I was in the studio audience for Taskmaster S21 E08 so here’s my very long taskhusbands-biased post about what happened at the recording:
This episode was recorded on the evening of Sep 16 last year at the Television Centre. The recording lasted about 3.5 hours from 6:30pm to a little over 9:45pm.
Greg was introduced on stage after the warmup person Mark Olver. He had a little chat with the audience, asked how everyone was doing, showed us his front-only vest and explained he was not allowed a real vest cause he sweats too much. After that he sat down on a chair on the contestants side and said ooo is something missing? The audience yelled Little Alex Horne and Alex was introduced onto the stage. Greg made an attempt at bear hugging Alex to welcome him onto stage, raising both arms up high, but Alex, after hesitating for a sec, went for his belly and gave him a good rub on the tummy like you do with a big cat.
Greg also disclosed to us that he was back at the peak of his weight (to which we cheered loudly), that he just had a nap and panick ate a Twix before coming on, so I guess that explains his good mood. When Alex came on he asked Greg about it (“you had a twix?”) in a sort of playful way and Greg asked if he’d had anything backstage. Alex said Haribo (cheer again) and added that he had a call with his wife. Greg, smiling fondly at that, said “you had a call with your wife?”
Greg asked if we wanted to see Alex do improv and was delighted when everyone yelled YEAHH with terrifying enthusiasm. He said this actually wasn’t a required part of the format, we could just start the show, everyone yelled NOOO and Alex tilted his head back and sighed so very loudly.
Greg then asked around for genre ideas. He picked an audience member “because of their enthusiasm”, and the audience member asked Alex to sing a hymn. For the topic of the song someone yelled out "carrot," so Alex was having to made up a hymn about carrots on the spot. The lyrics were “Did God give us little orange sticks? Yes he did. Yes he did.” Greg hummed along with him to provide melody. There was also a professional opera singer in the audience. Greg asked them to do a solo, then everyone joined in and sang the carrot song together. The song actually turned out surprisingly well. Later on, while the contestants were taking their seats and getting ready for the show, Greg kept humming "little orange sticks" to himself which was. Very adorable old man behaviour.
After the improv Greg went and sat down on the throne, and asked Alex to sit with him. Alex first sat down on the armrest of the throne - he perched up there so smoothly it genuinely looked like he does that very often, like he just belonged there (I’ll shut up now). Then Greg patted his own thigh and said Come sit over here. Alex’s first reaction seemingly was to straddle Greg’s legs and to sit on Greg while directly facing Greg, but he didn’t go through with it. Instead he stopped short, half hovering over Greg, they looked at each other and laughed, after which Alex spun around and sat right into Greg’s lap. Then to make things worse he started bouncing a little on Greg, up and down up and down. As if to stop his boy being naughty, Greg leaned his entire body forward, pressed against Alex's back, rested his chin on Alex’s left shoulder, wrapped his arm around him and hugged him tight. It looked so intimate I had to bite the inside of my cheek to not scream out loud.
LAH’s intro got cut a bit. After Greg saying the line about the postman in Alex’s neighbourhood, Alex admitted that there is indeed a postman who loves wearing shorts, and he said now that guy is going to think the story is about him. During the final pick-ups, Greg did the intro again, and Alex whispered under his breath, "Beautiful… beautiful eyes."
The banter was very pun-ridden and has something to do with Alex going on holiday. It wasn’t very long and will probably be released as an outtake so I’ll skip it here.
Loads of chat re Amy’s pregnancy pillow got cut. Greg said something to the effect that he only learned his one was a pregnancy pillow because his Romanian cleaner had asked him about it (gesturing towards his belly). Amy said she likes the big pillow because "it hugs you back like a big boy," to which Greg laughed and said, "I like a big boy too." Joel said he thought it was a sex thing, and Amy replied, "No, I have another thing for that." Greg said, "Me too, have I mentioned my Romanian cleaner yet?" (He immediately regretted the joke and started yelling "No, no, no!").
Also the pillow was named Linda. After all the sex chat, when Greg was taking notes on the pregnancy pillow, he accidentally wrote down "lesbian".
At one point Kumail called Joel by the wrong name - He called him "Reece". Apparently right before going on stage they were talking about Joel’s jacket, and the brand of the jacket was Reece? This resulted in multiple callbacks later in the studio.
In the VT Alex called Joel a twat. The studio discussion on this was longer, in that after Joel said Alex turned different shades of red, Greg very naturally decided he had to make Alex say dirty words. He asked Alex what he called the bits downstairs and Alex said "Mr. Cheeky". Kumail followed up by asking"How is it cheeky? Explain." I can’t remember exactly what Alex said next, but the gist of it was somehow that it’s called Mr. Cheeky because he likes to suck grapes. Greg then said, "Yeah, Alex often comes over at lunchtime asking to suck my grapes."
Kumail’s nipples were discussed extensively in the studio. They talked for ages about whether he actually had nipples or not. Kumail eventually admitted that he does have nipples; wardrobe and makeup helped tape some body hair over them to cover it up. It was Alex who suggested that they could just leave it a mystery, saying “we'll start a rumour". Kumail actually said after that he preferred to come clean, so this might get addressed on the podcast when he comes on, or it could be that Kumail now canonically just doesn’t have nipples in the Taskmaster universe.
To top this off, Joel had another bit about how his nipples have been able to lactate(?!) ever since he was a kid. Greg asked if he had to milk himself from time to time. This bit went on for a while. Alex looked up whether male lactation is a sign of a tumor. Joel said he had looked into it and the doctor said it's fine. Greg then said he once had a condition where if his nipples get touched, his tits would get bigger. He said he had to go see a doctor about it when he was a kid, and one time he bumped into something on his chest for some reason and they swelled up massively. I forgot what the condition was called and I genuinely hope this is a real thing and not the product of my fever dream.
The Hank Green cameo in Joel’s part of the VT felt longer in the studio and more identifiable. I wonder if they’ve cut it shorter.
I can’t remember any major stuff that got cut in Task 2. But for task 3, Kumail pulling the doll’s underpants off was talked about so much in the studio that at one point I thought it would surely be the major running joke of the episode. And then I remembered channel4 wouldn’t for their life air that many pedophile-adjacent jokes. It was such a good laugh for everyone though. Even after the recording they were still talking about it. Kumail was quite exasperated at the end and said "Have none of you ever pulled the underpants off a doll before?!" And everyone said no and said "You made it worse."
I might have dreamed this up but I swear they had a bit about Armando’s face during this task that got cut. Cause I remember seeing Armando’s face on the studio screen? But can’t recall much detail about this.
This was such a live task to watch in person. Alex was in charge of measuring distances and adjusting the cameras inside the mops. His body was so stretched out and looked so nice while he was doing that hashtag hardforhorne
There were a few pick-ups at the end. During the pick-ups, Greg noted that it was getting quite late, yawned, and very adorably said, "Sleepy time."
I think one of the ad breaks got cut. It was Greg saying "If you live nearby, you can take Alex home. He is what the sex circle calls a unicorn, and he will be happy to be the meat in your sandwich." In the final pick-ups, they recorded another version where they cut out "sex circle." For some reason Greg ended up saying: "He will be happy to be the meat in your couple's sandwich."
I was so lucky to be in the audience for this episode. It was my first Taskmaster recording and it was perfect. The atmosphere in the studio was electric and I felt hysterical even before the prize task had begun. I wrote all these down as soon as I was out of the studio so hopefully didn’t miss that much stuff. There might be some grammar errors and wording glitches as I wrote my note in Chinese and have only just now rewritten them into English. The one thing I regretted was that I didn’t know Joanna before Taskmaster so didn’t write down much about her contribution in the studio. Who’d thought she’d now be my favourite contestant of the series! I wish I could remember more about her. Anyways hope you enjoy reading this as I enjoyed typing it up!
