alex went, can you name as many things that were hanging from the ceiling as possible? And I went, was there stuff hanging from the ceiling? That sort of thing. A bit like when Catherine did her, where's the frying pan panic? I can't see the frying pan. Where is it? I really, I really empathize with that. But you didn't really panic in any of those situations. You were just like, oh, well, move on, next one.

Well, that's true, but that's because it didn't really warrant it. When I was a psychiatric nurse working in a 24-hour walk-in emergency clinic, the sort of emergencies there did warrant it, and there was nothing in Taskmaster that was anywhere near as scary, to be honest. Yeah, see, I don't have that level of life experience or perspective where I could sort of draw on my experience as a psychiatric nurse and go well this doesn't really matter does it for me things hanging from the ceiling that is the biggest panic I've ever had in my life so well you see the thing was actually

in in some ways to be a winner which of course course you were, you did exactly the right thing. You were very competitive. You reminded me of my little brother when he was about 11, who he would kind of do anything to stop me winning, including sort of breaking, like, you know, I used to play tennis a little bit and play in tournaments. He actually broke my tennis racket once so that he could win the game. I'm not implying that you're like that, that you're violent,

but you are a good competitor and you do brilliantly. I'm not sure I would break your tennis racket. I'd maybe hide your tennis racket. Yeah, fair enough. I think that's the level. Do you have any favourite task memories from our season? Now, obviously, not noticing the things hanging from the ceiling

is a painful task memory, but do you have any highlights? Well, I quite enjoyed singing Jerusalem in the back of a car to Alex, which was a way of waiting for an egg to boil perfectly. And what was so satisfying about it was it actually worked as well. And I think it was the perfect consistency. I think you won that task, didn't you? I think you did. It was the perfect jammy consistency.

And I have since tried that. I do sing Jerusalem when I'm boiling an egg now, so that's had a long-lasting effect on my life. Let's hope that's being repeated all over the country. I loved that task and your taking of it in particular, because when you first sit down for that first episode and they play you the theme tune and the title sequence, there's little clips of everything people have done across the series. And that is the first time you get a clue as to what the other people are like. And there was just a tiny little clip of you screaming Jerusalem in the back of a car. and I could not for the life of me work out what task that would have been for us so it took a few episodes I was like oh okay that makes sense now but no one else would have thought

to have get got in their car home to finish the task well and I'm sure that like everybody says don't they about Taskmaster that um it's such a shock getting to see what the other people have done. Because it's very easy to be in your own little bubble and think, yeah, I definitely won this one. And you see that quite a lot with every Taskmaster. People think, I'm all right here, you know, at maximum points. And then it suddenly starts to show on their face that they've been a complete idiot. So you say going into our series, you assumed you were going to do badly.

You knew you weren't going to win. But had you sized up the other contestants? Obviously, you knew David for a long time before. Did you have an inkling that he might be considerably worse than you? I didn't really, because I think we all assume that if someone's extremely intelligent, which he is, that they will be very creative and they will be practical, which, of course, is a ridiculous thing to think, because you should really think the opposite of that, shouldn't you? There's some old professor type shuffling around in their office never lifted

a hand domestically in their lives and they've got no idea how to do practical things that I should have known really yeah that's when you meet really truly intelligent people like sort of Oxford dons or people who've you know been in academia their whole lives they're often quite odd because they've just been buried in a book and yeah yeah, I'm calling David Bode a lot. That's what I'm doing. I'm calling him out publicly. But it was a lot of fun. I mean, we'd not worked together properly before.

Were the others new to you as well? Were Katie and Rose new faces to you? Yeah, they were actually. That was nice, you know, because us elderly members of the comedy community, we're aware that people are running after us, trying to section us and get us into old people's homes and we're still shouting out swear words and going, I will not be silenced.

But, you know, it's nice to kind of get asked to do something with people in it that are younger than you and don't, when you ask how are you don't say the word arthritis well i i think yeah despite you and david being the elder statesman of the records quite often especially you were the worst behaved during the records you started a thing where you did a different style of clapping every time we came back from a break oh yeah just and if you look carefully at the edit you can see and I joined in because I'm very easily led astray by the naughty one in the class um you can see me and Joe trying out different clapping and at one point

you would just had your hands like a little bird instead of clapping I think that arose from the Nicole Kidman clap at the Oscars where she, you know, where she did that weird thing where she kind of pinged her fingers together and they pinged right out. And then after that, I thought I'm going to try and invent something better than that. I don't think I did, but you know, it was more fun than just doing proper grown up. It was.

It was. so i will talk more about our memories from series nine later on in the podcast but i think for now we should crack on to episode three of series 10 now obviously this is the lineup following us there's a lot of pressure on them. What do you think of them as a lineup in general so far? Well, I was trying to think, are they sort of a kind of reflection of the lineup we were? You know, are there sort of elder statesmen? And I suppose in a way that you, or women, you've got Johnny Vegas and you've also got richard herring two

very different characters um i think johnny's great because you never quite know what he's going to do um but i think he's got a brilliant kind of creativity and unpredictability about him uh whereas richard is richard's i think is extremely bright and he's very kind of benign compared to Johnny. So they're sort of a good balance for each other. So I don't know if they sort of reflected me and Dave in a way. Catherine Parkinson, I think, also reflected me a bit because I was so hopeless at things. And she occasionally is is she's so charming in the way she fails to notice something you know or she doesn't quite really understand what well like catapult for example you know her catapult knowledge was obviously from sort of just William where someone actually held a catapult with a bit of knicker elastic and

pinged a conker at her or something. Yeah because her I mean we'll definitely come to that later but her immediate thought was a twig with two other twigs coming off it which is basically a Dennis the Menace Beano catapult right? Indeed yeah absolutely bless her. But first there was the prize task which was best thing with a spring in it now uh how did you enjoy the prize task job when we did it um well i i actually got it sort of wrong so i thought all the prizes had to be from your own house so it's it kind of limited me a bit but also in a way it was liberating too because because it just meant I had to think a bit harder. Yeah.

Yeah, I enjoyed it a lot, actually. And I must say, I was certainly impressed by some of yours. I remember that one being a certain tube that dispensed glitter at a given moment, which I really i really like confetti cannon party pants yeah that's the one indeed that was my favorite i think so yours yours were very inventive as well i i seem to remember smoothest thing being a highlight which was uh you had an action man in a bowl of blancmange uh yeah you know in a bowl of um uh butterscotch angel delight scotch angel delight the smoothest thing.

I think that was my favourite. What would you have done for best thing with a spring in it? Best thing that probably has a spring in it. That's a very key bit of language. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I think I would have tried to get something. I might have tried to pretend I'd shoplifted from an antique shop or something you know so got something like very old and interesting well i thought johnny's one-armed

bandit was great for example yeah i think that that one didn't it and i think that was uh i think that was a deserved winner i would have because richard again richard showing that he's probably the most competitive and pernickety of the whole bunch uh immediately going in with picking up on the language and saying it's it doesn't count if it definitely has a spring in it it only has to probably have a spring in it which is I mean it would have he would have got on my nerves if we'd been in the same series I think because I'm competitive but he he is really competitive yes but he's also pedantic as well pedantic that's exactly what he is you would just kind of challenge a decision against you with like pure anger pure 11 year old tennis anger yeah whereas richard is a bit more measured

in his objection to his being given one point. Yeah, exactly. I liked his penguin thing, though. I think that was good. And obviously, I think he appealed to Greg's sensibilities because it came with a stupid noise in a song. Yes. And doing that made Greg laugh. And I think that's very much the key in some of these.

Yes. I think it's quite hard to predict um you know what greg's gonna like sometimes because i think like daisy for example she she kind of goes for like stupid things that are very simple yeah very simple possibly she thinks greg is very stupid and very simple because she's always a bit shocked when he doesn't like it's kind of clever simplicity and she always has that face on and like oh you know did you not realize that was genius and I like that about her she's she's kind of got such a huge amount of self-confidence that everything she does is brilliant it's great like a great point to start from and I really love that yeah

and especially in the prize tusks you're right right, because she's, I think, like my favourite of your prize tusks was the action man in The Angel Delight and that takes a little bit of explaining. None of hers have taken any explaining whatsoever. It's just one word and you immediately know why she's done it. It is just stuff she's grabbed on the way out of the house. Absolutely. Here come the big guns.

She's previously bought in a crumpet. LAUGHTER Here we go. Umbrella. She's brought an umbrella. I tell you why. If this was a question on family fortunes, I would win with that and I would have won with my crumpets. I don't think you should come on here

and apply the rules of different... LAUGHTER I think Mawaan,an for me in this round summed up the entire taskmaster experience when he showed his mattress and then everyone started asking about does it probably have a spring in it does it definitely have a spring in it is it a memory foam mattress and he just looked really confused and then said what do you want to hear yes Yes, absolutely. He just wanted them to move on. Absolutely. Well, I thought it was a bit of a kind of bonus that his mattress wasn't, because most people's are, you know, it wasn't covered in sort of rather unpleasant or unexplainable stains.

Yeah. Well, had he put a cover over it, I think he probably had, I would never bring my mattress in. I think Daisy was unlucky to come bottom there. I think Greg's getting fed up with the simplicity of the prize tasks from her. Catherine's water pistol, again, two points. That felt okay. I think Johnny deserved to win, but I felt like the rest of them did pretty well

and probably deserved a few more points. Apart from Moanne, if it is a memory foam it probably doesn't have a spring in it so i'm not sure he should have got any points no because he should have he should have known that there was a negative there rather than a possible positive exactly and what we're finding out about moan over the last couple of episodes is that he does sometimes doesn't read the task properly but it is very funny oh i can empathize with that because i did that as well totally didn't read it properly a lot of the time yeah that's because you couldn't

be bothered there joe you know i know so we move on to the first task of the episode best upside down film which personally would have panicked me a lot any of those creative ones normally threw me into uh threw me into a bit of a panic they all actually seem to be pretty much on on it straight away i mean i wouldn't have had a clue what to do, really. Because I'm kind of a bit weird with my left and right and my up and down. And I reckon I would have done something that I thought was upside down. And then when it was finished, it would actually be the right way up.

And so I would have been disqualified. Well, let's talk about Daisy straight away then, because that's pretty much exactly what happened to her. She decided to shoot a film where everything was upside down but then she also put the camera upside down so when they showed the film back it everything was the right way up cancels it out yeah it just completely cancels it out technically i suppose it is an upside down film it was shot upside down but that it doesn't lend anything to the film at the end of it. It's just the normal, you'd have to tell someone that it was filmed upside down. But I think she's clearly on the same page as Johnny, because in the first episode, Johnny did a chicken film, didn't he? When he had to make something disappear, he did an angry chicken destroying London. And those two seem

to have got, they've got a sort of psychic link. They're sat next to each other, but they seem to be getting on really well. I think they've, I think they're on the same page. No, I totally agree with you. And I think, you know, it actually, to some extent, Catherine reminds me a bit of Katie Wicks in ours, which is that I don't know what it is about having to learn lots of words if you're an actor. It just kind of makes you a very different kind of prospect from a comedian, really. This task in particular, Catherine's acting really stood out, didn't it? Like her upside-down face.

Her upside... I really loved her upside-down face. And I thought it looked really good, whereas the others kind of looked slightly thrown together which is understandable mine would have done it's about her sort of attractive and professional like her really you know yeah well but yet again she it cut back to her and she was crying tears of laughter I think after every task she seems to have a sort of mini breakdown which is great I love I love that that's her angle on Taskmaster is to have a meltdown after every task. Well, I think so, because I think on Taskmaster,

I would have found it really easy to just either start crying or to kind of throw my belongings on the floor and stomp out and refuse to come back. Because you have absolutely no idea what level of humiliation is awaiting you. And I think if you're i mean i wouldn't say i was a particularly fragile person but sometimes i would think oh no you know i i know what's coming now and i'm going to look like such an ass but you really cannot let that kind of affect you because you have to remember that when you look like that,

people like that, especially people that can't stand you. And, you know, and so in a way, you're a winner to some extent in the end. Yeah, exactly. I think there's, you know, you don't have to win the task if you come out of it with a memorable moment. I think that's, that's just as important as winning. Yeah, absolutely. I totally agree. But I love that you say when things, important as winning yeah absolutely I totally agree but I love that you say you when things when things started playing that you panicked and remembered what you did because I'd say 80% of the time I was sat in between you and David Baddiel and then the task would start on the screen and you'd lean across me to each other and say do you remember this I

don't remember this I've got no idea I've got no idea what's going to happen no memory of it whatsoever I know and weirdly I remembered quite a few that hadn't actually got in and I was waiting for them to come up and they never did so there were a couple that I thought I'd done quite well in so I was I was a bit kind of oh do you remember what those were now they absolutely love it on the podcast when we have little behind the scenes things like that there was one where we had to go into this sort of plant filled conservatory type area and we had to there were some books on the floor and we had to describe things in a foreign language yes either our own foreign language or from one of the books on the floor i think there was a swedish dictionary yeah there was a maybe swahili dictionary as well i seem to remember

that's right yeah and so i um i did it in german because that because i i speak a bit of german and there were quite a lot of things that i just happened to know the name of that's great and i thought i've definitely i've definitely won this one but actually when now i think about it i don't think i did probably because there was a lot of bright people in that I expect Dave did it in Latin yeah probably um so these best upside down films I mean personally um I think my favorite was Johnny's um which was the uh the charity oh that's the charity appeal for for sufferers of upside upside downism I believe was believe, was the cause that he was raising money for. It was a perfect little sketch, but I think the moment where they're in the trampoline park,

so he is the upside down man, is stuck on the ceiling, and then he had everyone jumping up and down in the trampoline park, I thought was touching. I thought it was funny. I absolutely loved it. And he did bring the points home. He won in the end. He did.

And also he was the only one that kind of went for a charity. Yeah. I must admit, I like Richard's actually, because to me it looked like some sort of rather odd kind of Wild West sort of magic show. Yeah. Because he was dressed up in a slightly odd costume. And I just sort of like the look of it really um yeah because he was lying

I think he was lying on the ceiling wasn't he from from uh the beginning just like well not just like Lionel Richie because he was dancing on it but uh yeah so I just like the look of his but I mean I thought they were all good really those yeah I think I think they all had something to recommend them and Daisy's obviously had the fatal flaw of not being upside down at all uh but I think I think they all had something to recommend them and Daisy's obviously had the fatal flaw of not being upside down at all uh but I think I think Richard was under marked in this yeah me too me too I thought Greg went after him too hard about his acting which I thought was fine yeah just compared to Catherine's not good but I thought to get one point for that I think was a shame and I'd imagine they had to edit out a lot of arguments after that. So what are we supposed to take from it? I'm not going to explain.

You don't go to the director and go, what was that meant to be? You don't go to Stanley Kubrick and go, what was that meant to be? You do if Stanley Kubrick wants a point. And in relation to this upside-down video task, there is a return to our regular feature, which is BFF with Alex Horne. Oh hello it's little Alex Horne here your new BFF bonus factinder. And the bonus fact I've found for you today

regards Richard Herring's Upside Down film. It does, of course, have echoes of Lionel Richie's Walking or Dancing on the Ceiling song. And the video for that song, wow, listen to this bonus fact. It cost a staggering $400,000 and was one of the most memorable and expensive clips of the 80s it used a rotating room effect which Fred Astaire also did in the 1951 movie Royal Wedding Richard

Herring's movie cost 12 pounds and it used the famous rotating camera technique where we actually we didn't even do that, we just flipped it in post. But it did require some excellent acting from Richard Herring and some wires erected by the director Mr Andy Devonshire.

It took us a total of 45 minutes so it was within the time limit and I think it was as good as Lionel Richie's effort. Thanks, guys. See you next week. Bye-bye. Well, almost, almost anything. So, no, you can't get an ice rink on Uber Eats. But iced tea, ice cream, or just plain old ice? Yes, we deliver those. Goaltenders, no.

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We come to the second task proper of the episode. It's a classic Taskmaster food business task. Who can get the most spaghetti in a grapefruit and the twist being that they turn the lights off after two minutes and you have to do it in the dark yeah now this this felt like this felt like something that i think you would have been quite good at joe i think you would have nailed this well do you know what i i'm sure obviously we all do this don't and i'm sure you did as well thought oh, oh, how would I have done that? Yeah.

And I think what I would have done is I would have just got the grapefruit, cut it in half, scooped it out and then flattened it as much as I could so you could sort of wrap it around the spaghetti like almost like a ribbon, you know. Yeah. But I did, I thought Daisy had the right idea because it was it went on weight didn't it and she cooked it and obviously cooked spaghetti is much heavier isn't it than um yes but I won I think they didn't weigh the spaghetti afterwards they weigh oh I see they just weighed what was left that's right yeah yeah I think almost it was clever to go and cook it

like that would have been an instinct I had as to go and cook it like that would have been an instinct I had as well go and cook the spaghetti that must be a good way around it but I challenge whether it looked impressive but was all her spaghetti in the grapefruit a lot of it was spilling out the sides I'd say it doesn't feel like it was in it I don't know am I being too would you have argued that one I yeah of course you would um, Joe. Yeah, of course you would. Even if it wasn't all in the grapefruit. Even if it was me who did it. I know what you mean because it was spilling out a bit,

but surely some bit of each bit of spaghetti was in the grapefruit, I thought. Okay, so you would have argued it on strands. If part of the strand was in the grapefruit, then it's technically in. Yeah, all right. I'll let you both have that one. A lot of people went quite route one with it, but I think some of those ones you just have to start, don't you? When there's two minutes, you just have to do the first thing that comes to you.

Well, also that room is kind of, I find that unsettling, that room with the sort of, you know, it's like an abattoir uh because because that's what abattoirs are like they have kind of plastic sheeting everywhere so you know if there's an awful kind of horrible mess it's kind of easy to clear up so I always used to feel slightly chilled when I went in there like it was like it was in some weird kind of horror film and not only was I going to be doing the touch, especially if the lights went off, I would have just assumed someone was going to try and murder me. So, yeah, I was glad I didn't do that one. Also, that task, because it was in that room, brought to mind the cup of tea making one we had to do.

Do you remember that? That was, I think that was probably my lowest moment on television. When? Oh, sorry. No, no, no, it was my fault. You did win though. It was my fault that I decided to spit the milk into Alex's tea.

Oh, yes. And it was being encouraged by everyone in the room. Quite often when I was doing something and it looked like I was gonna do something disgusting, you'd look at the crew and they'd all be nodding and gleefully grinning uh and uh and then I'd be encouraged to do it so yeah I spat the milk in and that was that was the only moment when I was watching it back and going oh no my mum's really not going to be happy about this but that was in that one you and I, you and David, who I think are my favourite team in Taskmaster history.

I believe in that one, you went to the toilet halfway through the time to task, didn't you, Joe? Yes. Is that all right? Well, it was either that or being continent on television, which I haven't actually done yet ever. Thank God. It'll happen soon because I'm getting older, obviously. I'll give it a couple of years and i'll wet myself on extra slice or something i don't know i think extra slice is the place to do it right yeah i'll do my best while talking about how moist a slice

of cake is that's absolutely perfect so uh moan in that bit of controversy it's our first taskmaster controversy moan is branded the sneaky pasta snake uh for taking taking pasta from the room and dumping it in his dressing room bin to try and uh to try and fiddle fiddle the results yes but i i kind of at first that sort of made my head explode a bit that he'd done that because um I thought well what can he possibly gain from that you know because they'd already obviously weighed it yeah I guess I guess it's if they're weighing but I don't think he knew this I don't think he knew that they were going to weigh what was left and then take that away from what was originally there and that's how much they assumed was in the grapefruit because if he knew that it's very clever to get rid of pasta because then they'd assume it was just all in there well yes absolutely but so what

what was his motivation in getting rid of it then so it looked like he'd used it all up I think that was suggested that's what he did but I don't I don't think I you know I've we've seen the one over three episodes now I don't think he did that deliberately he tried to put helium in an egg in the first episode i think he panicked and just grabbed the pasta on the way out and then put it in his dressing room bin just to be tidy just just to be tidy i mean you do mad things when you're doing taskmaster you know well yeah and that's what is such a great element of it really isn't it yeah it panics people and like you say especially especially that room i think there's something about that room it feels like an episode of dexter you've got alex alex is not unlike a serial killer i can imagine him being a serial no absolutely i totally agree with you

there absolutely the benignest of serial killers but even so a serial killer absolutely yeah uh Serial killer, absolutely, yeah. Right, so obviously that was a daisy victory in that task with 757 grams of pasta. Mouan was second despite being a sneaky pasta snake. Exactly. He still did very well. Yeah, Catherine came in bottom with 73 grams. She got the one point. Richard with two points. Not a great episode for Richard so far.

I could see how Catherine and Richard happened, really, because all they did was stick individual stalks in, really, wasn't it? As if they were in a kind of junior school art and crafts halloween thing and they were taking it home to their mum um you know i i i think um that's why i kind of admire daisy because immediately she thinks of what's the biggest thing i can do here yeah whereas katherine i think it's quite dainty and in in a way she she gives a nod to sort of the aesthetics of it. Do you know what I mean? Yes, I see what you mean. Tear it in half, tear the grapefruit apart and just shove it in. Which I think, you know, Daisy and certainly Johnny does that kind of thing too.

They're kind of pragmatic vandals, the pair of them. Well, speaking of pragmatic vandals, especially in the case of Johnny, let's move on to the final pre-recorded task of the show, which was catapult the shoe into the bath. And it was a timed task. First of all, let's talk about what you might have done, Jo, because I feel like this task might not have been up your street. No, I don't think it would either.

I mean, I think it's kind of purely luck, those circumstances, because no one knows how hard you have to hit something with your foot to make a shoe go a certain distance. Once you start doing it and you get a picture of it, if you're a consistent performer, which I certainly am not, then you can sort of work towards getting it in there. But with me, my performance with those sorts of things is so all over the place. Theoretically, I could probably easily have gone on for two hours trying to get that in and just given up in the end. So that certainly wasn't my kind of task no the other thing that that Catherine did which I thought was so sweet and so hilarious and I would have done that as well is just somehow forgetting how you actually use a catapult a handheld one and just kind of like doing it the wrong way it's what it's like when you try and do archery and you sort of forget how to draw

back a bow so an arrow actually goes and it always just goes like that on the floor you know um so i i possibly would have tried that a few times but i think like the the pivot method was definitely the one to go for i think that was definitely the way to go i mean yeah as uh as shown by katherine um who asks for alex's help a lot and he normally says yes, which is very interesting. I don't think Alex ever offered to help me, but he seems to sort of have taken pity on Catherine, especially in this task. her legs to let go and she was so confident every time that she'd she'd nailed it so the shoe would obviously just fall behind her and then she'd immediately get up and go where's it gone and look towards the bath as if it was hiding in the bath i know bless her i thought it was lovely every time as well it wasn't just once and then she realized it was a bad method she was like well it's probably gone in the bath this time, hasn't it? I know.

It's so strange, isn't it? You didn't, for some reason, you didn't get the impression she was building on her current knowledge. You know, the same mistakes just kept happening. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Now, we've got to talk about Johnny here because I think this was my highlight of the episode. I'm a simple man who likes simple comedy.

here because I think this was my highlight of the episode I'm a simple man who likes simple comedy and Johnny Vegas uh standing on a ladder and then saying have you been injured in an accident that wasn't your fault and then the ladder breaking under him was perfect it was it was there's also nothing better than watching an old fat person fall off something and I know that to my cost because every time I've done it people have thought it was absolutely hilarious he's such a brilliant kind of physical character that him just falling off a ladder was that was my highlight as well oh it's so funny and he does i mean obviously he he knows how to play with pathos and tragedy so much within his persona uh that just the fact it was johnny vegas breaking

a ladder and falling off it while saying something quite ridiculous and perfect beforehand was ideal i felt i felt like he should have got an extra point for that oh me too definitely the catapult task of course was won by daisy again who's uh who won the pasta task and the catapult task a very good episode for daisy yeah i mean incredible because of like daisy's general um well pregnancy date and also you know you had kind of some big strong guys there that might have uh managed it better but yeah really really impressed now i'm we don't normally talk about the studio task uh too much but i thought it was a good studio task um the drawing task, they had to draw, it's like pictionary, team pictionary,

but with a rotating podium. And very quickly they realised that they could disrupt the other person's drawing as it came round to them. So the whole thing was absolute chaos. Yes, it was. And yeah, there was plenty of, there are plenty of options for sabotage

but also there i mean i think the thing was unless you got your points out of the way fairly early on as it speeded up it didn't really matter which one was yours and which one was the other person because they all look absolutely appalling um so you know if you got it really quickly got in sort of two or three questions right then the rest of it was pretty pointless really yeah apart from scribbling on the other person's going you know it yeah it immediately turned into the most childish task in taskmaster history just people scribbling on sheets of paper now we got loads of questions actually about um about your one of your finest moments i think in taskmaster uh which was a studio task it showed quite how uh relaxed you were during

the studio tasks it was the game of uh horse or laminator um which to remind people was uh where greg had a picture of a horse or a laminator in front of him and we had to guess uh whether it was a horse or a laminator and i don't know how many you got in a row joe but it was it was over 20 and it was spooky i think it was about 13 or 14 actually wow but i think in context i i think i got two as most people on average sort of got two to three, I think. And then it, we were there for so long.

I think they were panicking about the edit because it was like an hour and a half of you just getting. I know it was, it was really weird. I was slightly spooked by it myself. Yeah. And I think we worked out what the chances of, of doing that many in row were.

And it was about eight and a half thousand to one. Incredible. I know. Have you shown psychic abilities beforehand? Well, I wouldn't. No, I don't think so, really. I mean, I've kind of seen ghosts and that sort of thing. But that might just have been because I was pissed.

I don't know. But I did think after it that I did have some weird sort of ability I looked at a couple of things on Twitter one thing I really loved was that someone suggested I could see in David's glasses the reflection of the um yeah whatever image it was hilarious at wrong but actually um since then to be honest i've rather vainly kind of thought about should i try and exploit this um somehow or just find out a bit more about whether i have got uh any power so i went straight home and did the irish lottery I went straight home and did the Irish lottery. Nothing. You know, not even one number the same.

Well, that's a problem. I think the main problem with the Irish lottery is it's not based on a horse or laminator system. That is the problem. I know, maybe I should have word with them. But I do occasionally, like, one thing I find really weird is kind of like inadvertent messages. And I don't know if you do occasionally, like one thing I find really weird is kind of like inadvertent messages. And I don't know if you do this, but I very rarely with my phone, you know, I just put it in my pocket before I've locked it. And so, you know how like you get weird messages like coming up and you just look at them and go, what does that mean?

Well, for example, one the other day I did this, message came up that I'd obviously, I'd pocket written it. And it said, wazoo, hurty, hurty. So I looked up wazoo and that is a town in Estonia. And so, yeah, I know how weird is that, that it was actually. So I'm thinking that if something happens there, where people get hurt in the next couple of weeks, that is really going to seal my, you know, reputation. Yeah, you can only, if it turns out you are psychic,

but you can only predict disasters in Estonia, I don't know how you're going to make use of that, really. No, exactly. But I can always incorporate it into extra slides. I must say to them, let's have an Estonian week on Bake Off and then I can do my wazoo story. Wazoo hurty hurty. So I do occasionally, well, no, more than occasionally, have lots of really weird coincidences in my life.

But I think probably most people do and I'm over-egging it, really. Laminator. I mean, I am starting to think she is raising my mind. No, no! So it was another studio task victory for Daisy and Richard, who are both very good at the studio tasks. Richard especially, I think, he just sort of gets his head down and gets on with it.

He's very industrious in the studio tasks. He really wants to win, I think I think yes I think so too I mean I can't I can't remember whether Richard's an Oxbridge person or not because I think that adds an extra sort of steel to your innards which makes you more competitive you know and also makes you more confident in a way uh whereas like someone like Daisy who I don't think went to Woxbridge has kind of got that somewhere else that supreme confidence and it's nice to see those two different um you know approaches come up against each other I think yeah it's great so Daisy won the episode and quite rightly I I think, after the grapefruit victory. I think that was a deserved victory, which I believe puts her on top so far.

She is in the lead, but it's all it's all pretty tight in the series. I think in our series, maybe by this point, it was clear who the bottom place was going to be. I'll say that. Yeah. Well also it well i was vying for that until my horse and laminator sort of dragged me screaming from way down the bottom to not that far off the top which is so weird yeah but yeah poor old dave was uh yeah i think the first episode took him by surprise when he could see what everyone else had done compared to what he'd done but then he got used to it very quickly, I think. Yeah. And he was just delighted, like I was, to actually be able to make a cup of tea during a task and have a chat.

We've had loads of emails in, Joe. I'm going to let's ask you some questions from the Taskmaster public this is a good one we sort of we touched on this topic earlier dear Joe and Ed what was the task with the greatest disparity between how well you thought it went at the time compared to how it actually turned out watching it in the studio oh that is such a great question that's's from Sophie. Well I think one that really upset me was that one with with wheelie bins with who was hiding in a wheelie bin. We had to find Alex who was hiding in a wheelie bin right. We did. We had to do a certain amount of things. And by that point I think we hadn't done that much and I was extremely naive because I didn't think that they'd put other things in the other wheelie bins why

didn't I think that I just thought it would be like so easy and that if you if you picked one up that was heavy that was because he was in it I'm honestly I was so stupid um and so I looked really stupid in that and it kind of I thought oh I've done all right in that everyone else will think the same as me and yeah nobody did so I believe you opened the last bin to check to see if Alex was in it uh and you opened it and looked in and said oh it's a lame page and then just slam the bin and left again wouldn't that have been great though what would have been what a surprise um i think mine might have been i tell you what i really thought i'd nailed on the day because of the cruise reaction was uh make one of your body parts longer than it actually is oh yeah and i chose the leg uh and i

went and got my spare pair of trousers and sort of stuffed them right down in my actual trousers and filled it with newspaper. So I had an extra leg and put a shoe on the end of it and sat on top of a wheelie bin. And then they, you know, they filmed it with Alex standing next to me. And at the time I thought, this looks amazing. It looks perfect. It looks exactly like I've got a really long leg. But of course, the problem is I couldn't actually see how it looked looked I could only see it from above because it was attached to me and then when you saw it back it didn't look like my leg at all it looked like I'd stuffed some newspaper

in a spare pair of jeans and then just to compound the problem roses was absolutely amazing brilliant yeah it was so good it was so good and then i was like oh no that's that's how i should have done it so that was the one where it was sort of that stomach dropping feeling of even when they come back to it in the studio you can hear the audience are a bit like okay they're not on board with it this is from laura i often wonder what outfit i would wear if i were on taskmaster so my questions are what do you think are some of the most memorable competitor outfits throughout the series? And are contestants given any sort of guidance as to what they may or may not want to wear?

I don't think people are given any guidance as to what to wear. I think what I wore was the most unmemorable thing ever because basically you get to this stage in your life yawn yawn it's an old woman talking again but actually you just don't want to be uncomfortable so you just want to wear kind of utilitarian kind of you know leggings and a kind of crappy old t-shirt um I mean I think actually Lisa Tarbuck did that as well she just looked very comfortable to me in a kind of but yeah I think I think that's important I think that's a really important point that you can wear the craziest thing possible but it does you are doing like some physical stuff you are in it all day so it does need to be vaguely comfortable that's why yeah I went for

the all denim but denim's pretty comfy yeah absolutely I'm just trying I think so far Daisy looks amazing because it's a pretty incredible outfit well I really admire her just I mean I admire her generally a lot but you know from that point of view and and doing quite physical tasks as well and in that outfit I mean you know yeah yeah it's it's pretty it's pretty amazing um yeah her outfit is great i think moan's outfit is really good there's a there's a big history of the people wearing boiler suits or jumpsuits in taskmaster um which is i don't know if they they would sort of steer people away from that now i think moans is really cool but he dresses amazingly anyway even in the studio i think he's got a he's got a He's got an amazing, yes. And his nails match his outfit,

which I'm very impressed by. I've never managed that in my life. So good on him. I always thought Noel Fielding's was very good. He had a skeleton painted onto a yellow boiler suit. Which was great. Noel Fielding is like a work of art walking around though, isn't he?

You know, you would expect a lot from him really. Yeah, exactly. That's, yeah, isn't he? You know, you would expect a lot from him, really. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, Noel's probably up there as a favourite. Mel Gedroych's jumpsuit was very cool as well. Oh, yes, indeed. Lou Sanders also had a jumpsuit, but she had Taskmaster Series 8 Champion written on the back of it, which was a very funny, arrogant thing to do.

And the fact that she then went on to win made it even more arrogant, I think. Yes, indeedy. This is from Chris in Newcastle. How well do you think Greg would do as a contestant on Taskmaster? Well, what I love about Greg is I like to think of him being a teacher because he, to me, he is the ultimate,

he has the ultimate control weapon as a teacher. He must have done, which is massive sarcasm, you know. And if there's anything that makes kids sort of shut up, it's being humiliated by a really sarcastic, funny teacher. And so I think that he'd be like that in it and he'd be he he would just he would just cut a sway through the other contestants and knock them down to size and find some way of making them so disturbed and humiliated that they wouldn't be able to finish the tasks i think i think you're probably right

i think it also depends on what sort of task he was doing on any given episode uh because i think with the creative stuff he'd be brilliant like making an upside down film i think he'd be incredible at that sort of thing uh anything sort of thinky i think he'd be good at i think he's you know he's a really clever bloke. Anything too physical, I think, would be a disaster and he'd get quite frustrated. I played rounders with him quite recently and he missed the ball every time and looked very angry with himself. Well, I can empathise with that, but I agree with you. I can't actually see him ever breaking into a jog, let alone a run to get anywhere. But again, I'm kind of with that concept

so that would be fair enough yeah you never I what you knew that you didn't want to do that so you never tried which which I thought was great you were just like I'm absolutely I'm not doing it it's not going to be good I'm just going to do it in my own way and bring the task to me well and also I really honestly don't think it actually makes that much difference, really, if you run somewhere, because it's not exactly a big garden, is it? It's only going to be a second's difference if you run down it. Anyway, that's what I thought. Sometimes a second is very important in Taskmaster Joe.

Well, all right, yeah, and that's why you won. Before we say goodbye to you, Joe, do you have any predictions for who might win this series of Taskmaster? Well, I think kind of what it's going to come down to in the end is people kind of relaxing about it, you know, because I think, I mean, I see Daisy winning at the moment, but I think that's because Daisy's got a sort of relaxed charm about her that enables her to kind of calmly go about the best way to do something. But then, you know, if Richard is really quite competitive, who knows whether that's going to win out in the end.

But I would say I'd like Catherine to win because I'd like her to come in and do something amazing in the last couple and people just go oh my lord look she's brilliant and um you know i think people have thought oh she's not gonna she's not gonna win and i'd really love it if she did yeah she'd take herself by surprise i think as well she really yeah yeah and finally before you go joe would you just rate your experience on the Taskmaster podcast between one and five points? Oh, good Lord. Well, I would say a five for enjoyment for me.

Good. And a one for achievement. We'll take the five. We're taking the five points. That's what we're taking. Joe Brand, thank you so much for coming on the Taskmaster podcast. Thank you. Pleasure. Loved it all. Thank Brand, thank you so much for coming on the Taskmaster podcast. Thank you. Pleasure.

Loved it all. Thank you very much. Bye. So there we have it. That is the third episode of the Taskmaster podcast done and dusted. The series is looking very exciting now, points wise already.

Daisy is, of course, in the lead with 48 points after an absolutely stunning episode from her. Richard very close behind on 46 points but then everyone else is pretty close together. Johnny's on 42, Mouane's on 38, Catherine lagging behind slightly on 32 but that's still not a lot of points in between last and first place.

It makes for a very exciting and interesting series. Can't wait to see the next episode. And we will, of course, be back next week to chat all about that. If you want to get any questions in for me or my special guest next week, the Taskmaster email is taskmasterpodcast at gmail.com. So if you email questions to taskmasterpodcast at gmail.com so if you email questions to taskmasterpodcast at gmail.com we will have a look at that question and we will ask my special guest next week for all things taskmaster go on to youtube.com forward slash taskmaster if you want to buy some lovely taskmaster

trinkets for christmas or birthdays or just for fun go to taskmasterstore.com now I've made reference to my special guest next week I can now confirm that the special guest next week is Paul Chowdhury that's right bastards crying in it Paul Chowdhury will be here in the Taskmaster podcast studio which is not a real studio we do it on zoom uh we will be chatting to him about next week's episode and also his time on taskmaster an intriguing and very funny man don't forget to watch next week's episode 9 p.m channel 4 or for the family friendly version sunday at six o'clock on e4 but for now get your questions in for paul chowdhury thank you very much to Jadot Brand. We will see you next week. Goodbye. It's winter and you can get anything you need delivered with Uber Eats. Well, almost, almost anything.

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