Taskmaster Series 20 Episode 4: The Stats Round Up

Wow wow wow, back up a second! This blogpost is filled to the rafters with spoilers for Taskmaster Series 20 Episode 4! Do not go past this picture of Jason Mantzoukas being pulled off the roof of the Taskmaster house by half a dozen production staff dressed like him if you haven’t seen Taskmaster Series 20 Episode 4!

Mum’s The Word: a great episode for Ania Magliano (19 points, 3.8PPT) sees her edge out Sanjeev Bhaskar to go top of the series leaderboard for the first time, leaving Maisie Adam feeling a bit green (although that might be the olives)…

Let’s make like Reece Shearsmith being a brave little boy with an insect and splutter in horror at the creature of STATS!

• For the fourth episode in a row, the series lead has changed hands — it’s gone from Maisie (end of Episode 1) to Reece (Episode 2) to Maisie (Episode 3) and now to Ania (Episode 4). It’s only the third time this has happened (the lead also switched in each of the first four episodes of Series 1 and Series 9), and it’s also worth noting how close it is between the top three — there are just 4 points now between Ania (67), Maisie (66) and Reece (63). Only once has it been closer between the first and third contestants at this stage — in Series 12, when just 3 points separated Desiree Burch, Alan Davies and (eventual champion) Morgana Robinson.
• It’s also pretty close across the whole series — Phil and Sanjeev are level on points on 55, and that 12 point gap between first and fifth is the second smallest at this stage in the show’s history (with only the 9 point gap in Series 18 beating it). Unlike other series where there’s a big gap between the frontrunners and the (uh) backrunners (IE, Series 17, where John Robins, Joanne McNally and Steve Pemberton swept ahead of Nick Mohammed and Sophie Willan), here everyone is pretty much still in the mix. 12 points is a relatively large gap but it’s not a ridiculous one to make up with six episodes to go — in Series 13, eventual champion Sophie Duker found herself 10 points behind the leader after four episodes, while in Series 10 Richard Herring was 8 points back at this stage and would go on to win. Should we be backing Sanjeev to storm ahead then? Well if he keeps riding the way he rode George Clooney this week… going to stop that sentence before I end up on a fanfiction website.

• Onto the prize task (“the present that would most make you say this if you received it on your birthday, ‘oh that’s the most gorgeous gift ever!’”) and there was a bit of ambiguity about who this “gift” was for — in other versions of this prize task, the contestants are trying to get Greg specifically to react in a certain way (IE, Series 18’s The Thing Most Likely To Make Greg Say ‘OOOH CHRIST! Now that is badass!’). Here the subject was left vague (the “you” could refer to Greg, to the contestants themselves or anyone, really), which was probably a good thing — it’s hard enough to think of “gorgeous” gifts without having to work out what Greg Davies specifically finds “gorgeous”. As it happened the one contestant who attempted to tailor the gift for Greg specifically (Maisie) scored poorly, and two of the contestants who pushed their subjective version of what “gorgeous” means (Reece with his haunted house and Phil with the mayor of Preston) did well.
• It was a return to form for Reece with his modified dollshouse — he scored 5 points in the prize task for the first time since Episode 1. We also saw proof that Reece had made the prize task himself (as if his furious ‘TWO WEEKS GREG!’ wasn’t proof enough) with footage of him spraypainting it in his back garden — I believe this is the first time since Steve Pemberton’s arse moon in Series 17 that we’ve seen footage of a contestant making their prize task at home (to show that it wasn’t done by the excellent Taskmaster prop people). Usually things related to toy houses don’t score that well — Mel Giedroyc (Series 4) and Katy Wix (Series 9) both scored 1 point for bringing in mini furniture from a dolls house (a chair and a stepladder respectively), presumably because tiny things infuriate the gigantic Greg. However here Reece had to score highly just for the sheer amount of effort (and because he was up against, among other things, a tea towel).

• Phil nabbed his highest prize task score of the series — a 4 for a picture of himself in a Preston North End shirt with the mayor of Preston in front of Preston Bus Station (the largest bus station in Europe). It’s the first time in the show’s history that Preston North End, Preston bus station or in fact anything to do with Preston has been mentioned — and it’s also the first appearance of a mayor on the show since Series 2, when the contestants had to impress the Mayor of Chesham (Joe Wilkinson bought forty two Calippos and eight cans of strong lager, Jon Richardson showed a picture of a pistachio eclair). Special mention to Rose Matafeo in Series 9, however, who brought in items for a ribbon cutting ceremony so that contestants could pretend to be a mayor during the “best thing to celebrate with on stage” prize task. She received 2 points, which is probably around what Phil should have received (if Greg wasn’t overawed by the glitz and glamour of Preston Bus Station).
• Sanjeev, meanwhile, followed up his 5 points last week with his second highest score in the prize task — a 3 for his tea towel which instructed the reader to say aloud “Happy birthday to me- oh that’s just the most gorgeous gift ever!” It’s a tactic which has been employed a few times in the show’s history — in Champion of Champions 2, when instructed to bring in the thing that makes everyone go “Wow that really is the greatest thing!”, Kerry Godliman produced a play script with lines which made the audience say “Wow, that really is the greatest thing!”, while in Series 18, for “the thing that most makes Greg scratch his chin”, Emma Sidi produced “fake chin acne” in an attempt to make him scratch his chin out of habit. Greg doesn’t usually appreciate these attempts (Kerry received 2 points, Emma 1), and Sanjeev’s 3 points was probably the upper limit of what he could have received, given that it was a fairly ugly tea towel. It’s the second time a tea towel has been brought in in the show’s history — the other person to do it was Ardal O’Hanlon, who inexplicably received 5 points for it as “the most calming item” in Series 13. It means that Sanjeev is currently the 73rd best prize tasker in the show’s history — this most recent effort means he slides above Lucy Beaumont in the rankings (not exactly a high bar, but still).

• For the first time this series, Maisie and Ania occupied the bottom two spots of the prize task — for Maisie it was the first time she’d dropped below 4 points (scoring as she did 2 for her piece of rope with a tennis ball on the end) and for Ania it was the first time she’d fallen below 3 points (1 for her admittedly beautiful gossip book, Allegedly). Maisie’s present referenced Greg Davies’ teaching career, and specifically a Reddit thread which asked what he was like as a teacher (this one here, in fact, with the comment by Crashwolf88). Doing research on Greg for a task is usually a good bet — in Series 2, Doc Brown bought a present of a cricket bat and a helmet for Greg, based off of a comment he’d let slip in an interview once (that he used to play a game called Mad Helmet Murderer with his friend and his sister, where they’d bash her on the head with a cricket bat), while in Series 3 Dave Gorman discovered that Greg was from Wem so bought a series of Wem related gifts (including some Wem Town FC memorabilia, which didn’t move Greg as he said he genuinely didn’t know they existed). Having said that, Greg doesn’t usually like it when the gift reminds him of his own shortcomings (like this one) — in Series 13 Greg took exception with Bridget Christie’s present of the ghost of Owain Gwynedd, who orders Greg to stop telling people they’re related (because according to Greg, he IS related to Owain Gwynedd, he IS.) Even Bridget scored 4 points though, so Maisie is perhaps right to feel aggrieved. Ania, on the other hand, nabbed the 1 — she’s the second contestant to receive 1 point in a prize task where she admitted that she didn’t know about a famous historical document (here she admitted she didn’t know what the Magna Carta was, while in Episode 2 Phil scored 1 while saying he didn’t know what the Treaty of Versailles was).
• On to Task One (“What number has Alex written down?”) and we’ve seen this set-up for a few tasks before — a specific thing must be found by the contestants, and Alex can only answer yes or no to their questions. In Series 13, the contestants had to display the shoe Alex was thinking of (AKA, Judi Love’s Shoe Who), while in Series 19 the contestants had to discover what was on top of Alex’s head (but he would only answer questions using his “exciting new numbers system”). Like those tasks, this one was technically fastest wins — but unlike those tasks, there was an inbuilt limiting factor (the fact that one could only ask Alex twenty questions, and that the task would end at the end of the 20th question). This task was also painfully maths-based (instead of shoe- or thing-on-the-top-of-Alex’s-head-based, and you could tell that at least three of the contestants lost interest almost immediately. It’s the second time that contestants have thrown a maths task about Alex’s name, after Jack Dee famously gave up during a tiebreak in Series 18.

• There were a number of helpful clues in this task (Alex’s Happy Birthday badge, the equation which Phil found) and a number of red herrings — the 63s written all over the room (which Reece spotted) and the pointless numbers read out to the contestants on the hidden phone. Previous tasks have used a hidden phone as a hack — in the first task of New Year’s Treat 2023, if the contestants picked up the ringing phone, they would have heard the correct answer to a task: it therefore feels extra mean to make the contestants waste time finding a hidden phone which was fundamentally useless (unless you happen to be Ania Magliano, of course). In that sense, this task was similar to the “ring the bell” task in Series 18 — a bunch of clues that would send a contestant on a wild goose chase and make them use up their questions, when the answer was ultimately very simple. The answer was written on a piece of paper in Alex’s pocket, he claimed they could have just asked for it at any time — much like the Series 3 task “Free Alex”, where the contestants had to undo his handcuffs with a key… which was in his hand the whole time.
• Maisie came last here with her (sarcastic) guess of “three”, and that was quite a turn-up — not only was it the first time she’s come last in an objectively judged solo filmed task, it’s actually the first time she’s failed to score fewer than 4 points. It feels like a long time since she honked the horn in under five seconds now. Reece, like his (usual) teammate, also struggled, scoring 2 points with his guess of ten. It means Reece still hasn’t scored more than 3 in a solo filmed task since Episode 2 — his good start has been thoroughly undone by dodgy maths (and some unholy Snakes and Stairs luck last week). Much like the first filmed task of last week, Phil did terribly and yet managed to score fairly well — last week’s croissant bear was replaced by this week’s stab-in-the-dark number which ended up scoring 3 points by virtue of being higher than ten. Phil did also show a level of Taskmaster nous by assuming that Alex would pick a prime number (although then showed a lack of general maths nous by admitting he didn’t know what a prime number was).
• Ania and Sanjeev both scored well — Ania with a methodical approach, working out why Alex was wearing a birthday badge and calling his wife to find out Alex’s birthday, and Sanjeev with the “I will take a sledgehammer to the wall” strategy. Ania’s attempt did make a bit of history here — it’s the first time that Alex’s wife (mum?) Rachel has featured on the show (although she has been the subject of many of Greg’s intros for Little Alex Horne at the start of the episodes). Alex’s wife has come in handy for contestants before — in Series 6, Alice Levine called up Rachel to get Alex’s PIN to put inside a chocolate egg as a way of genuinely surprising him. This was Ania’s first objectively judged filmed task win of the series, and it means she overtakes Reece as the second best objective tasker of the series with an average of 3.08PPT. She’s still a fair bit behind Maisie, who, despite her performance here, is going good guns in the objective tasks, averaging 3.58PPT. As it stands only John Robins, Dara Ó Briain and Joanne McNally have a better objectively judged task score than that — if anyone is going to topple Maisie, they’ll likely need to do it in the subjective tasks where she is, admittedly, a bit rubbish.

• Task Two (“make a love heart using your body”) once again broke new ground for the show — it’s the first time that the teams have been switched up in a filmed task, where Reece was paired with Ania instead of his usual partner of Maisie. We’ve had it before where the teams have been switched, but that was only in a live task — in Series 9, Ed Gamble was shunted onto a team with David Baddiel (despite usually competing with Katy Wix and Rose Matafeo in the filmed task), while in Series 10 Daisy May Cooper and Katherine Parkinson were put on a team together for a live task (despite Daisy usually competing with Richard Herring). Much like Alex’s wife’s appearance, I suspect this might have been a bit of Taskmaster history being made by accident — this team task was filmed before all the others, while the contestants were filming their solo tasks, and as such I think this was how the teams were supposed to be divided for the rest of the series (Ania and Reece; Maisie, Phil and Sanjeev). I suspect an unexpected schedule conflict meant one or two of the contestants couldn’t film on their original dates so they had to rejig the teams to what we have currently (Maisie and Reece; Ania, Phil and Sanjeev). Otherwise they’ve just switched up the teams for no reason and ruined my stats for a laugh, and I refuse to accept that.

• This is (I believe) the second time they’ve done a team task “remotely” — IE, during the solo task filming, instead of on team task day. The other time was in Series 10, when one set of contestants had to tell their teammates what was in the safe — like this task, there was a limitation on how they communicated (here it was with a 10 second voicenote, whereas in Series 10 whatever they said would be played backwards to their teammate). In both tasks, the confusing nature of the communication would flummox and infuriate the contestants — here it was Reece complaining about Ania’s gabbling and Sanjeev bemoaning Phil’s lackadaisical “hey mate”, whereas in Series 10 it was Daisy May Cooper losing her will to live listening to Richard Herring’s terrible backwards talking.

• The (temporary) Team of Two triumphed here, meaning that, after three tasks, the Team of Two are leading 10–4. This is the biggest lead for the Team of Two after three tasks since Series 14 (when Dara, John and Fern were trounced by Sarah and Munya). Interestingly enough the third team task of Series 14 also involved a little bit of shenanigans with the teams — that was the famous “sabotage” task where John Kearns successfully undermined his team for an extra 5 points (so one could argue that that was the only other time that the teams were switched up in a filmed task as John technically joined the Team of Two without them realising…).
• Task Three (“win the horse race”) saw the contestants back at Sanddown Park Racecourse, and using the track itself for the first time — members of the production team wore masks of the contestants while reading a pretend horse. It’s the first time that the contestants have been confronted with an image of themselves in a filmed task since Series 16, when they had to put a cardboard cutout of themselves in a room — in that task, no-one reacted with quite as much horror as Reece Shearsmith did to his own face here (horrified at the dead eyes staring at him). Although Sam Campbell did decapitate himself which fortunately no-one did here.

• This task saw the contestants control their “horse” by doing various things — spinning a wheel, throwing darts at a board and eating olives. By my count it’s the fourth task where darts and a dartboard have been incorporated, after Series 6’s outdoor dart task, Series 14’s “Eat the grape” task (which involved a game of vertical darts) and Series 17’s “make the most moves on the movement circle”, where contestants had to throw a dart to “create a move”. In that last one, John Robins did ridiculously well as he was the captain of his college darts team — I’m fairly confident that none of the other contestants here had such a leg up.

• I believe this is the first time ever that olives have been incorporated into a task in the main show, although it did come up in a task in Junior Taskmaster (presumably as the production assumed that eating an olive was something most kids hate but most adults quite enjoy, without counting for Phil or Maisie).

• One other thing to note about this task was that it was a proper “fastest wins” task — usually in a task like this, where one moves a certain number of steps based on their actions, the way of judging it is by “fewest number of steps/turns wins” (for example in Series 17, when the contestants needed to work out who was following them and had to take a step every time they asked a question, or even last week’s “Snakes and Steps” task). Noting this change in the scoring system is not just pedantry on my part (I mean, it is, because all of this is just pedantry on my part, I’m very aware of how little any of this matters, please don’t write in) — it did have a large effect on the scores. Alex noted that Phil took as long to eat an olive as Sanjeev took to run the whole race — so unlike the “work out who’s following you” task, where one had the time to pick the right option, here it was as much about speed as it was about picking the olives. This is where Sanjeev’s attitude of “let’s just get this over with” probably came in very handy as he romped home with 5 points. For the second week in a row, Sanjeev won an objectively judged filmed task, and Reece came last — both pretty much via luck rather than strategy (although unlike last week, there were more easily identifiable hacks which Reece could have employed had he not been hellbent on just spinning the wheel and getting angry at Alex).
• EDIT: I have done Sanjeev dirty here and he does NOT deserve it! Thank you to the reddit user 235anon who pointed out that in the latest episode of Taskmaster The Podcast (never heard of it), Sanjeev shares that he had a specific strategy for winning this task, and it specifically avoided luck. He targetted the olive eating even though the yield was lower because it relied on a lot less chance than spinning the wheel/throwing darts, where the risk of failure was much greater. Sanjeev, I apologise, I was unfamilar with your game.

• Both Ania and Phil found hacks to this task — Phil took off all the grapes on the wheel, while Ania used a linguistic workaround by putting an olive on the floor and getting the wheel to “land” on the olive. This is a device that we’ve seen before from Bridget Christie in Series 13, when she had to record the highest number on the pedometer — when she became furious at the pedometer’s inability to register her (admittedly bonkers) steps, she sat on the device and recorded a high number onto her phone. Sadly for Ania and Phil, these hacks came a bit too late, scoring 3 and 2 respectively. Somewhat incredibly, that is Phil’s lowest score in a solo filmed task so far, despite the (eventual) excellent hack. In some ways though Phil’s bad luck here is possibly balancing out the good fortune he’s had in other filmed tasks (IE, managing to score 4 points for a deformed croissant last week and scoring 3 points in the number task earlier).
• The live task (“fill out your form”) was classic Taskmaster fodder — the contestants had to fill out form (and therefore were sitting at the desks previously seen in Series 15’s sausage exam live task), and then convince the Taskmaster that they had (or hadn’t) written what they said. In this sense it was similar to several other tasks, including Series 15’s “convince the Taskmaster that your feet are in ice when they are not in ice (or vice versa)” live task (won by Jenny Eclair) and “convince the Taskmaster that you are holding a pineapple behind your back when you are not holding a pineapple behind your back (or vice versa)” task from Series 16 (AKA, the task where Susan Wokoma kept yelling “THIRTY GRAND BABYYYY!”).
• This one saw Ania extend her record in the live task (the only contestant in Taskmaster UK history to score maximum points in the first four live tasks of a series), although there was an element of fortune in it this time — she told Greg she had said the M40 (which he disbelieved) when she had actually said the A40. This is the first time the A40 has come up on Taskmaster since Series 1, when Frank Skinner attempted to make Fred the Swede blush by informing him that he has a surprisingly bulbous vein on his private parts which almost exactly resembles the point where the A40 joins the A315. Ultimately Ania was allowed to get away with the error (because anyone who has driven from Acton to Beaconsfield knows that the A40 becomes the M40, shoutout to the A40 crew, especially that big Dunelm near Perivale, much love), and she ended up being the only contestant to get a question right. At the same time, everyone was a little fortunate here: in previous live tasks, when only one contestant gets an answer right, they’ve received 5 points and everyone else has received 0 (or occasionally 1), for example in Series 6’s “shake hands with the Taskmaster without revealing your identity”, where Alice Levine was the only contestant to score any points as the only one to fool Greg. Here, however, Ania received 5 and everyone else received 4 (as they finished in second place). Given the leniency Ania herself was shown she probably wouldn’t (or shouldn’t) challenge it, but it’s a slightly iffy bit of scoring which, if nothing else, fuels more points inflation (sorry purists).
• It meant that the episode was decided by a tiebreak — it’s the first tiebreak of the series, and the first since Jason Mantzoukas won against Rosie Ramsey in the fifth episode of Series 19. The tiebreak was youngest vs oldest (Ania vs Sanjeev) — the last time this happened was in the fifth episode of Series 18, when Emma Sidi went up against Jack Dee. On both occasions the youngest was the winner (although this did seem a bit unfair — as it was a tiebreak decided by the quickest one to get a showercap off by blowing into a balloon underneath it, Ania basically won by having bigger hair). It’s also the first time an English born contestant has won a tiebreak (as both Emma and Jason were born in the USA) since Series 17, when Steve Pemberton was victorious in the first episode. Yes, I am running out of facts about tiebreakers.

All Time Leaderboard

• For the first time, Ania Magliano takes the lead in the series — she’s sitting on 67 points with a series PPT of 3.35. That puts her just outside the top ten on the all-time leaderboard — she’s in 11th place, between Katherine Ryan and Ed Gamble. 67 points after four episodes is a decent return — that’s the same score Daisy May Cooper had at this stage in Series 10 — although she’s a long way behind where some of the all-time greats were (Dara Ó Briain was on 83 after four episodes, Sarah Kendall on 79, John Robins on 75 and Sam Campbell on 74). It would take a fairly remarkable upturn in Ania’s fortune for her to challenge those contestants, although not impossible — after four episodes, Mae Martin had scored just 59 points and wasn’t even leading their series before storming the final six episodes (averaging more than 19 points an ep) to eventually finish as one of the highest scoring contestants ever (they are currently third on the all-time leaderboard, level with Sarah Millican). So it can be done — although if she does, she’ll need to up her prize task game, where she’s currently averaging 3.00 (third in the series, behind Reece and Maisie), and probably win a few more objectively judged tasks (where she’s still lagging behind Maisie). In subjectively judged filmed tasks she’s doing brilliantly, averaging 4.50PPT (although this week she was arguably helped by her temporary teammate Reece) — this is currently the best score ever in subjectively filmed tasks, beating the previous leader Fern Brady (who averaged 4.44 in subjectively judged filmed tasks, a surprisingly high number for someone who finished bottom of their series). Will she be able to ride this particular to victory? Hard to say — only in seven of the previous nineteen series has the contestant who scored the most in subjectively judged filmed tasks also ended up the champion (Noel Fielding, Liza Tarbuck, Sarah Kendall, Morgana Robinson, Mae Martin, John Robins and Mat Baynton). If nothing else her subjective filmed task this week made a beautiful present for her mum/Alex’s wife.

• A poor episode by Maisie Adam’s standards (14, 2.8PPT) sees her fall nine places on the all-time chart — she’s now 14th with a series PPT score of 3.30, just ahead of Kerry Godliman and Jessica Knappett. It was a week where everything seemed to go against Maisie — her usual dominance in the prize tasks ended with a 2, she scored poorly in the objectively judged filmed tasks (an average of 2.5), and she was the person who lost out most in the switched up team task (her “usual” team of two won, and her temporary team of three scored a paltry 3). Strangely the task she did the best in was the time she had probably the worst time (4 points in the horse race task, where she despised eating the olives and also drooled into a camera). It’s not quite an occasion to scream bloody murder (or bloody red room) just yet: she’s still leading the series scores in prize tasks (averaging 4.00PPT) and objective tasks (averaging 3.58PPT), but it means her subjectively judged task score needs to start pulling its weight — she’s currently on 2.88PPT in subjective tasks (joint bottom of the series with Sanjeev), and that collapses to 1.75PPT when you take out prize tasks (bottom of the series by some distance, and in fact currently the worst average in that metric in Taskmaster history). A return to form in the prize task (and a return to her regular team) will be welcome — and at least we’ve got the olive task out of the way…

• An up-and-down week for Reece Shearsmith saw him score a decent 17 (3.4PPT) and rise up the rankings by eleven places — he’s now sporting a series PPT of 3.15 and sitting in 31st (just between Kiell Smith-Bynoe and Bridget Christie). Having managed just 2 points in the studio tasks last week, Reece bounced back with 9 here (5 for his haunted house, 4 in the live task) — although in some ways, that improved score hides a multitude of problems beneath the surface. Like last week, he did poorly in the solo filmed tasks — he averaged just 1.5 points in that metric this week, which was even worse than what he managed in Episode 3 (2.0PPT). Reece is currently bottom of the series in solo filmed tasks with a score of 2.67 (below even Sanjeev), and that is not a good sign for his ambitions of winning the show — no contestant has ever won the series while being the worst at solo filmed tasks, and in sixteen out of the previous nineteen series, the champion has either been first or second in solo filmed tasks (the exceptions being Katherine Ryan in Series 2, Kerry Godliman in Series 7 and Andy Zaltzman in Series 18). It’s not necessarily impossible to win while doing averagely in filmed solo tasks, but it requires a near perfect studio performance (and Reece is curretly third in the studio this series behind Maisie and Ania). Basically, the underlying stats don’t look good for Reece. Still, at least he got that creature off him in the lab.

• Good news for Sanjeev Bhaskar this week — he’s technically off the bottom of the table! Yes, now he’s joint bottom. His episode-tying score of 19 (3.8PPT) means that he shoots seventeen places up the table to joint 79th (alongside Phil) with a series PPT of 2.75. Despite his reputation as the loser of the series, Sanjeev has now won four solo tasks, averaging one a week — that’s the same number as Reece has managed, and four more than Phil (sorry Phil). In fact, he’s actually already won more solo tasks than Sara Pascoe, Joe Wilkinson, Doc Brown, Paul Chowdhry, Frank Skinner and Katherine Ryan managed in their entire series (albeit with shorter episode runs), and if he manages to win another three tasks this series he’ll outdo the tallies of Phil Wang, Johnny Vegas, Katherine Parkinson, Victoria Coren Mitchell, Judi Love, Munya Chawawa and Jenny Eclair (sorry Jenny). Currently Sanjeev is on 55 points — that’s 82nd on the all time list, although worth noting that Kiell Smith-Bynoe had 51 at this stage (and he went on to finish second in his series) while Series 19 runner-up Stevie Martin had 56. Of course it’s hard to change the narrative once you’re set up as “the old one who doesn’t put in the effort” (and saying stuff “I’m losing the will to live here” midway through a task doesn’t help), but points-wise he’s not a million miles away from the rest of the pack…
• Level with Sanjeev is Phil Ellis, who scored a pretty decent 16 (3.2PPT), although still finished fourth in the episode — like Sanjeev he has a series PPT of 2.75. Somewhat incredibly, four episodes in, Phil still hasn’t won ANY tasks (prize, live, team, filmed) — before this series, every single contestant had won at least one kind of task after three episodes, with all but Judi Love and Paul Chowdhry managing it in the first two episodes. This week’s blank also means that Phil has broken Katherine Parkinson’s record for longest time without winning a solo task — she won her first solo task in the fourth task of Episode 4, and Phil won’t manage his until at least Episode 5 now. The longest time anyone has gone without winning a solo filmed task was in Series 9, when David Baddiel took until the third task of Episode 7 to score 5 points — Phil will surely be hoping he can win one before then (although, then again, maybe not, he’s a delightfully weird guy and he’s probably doing it on purpose at this point). The strangest thing about all of this (and apologies for repeating myself from last week but it’s still happening and it’s still strange) is that Phil is doing very well by one of the most reliable metrics for success. Despite not winning a single task, he’s leading the solo filmed task score in the series with an average of 3.44PPT. That’s the 15th highest average ever, a higher average than Mae Martin, Rob Beckett and Mat Baynton managed in their series — he’s got it by consistently finishing second or first in tasks (he’s only finished bottom in solo tasks twice all series). Could Phil be the first person to win Taskmaster without winning a single task? Almost certainly not, he’s currently bottom of the series, come on, be serious now. I’m just saying we don’t have to send him to the glue factory just yet.

…And Finally

• In the first task this week, Alex’s phone was left in one of the secret compartments in the living room (the same one used for the cheese phone in Series 19) — it rang in each of the contestants’ attempts (twice in Ania’s, when Alex’s wifemum called in to check that he’d eaten his sandwiches). The caller ID on the (scheduled) phone call was from Lil Wayne, and thus a continuation of a very fun (and strange) joke from the show’s past — Alex’s friendship with The Little Ones, a WhatsApp group featuring “little” celebrities. In the pre-prize task banter section in Series 16 Episode 9, Alex revealed that he, Little Alex Horne, was in a WhatsApp group with Lil Nas X, Lil Wayne and Richard Littlejohn, where they apparently spent most of the time organising get-togethers (which they call “Little Plans”). In the WhatsApp chat we heard in Series 16, Lil Nas X was the main one trying to work out a time for the “Little Ones” to hang out, but kept being turned down by the other members (Alex had his swimming lesson and Lil Wayne had his climbing lesson, although Richard Littlejohn was free because his javelin practice has recently moved to Sundays at 8am (WTF???)). It’s good to see that in the past four series, the friendship dynamic has shifted a bit, and it’s now Lil Wayne calling around to see if the Little Ones are available to hang out (as Alex says, “he’s always calling”). Fingers crossed that in a future New Years’ Treat we get a “Little Ones” special (the current Whatsapp group plus two more “little” celebrities — maybe Arsenal midfielder Kim Little? Lil(y) Collins? I don’t know, I’m not a casting director).

If you want more stats, simply lie on the floor in a perfect curve and attempt to post a letter into Phil Ellis’ arse… or click here for the Terrifying Spreadsheet!

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And don’t forget to listen to this week’s episode of Taskmaster: The People’s Podcast with me and Jenny Eclair! This week we make a breakthrough in our quest for the answer to one of the most important questions of our times: WERE THEY REALLY HUMAN TEETH? WERE THEY, ALEX? I NEED TO KNOW.