#mark olver

oh no! 🫂 i promise if i hear of any sexual misconduct allegations against james, i will mention them straight out. 💜

using james to promote the episode is mildly clickbaity, imo. he’s mentioned twice:

the host makes a good point that james created an entire tour show about heckling while there are much bigger problems in standup that don’t get discussed enough. the old observation ‘a women’s greatest fear is being murdered, while a man’s greatest fear is being laughed at’ definitely applies here.

the host named james, among several other comics, as participants in the taskmaster charity football match where one of the other players was mark olver. i’d never heard of this guy but apparently he has multiple allegations against him going back years. now, i see why the host did this, and ideally james and the other comics would’ve refused to play in that match—even if it was for charity—with olver. but you’d be surprised how many good people are unwilling to speak out against problematic behavior in a group setting. it goes against our survival instincts, which tell us that being ostracized by a group is life-threateningly dangerous. and unfortunately, being ostracized by the group is often the result of speaking out. however, i’m pretty sure mark olver’s participation in that match is ultimately down to alex horne, who certainly gave the impression at the time that he was solely responsible for organizing the comedians. also apparently mark olver has worked (works?) as the warm-up act for taskmaster. ew.

8 Out of 10 Cats Does Deal or No Deal (2013)

(for those who haven’t heard about this, you can catch up here)

if, like me, it doesn’t sit right with you to allow the allegations against olver to go unaddressed while he continues to be the warm-up act for taskmaster, please join me in making your voice heard.

since i don’t use social media outside of tumblr, i’ve emailed avalon ([email protected]) and filled out a complaint form on the channel 4 website. you can also comment on taskmaster’s and channel 4’s posts and/or @ them. it doesn’t take that much negative sentiment to set off a social media crisis alarm at a company, i assure you.

alex is not on social media often these days, but i know some of you have other ways of contacting him. if you feel comfortable using that connection to express your concerns, that would carry a lot of weight, i’m sure.

‘but we don’t have any source for these allegations beyond a single podcast!’ you say? well, first of all, we have john robins’ chortle award acceptance speech, which was clipped in the podcast. second, it’s not necessary for us to provide proof. we’re simply telling them we’ve heard about some allegations (and, cya, don’t go beyond saying ‘alleged’). it’s on avalon to investigate.

yeah, after i got that anon saying the taskmaster subreddit had shut down discussion, i went and had a look at the frozen thread and saw some people saying it seemed like john was joking about rumors he didn’t believe bc the audience was laughing. which, a) is a much weirder thing to do in an acceptance speech and, b) doesn’t seem like something john robins would do anyway. plus, c) someone should issue a memo posthaste and tell everyone we’re not allowed to laugh at call-out jokes anymore. there goes james’ entire ricky gervais bit.

part two is out!

for those who are hesitant to listen, there’s a tldr under the cut. i’ll say here that no new names/allegations were revealed, and alex horne was not mentioned again. james acaster was.

it was a very good ep, though i did end feeling frustrated, for reasons i explain below.