Taskmaster Series 22 Episode 6: The Stats Round Up

Stop in the name of Zeus! This rambling spew of references is packed to the Greek gills with spoilers for the latest episode of Taskmaster UK! Do not go past this photo of Greg Davies’ papier mache head if you haven’t seen Series 22 Episode 6 of Taskmaster UK!

Chloe’s A Shoe-In: a record-breaking fourth episode win for Chloe Petts (19, 3.8PPT) sees them bound, finger-pretending-to-be-their-penis very much out, into a 14 point lead ahead of the gap yearing but still baffled Nina Conti (15, 3.0PPT). Surely not even the biggest whoopsie imaginable could stop them now?

Let’s make like an optimistic Isy Suttie and throw our shoe into the infinity well of STATS!

• With this win, Chloe becomes the fastest contestant to reach four episode wins — they’re the first contestant to do it in six episodes, edging out Mat Baynton’s previous record of seven. In fact, Chloe has become part of a very elite group here — they are just the seventh contestant to win four episodes or more, joining Emma Sidi, Guz Khan, Ed Gamble, Mat Baynton, Richard Herring (who won five) and John Robins (also five). They have four more episodes to equal (or beat) Richard and John’s record — although both Richard and John would likely point out that they also top-scored in another episode, but lost in a tiebreak, so unless Chloe also manages to do that, Richard and John can maintain some kind of superiority (as much superiority as one can gain by being top of some weirdo’s spreadsheet about a light entertainment show).

• Chloe’s lead of 14 is the second highest after six episodes, only beaten by Sarah Kendall in Series 11, who had at this stage a 20 point lead. It is worth saying that Sarah’s lead did diminish as the series went on, eventually finishing just 4 points ahead of Mike Wozniak, so it’s not inconceivable that Nina could come back — although given that Nina has only managed to outscore Chloe twice in the previous six episodes, it does feel as if her momentum has stalled (like a failed Rube Goldberg machine made out of a clown bin and a Greek podium). To Chloe’s credit they are putting in an all-time performance right now — only eight contestants have scored more points than their 107 after six episodes, and only five have a better points-per-task score than their 3.57PPT (they are John Robins [3.77], Dara Ó Briain [3.73], Sarah Millican [3.63], Liza Tarbuck [3.62] and Mae Martin [3.60]). Indeed, every single contestant who was leading their series with a points per task score of 3.50+ at this stage has gone on to win their series, so things are looking extremely good for Petts right now — they can even afford to lose silly points for not taking a photo of a shoe next to a pint of Guinness on St Patrick’s Day…

• On with the show, and the first studio task (“The sickest bit of lit kit”) marked the first time this series where neither Matt nor Isy has won the prize task — instead it was won, slightly surprisingly, by the person who had been up until now the series’ worst prize tasker in Richard Ayoade. His set-on-fire looper pedal next to a big pile of sick somehow managed to take home 5 points, and means that he is now in second last place in prize tasks for this series, ahead of Nina Conti, whose full body cow received 1 point. It’s the second time this series that Nina has scored 1 point in the prize tasks, after Episode 2’s a giant monkey head puppet (I am noticing a theme with these prizes). Somewhat interestingly, neither Nina nor Chloe, the frontrunners in the series scores, have won a prize task so far — it’s the first time since Series 2 that the person leading the series score at any one time hasn’t won a prize task*. In some series prize tasks can be crucial (indeed, without them Series 20 champion Maisie Adam would have finished bottom), but in this series they seem to be having minimal effect on Chloe and Nina’s chances…
  *this feels slightly convoluted but it is interesting — in every other series at least one of the contestants who had the lead in the series had done so with a prize task win under their belt. This is not the same as saying the person who won the series didn’t win a prize task — in Series 12, Morgana Robinson didn’t win a prize task at all but frequently found herself in the series behind Guz Khan, who did win a fair few prize tasks. Phew.

• Task One (“do a whoopsie”) was the first “open-ended” task of the series, in that it was a subjectively judged task with no limitations on method (the contestants could do anything, as long as it could fit into the vague concept of a “whoopsie”). In recent years there’s usually been at least one of these a series — in Series 21 there was “Be brave”, in Series 20 there was “make things genuinely awkward”, in Series 18 it was “present the goose”, in Series 17 it was “create tension”, in Series 16 it was “Make mischief”, in Series 15 it was “fake something”, in Series 14 it was “catch something”, in Series 13 it was “show off” … You may have noticed that I skipped Series 19 — that series did have “Do something really cool”, which seemed to be an open-ended task — until the second half of the task was revealed, which was “do your cool thing backwards”. There was no such trickery here (good news for Nina who might have struggled to unsmash an ancient Greek pot…)

• Three contestants scored 5 points here (Chloe, Isy and Richard), with everyone else (Matt and Nina) getting 4 — as such it’s the highest scoring solo filmed task since the second last episode of Series 20, when Greg gave every contestant 5 points for their “fantastic fifteen second film featuring their faces in full frame” task. It was Richard’s first filmed task win since the second episode, twelve tasks ago — that’s the longest time anyone has gone without winning a filmed task this series, but does fall slightly short of Joel Dommett’s fifteen task streak last series between the final filmed task of Episode 4 and the final filmed task of Episode 9. Richard is also the second contestant to get Alex to look at what is clearly a piece of food in the toilet while pretending that it’s someone’s bowel movement, after Jack Dee in Series 18 gleefully put several items down the toilet and got Alex to film the soil pipe on a doorbell camera. Isy, meanwhile, got the crew to attend Alex’s funeral — it was the first on-screen appearances of the legendary Vicky Winter and Becky Cant this series, and the second task this series to feature the crew (as a key part of the attempt, at least) after the arrow task last week featured director Andy Devonshire in Richard’s attempt and Clarenz in Chloe’s attempt. Matt’s attempt, meanwhile, where he wrote the word WHOOPSIE on the front drive, had shades of Tim Vine’s attempt at the “biggest announcement” task in Series 6, albeit at a much smaller scale — he attempted to write the word “ANNOUNCEMENT” under the flight path at Bristol Airport, but was stopped by police after the first two letters.

• Task Two (“achieve the highest score on the Gregulator”) was effectively a giant version of a one-armed bandit at a casino — in a sense it was similar to the giant version of Noughts and Crosses earlier in the series (or indeed the giant version of Snakes and Stairs in Series 20). This task also had similarities with the horse-race task in Series 20, in that it appears to be a game of chance (spinning a wheel to land on an olive) but it can be manipulated via hacks (although in the horse race task, the contestants found workarounds like making the ‘wheel’ land on the olive by physically picking up the wheel and placing it on the olive, whereas here seemingly the only workaround was to spend points to rig the game and earn bigger rewards, something only Chloe seemed to pick up on). As Matt pointed out, there was a lot of information at the start of this task and it’s unclear how much of it actually was useful and how many pieces were red herrings — indeed, Isy spent a long time working out which Greg liked eggs, seemingly with no benefit at all. In that sense this task was a bit like the “ring the bell” task in Series 18, where the contestants were given a set of ropes to pull and a bunch of clues which were, ultimately, all entirely useless, as the contestants really just needed to go ring the bell inside the house/doorbell.

• It was another task win for Chloe, and another task defeat for Nina — it’s the first time this series that Nina has come last in a task that Chloe has won, although it’s the third if one includes live points (after the toilet roll task in Episode 3, and last week’s “snag the snake” task where Nina scored -1 and Chloe bagged the five points). It’s the second solo filmed task Nina has come last in, after last week’s “disobey all instructions that start with Alex says” — as such it means her solo filmed task average has dropped below 4.00PPT for the first time this series. She’s now on 3.88PPT, which is still leading the series, and actually would make her the best solo filmed tasker of all time if she kept it going until the end of the series, but that is currently a big if…

• Task Three (“get the shoe the furthest away from the other four shoes”) was in a sense a twist on a task from Series 3 (“spread your clothes as far and as wide as possible”), albeit on a global scale — rather than just driving around London, here the contestants had the option of travelling the globe, and three out of five took the opportunity to do so (while Isy and Richard both took the Paul Chowdhry approach of not travelling very far at all). This task was also a bit of a throwback, in that it was a task the contestants had to complete in their own time, away from the show. This used to be a relatively common type of task — in each of the first three series the contestants had to buy a gift for Greg*, while in Series 1 the contestants had to grow the longest nail, and in Series 5 Mark Watson famously had to send one hundred and fifty cheeky texts to Greg (which he failed to do, lazily only completing one hundred and forty eight). I believe the last time the contestants were made to do a homework task like this was a team task in Series 8, where the contestants had to “play catch” over the longest “distance” (as in, throw the ball off one side of the camera and have someone else catch it in a different location). That’s also the last time the contestants were encouraged to leave the country for a task — indeed, this is the first “travel” task since the pandemic, and definitely one which rewards contestants who have the means to travel… traditionally that would mean that Chloe, the least established contestant, would be at a disadvantage, but as this task was completed in March 2026, they were in fact in Australia for the Melbourne Comedy Festival/Brits Abroad Kangaroo Walloping Festival. It does sort of make me wonder if a task like this could only be set in even numbered series (IE, in a series filmed during the winter when less established British comedians might have the opportunity to travel across the world for the Melbourne Comedy Festival), otherwise it might be a bit unfair…

• Chloe did actually win here, but was docked a point for not providing a photo of their shoe on St Patrick’s Day — meanwhile Isy came last, but did pick up a bonus point for sending her shoe into infinity (fair play). I think this means this is the first time in the history of the show that a solo task has finished with no-one scoring 1, 5 or 0 (full disclosure, I haven’t checked this comprehensively so am very prepared for someone to prove me wrong on this…). Meanwhile, by burning his shoe, Richard joined a group of twisted fire starting contestants in the show, alongside David Baddiel (who set fire to Alex Horne’s Broadcast award), John Robins (who started a fire in a bucket to make it look as if he had fired himself out of a bucket) and Jenny Eclair (who lightly singed a curtain in the caravan while being carefully watched by about fifteen fire marshalls).

• The live task (“draw the item on your screen for your teammate to identify”) was the first live team task of the series, and was the latest in a long line where the contestants had to convey something to their teammate without words — often this is mime (so a version of charades) such as Series 16’s “mime the proverb on your card” or Series 20’s “demonstrate to the Taskmaster the idiom demonstrated to you by your teammate”, but it can also be drawing (so a version of Pictionary), such as Series 9’s “standing in a queue draw the most accurate pictures” or Series 10’s “draw a picture of your object on the turning canvas” (which led to a near fatal breakdown in relations between Richard Herring and Daisy May Cooper). This was a Pictionary task, and it seemed to be the making of Isy and Nina with 5 points for the Team of Two — it’s the first time Nina has won a live task*(indeed, it’s the first time Nina has scored over 3), and means that Nina is no longer bottom of the series for live tasks (that’s gone, somewhat predictably, to Richard Ayoade). This is also the first time the contestants have stayed in their seats for the live task since the sixth episode of Series 20, when the contestants had to guess the age of the mystery man Quentin — and I believe that, with Chloe swapping over with Nina to help with team guessing, it might be the first time ever that contestants have sat in the “wrong” seat (as in, not alphabetically). Can that possibly be true? No idea, factcheck me, you cowards**.
  *this previously said that this was also Isy’s first live task win of the series — it absolutely wasn’t as Alannah Reilly pointed out, it’s her second after the one in the second episode…
  **oh BOY did you cowards factcheck me — thank you to LOTS of people on Reddit (and Alannah again) for reminding me that in Series 19, Jason Mantzoukas swapped seats with Rosie Ramsey so that he could be seated with Stevie Martin for the discussion section of the “convince the other team that the following things are the opposite of what they are” task. I am eternally grateful for your diligence, it’s another seven hours in the Gregulator for me as punishment.

All Time Leaderboard

• They’ve got Hannah Gadsby to perform for a shoe, of course they’re in the lead — Chloe Petts continues their romp towards the title with another 19 (3.8PPT), cementing their place in the all-time Top Five, now on a series PPT of 3.57, a shade behind Dara Ó Briain in second. What’s impressive about Chloe’s score is that they’re hoovering up points in a series where they aren’t necessarily that plentiful — Series 22 has averaged just 14.87 total points per task, which is very low compared to John Robins’ Series 17 (15.82) or Dara’s Series 14 (15.31). Indeed, Chloe has scored 23.99% of all the points this series — that’s the second highest proportion ever, just behind John Robins’ 24.27%. Since Chloe’s disastrous performance in Episode 2, they’ve gone on an incredible run — they’ve amassed 80 points at a rate of 4.00PPT, which is one of the highest scores in any four episode stretch ever. I think only three contestants have outscored it, in fact — Dara Ó Briain in Episodes 1–4 of Series 14; Mae Martin in Epiodes 5–8 of Series 15; and Liza Tarbuck in Episodes 2–5 (and Episodes 3–6) of Series 6. Crucially though, each of those episodes either featured more tasks or more “bonus points” than Chloe has received — I believe Chloe is the first contestant ever to score 80 points in four episodes in five-task episodes*. Fundamentally this has been an incredibly dominant performance from Chloe — they’re top of the series in subjective tasks (3.83PPT), top in objective tasks (3.39PPT), top in fastest wins tasks (3.50PPT), top in live tasks (3.50PPT, nearly a full point more than the second-placed contestant in Isy Suttie), first in studio points, most task wins, fewest last-place finishes in tasks… they’re also second in the series for solo filmed tasks and prize tasks, demonstrating just how good they are across the board. In previous series there was a weakness in the champion that other contestants could potentially exploit (Mat Baynton frequently had meltdowns in objectively judged tasks, Maisie Adam was overreliant on prize tasks, Joanna Page didn’t understand how solar power worked), but Chloe seems pretty unstoppable everywhere. The only possible weakness is in the team tasks (where the Team of Two are now ahead of the Team of Three) — one could see comparisons with Dara Ó Briain’s series, where the series was mostly only kept competitive for so long by the incompetence of Dara’s teammates. Could Richard be this series’ Dafty In The Middle and blow Chloe’s chances? I imagine Richard wouldn’t be receiving any beer and burger QR codes from Chloe for quite some time…
  *people might rightfully point out that Chloe did receive two “bonus” points in Episode 3, during the before/after photo task, meaning that there were more than 25 points available to them in Episode 3 — however, this is on a slightly different scale to the points available to Dara and Liza who both had extra tasks, and also to Mae, whose team received 10 points for correctly guessing how many items they had put in the trolley in the fifth episode of their series. Phew.

• Power down the Gregulator, it’s bad news for Nina Conti — another underwhelming episode (15, 3.0PPT) means they lose ground on Chloe at the top and on the top twenty on the all-time leaderboard. They are now on 3.10PPT, which is joint 36th (level with Julian Clary, Amy Gledhill and Daisy May Cooper). It’s a familiar story as last week for Nina — her magic powers in the solo filmed tasks seem to be running dry (just the 9 points this week, her second lowest return after last week’s 7), and she’s still underperforming in the studio tasks (another poor prize task takes the shine off her live task win, giving her just the 6 points). They are averaging just 2.00 points in studio tasks for the series — a slight improvement on last week, but still the worst ever (joint with Roisin Conaty). In general, it’s not been a great run — Nina hasn’t won a solo task since the worker earpiece task in Episode 4, and she hasn’t outscored Chloe in a solo task since the “look under the table” task in the same episode. So where does Nina go from here? Obviously if Nina could start picking up points in the prize and live tasks, the dynamic of the series could shift — it’s worth saying again that despite Chloe’s huge lead and seeming dominance, Nina is still leading in filmed tasks (averaging 3.83PPT, ahead of Chloe’s 3.67). If Nina could turn some of these 1s or 2s in the prize tasks to 3s and 4s, we might start to see her eat into Chloe’s lead. However, that might mean leaving the terrifying cow costumes behind and that seems to be a non-negotiable for Nina.

• Bouncing up into third like a clown at Alex Horne’s funeral, it’s Isy Suttie — her score of 18 (3.6PPT) was her second best of the series so far and pulls her within touching distance of Nina, and into 66th place on the all-time chart with a series score of 2.97PPT (just between Mel Giedroyc and Al Murray). After a fairly lousy start, Isy is starting to turn it around — she’s scored 54 points in the past three episodes, which is just five behind series leader Chloe and a whole ten ahead of Nina. She’s also dropping her reliance on prize tasks — after three episodes 31.43% of her points came from prize tasks (a record high score), but that’s dropped down to a healthier 22.47%, behind both Richard and Matt. Isy’s success is built on subjectively judged tasks — she’s averaging 3.83PPT in non-prize subjective tasks (15th on the all-time list, level with Bridget Christie, although still behind both her seriesmates Chloe and Nina, which just goes to show how high the standard is this series/how Greg’s throwing subjective points about like candy). In objectively judged tasks she’s doing a fair bit worse — she’s in 83rd place on the all-time list, level (gulp) Lucy Beaumont, although it’s worth saying she’s not below either Matt or Richard in objectively judged tasks (with Richard currently occupying his usual spot of dead last by that metric). Isy is keeping things ticking over in the inconsistency stakes — another task win (as Whoopsie the clown) and task defeat (throwing her shoe into infinity) means that she’s still the third most inconsistent player of all time in terms of tasks won and lost (after Roisin Conaty and Bridget Christie). And there’s one other battle that Isy is in that I have somehow contrived to overlook over the past six weeks — that of “Best Player Who Was Born In Hull”, a fierce rivalry between Isy, Reece Shearsmith and Amy Gledhill. This week Isy pulled fractionally ahead of Reece on the all time chart, but if she wants to overhaul (overHull?) Amy she’ll need to up her game — she requires 67 points in the final four episodes, so about 3.35 points per task (or just under 17 points an episode). Can she do it, or will Gledhill keep the crown of Top Hullraiser? Look *I* find it interesting and that’s all that matters.

• Strap a stuffed polar bear to a snowmobile, it’s Matt Lucas — his score of 14 (2.8PPT) gives him a series PPT of 2.87, putting him in 79th place on the all time board alongside Hugh Dennis. This was not Matt’s worst episode but it is the first time this series he’s finished bottom of an episode scoreboard (oddly with a score which had previously put him top in Episode 2). Matt is still leading the series in prize tasks, but his 2 this week was his lowest so far — he’s on course to finish with 35 prize task points, which would be the lowest “top” prize task score in a series since Series 14 (where Dara Ó Briain top-scored in prize tasks with just 34 points). The issue for Matt is, prize tasks aside, he’s scoring a few more eggs than pineapples — his score in non-prize subjective tasks is 3.17, joint bottom alongside Richard, while his objective task score is 2.56, joint third with Isy. He’s bang in the middle of the series for studio tasks, averaging 2.59PPT (that’s lower than average in the all-time chart at 89th, but saved by the fact that Richard and Nina are doing so much worse than him in the series), and bang in the middle of the series for solo filmed tasks (2.88PPT, level with Isy Suttie, as well as Kiell Smith-Bynoe and Steve Pemberton on the all-time chart). He’s also the contestant who has scored either 1 or 5 the fewest number of times this series — he’s on nine, well behind the sixteen of Isy Suttie, the series leader of being either brilliant or awful. Can Matt cut loose for the final four episodes and start hitting wonderful highs and dreadful lows? Or will he just berate the production staff for insufficiently making the best use of the educational power of the London Museum of Water and Steam? Yeah, it’s probably the latter.

• And closing the round-up like a man locking Alex Horne in a toilet with a Mars Bar in it, it’s Richard Ayoade — he posted his best score of the series (15, 3.0PPT) to drag himself up to 108th in the all-time chart with a series PPT of 2.37PPT (between Victoria Coren Mitchell and Katherine Parkinson). His semi-decent episode here also means he’s overtaken the points total of the worst contestant ever, Roisin Conaty (who scored 68 in six episodes in the first series) — while it’s still a long way out of the Baddiel Zone (he needs 58 points from the final four episodes at an average of 14.5 points per episode, which is a bit steep given his performances so far), it’s at least a step in the right direction. This upturn in performance came almost entirely in the first two tasks — his prize task win followed by 5 points in the “whoopsie” task was the first time he’s won two consecutive tasks in a row, and in so doing he managed to double his number of total solo task wins (taking it up to four). His last task win before the prize task was eighteen tasks ago, all the way back in Episode 2 (for the beans task), and means that he doesn’t quite outdo the record for longest streak without a task win (set by Joel Dommett last series when he went twenty three tasks without a win of any kind). While things certainly aren’t looking rosy for Richard, they’re definitely not the dumpster fire/shoe-on-fire that they have been previously — he’s now won 14.81% of solo tasks in the series, which is higher than twenty other contestants, including Series 2 champion Katherine Ryan, Romesh Ranganathan and Jenny Eclair (sorry Jenny). At the other end, he’s come last in 32% of all solo tasks (eight times), which sounds bad but is not too shabby historically (lower than ten other contestants, including Bridget Christie, Nish Kumar and yes, David Baddiel). This was the first episode all series where he hasn’t come last (or received 0 points) in a solo task — a few more episodes like this and there’s a chance he won’t be everyone’s automatic pick for Worst Contestant Ever. I’m sure he’s delighted.

And Finally…

• The Gregulator task scratched a few itches that you may have been suffering with this series — it was the first task to feature eggs, rubber ducks and pineapples as a key part of the task. Across the series it’s relatively rare for none of these items to turn up at least once — usually there’s at least one egg a series (with the exception of Series 19, where Jason Mantzoukas’ extremely severe egg allergy put paid to that), and rubber ducks are a classic of the Taskmaster oeuvre (although somewhat surprising that there was no truly ‘duck’-based task in Series 18, when one would have thought the Andy Zaltzman cricket connection would have been too much for Alex to resist). Pineapples are a bit rarer, although have been involved in a few memorable tasks (Series 15's “pile the pineapples on the path”, or Series 2’s “hide this pineapple on your person”, where national treasure Joe Wilkinson almost certainly shoved a piece of pineapple up his arse). Indeed, in terms of “fun Taskmaster staples”, this series has been a bit more beans focussed (with the ‘work out the height of the tower in baked beans’ task and the ‘do the buggy, bounce or beans task’, both in Episode 2) — we’ve previously had beans in Series 1 (when Josh Widdicombe had to count how many beans there were in a can for no reason), and in Series 7 (where the contestants had to work out the circumference of the caravan in beans). I believe (and it’s a very shaky belief), the Gregulator task did mark a milestone— it’s the first time in 1, 017 tasks that we’ve had eggs, ducks AND pineapples all as a key element of the same task. I’m fully prepared for this to be completely wrong, I’ve tried to be as thorough as I can with this stat but it’s very likely I’ve overlooked something, so do get in touch if it is, but if it ISN’T wrong? Imagine! What a stat! What a STAT!

For more stats and facts simply use your penis to accidentally follow your ex on Instagram… or click here for the Terrifying Spreadsheet!

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And don’t forget to listen to this week’s episode of the Taskmaster People’s Podcast, where Jenny raves about Isy’s clown make up and I lose my mind about rancid fish!