Taskmaster’s Alex and Greg reflect on the show’s history and future

“Put as much money into my bank account – most money wins.”

While this request might, at first glance, seem like someone’s clever ruse to collect as much cash from their mates as possible, these words more or less marked the very beginning of Taskmaster.

Having sent this instruction to 20 of his comrades on the comedy circuit back in 2009, following up with one additional task per month, Alex Horne took to the stage of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe to announce the first-ever Taskmaster winner.

Five years and ten series later, and it feels as though the format was born for television. But, according to its creator, it wasn’t dreamt up with the intention of hitting the small screen at all.

“I think that might be one of the keys to why it worked, because it wasn’t meant to be a TV show,” Alex told Digital Spy. “It was just a natural thing that happened pretty much by chance. And I did it a couple of times like that, and then we thought, ‘Yeah, there’s something in it.'”

“There was never a great plan for it to be a TV show, and I’m really pleased that it was organic and it all was step by step,” he continued. “So after the second one [at Edinburgh Fringe], I approached Greg [Davies] and said, ‘There’s this thing. Would you fancy fronting it?'”

As well as recruiting Greg Davies to take his seat in a large red throne – as the completely rational and fair-minded Taskmaster himself – the format needed to make a few small tweaks in order to work for broadcasting.

One addition was the introduction of the Taskmaster house for the contestants to film their tasks ahead of the studio shows, in which Greg delivers his brutal yet whimsical judgement in front of a live audience.

“We looked at a few different places,” Alex said of finding the famous house. “That was the smallest place we looked at. Maybe we looked at three. And I really liked this massive place. But the director, Andy Devonshire, said, for two reasons, this little one’s better. One, actually having fewer rooms makes the filming a lot easier. And it’s quite nice coming back to the same rooms each time. But also, it’s about a mile from his house. So that’s why we went there.”

In normal times (and by normal, we’re talking pre-COVID TV-making), the task element of the show can take about six months to film, with each comedy contender spending about a week tackling a few different wax-sealed envelopes a day.

As you might imagine, finding a bunch of willing contestants for a brand new television format isn’t exactly easy, and Taskmaster met that same challenge before its small screen debut.

“People are understandably wary when something isn’t tried and tested, especially when it involves them, you know, doing challenges live and in the moment,” Greg told us. “They were understandably suspicious.”

“New shows do tend to be eaten up by Twitter,” Alex noted. “People are very quick to go, ‘What is this nonsense?’ if they’ve not seen something before and it’s a bit different. But also, we got lucky: someone like Romesh wasn’t the Romesh he is now; he was just on his way up. It was such a great line-up that first year.”

The format – which is produced by Avalon – was pitched to several different broadcasters before it was snapped up by comedy-dominated channel Dave. Taskmaster’s addition saw Dave’s audience grow by more than 80%, and it became the most popular show for the broadcaster by a long mile.

Debuting on screens in 2015 with six episodes, the very first series of Taskmaster featured the aforementioned Romesh Ranganathan along with Frank Skinner, Josh Widdicombe, Roisin Conaty and Tim Key.

Less than a month after Widdicombe came out victorious, it was announced that the show had been recommissioned for at least two more series. The audience reception was so positive, in fact, that the third edition was put on air earlier than planned and two additional series were ordered.

Taskmaster really hit the ground running, and the format has remained unchanged since its very first televised outing (we’re not counting COVID-related provisions, brought in for series 10, as these are health and safety measures rather than permanent shake-ups).

“I guess we got lucky that it worked the first time around,” Alex told Digital Spy previously.

In addition to the revolving door of comedy talent, what really keeps Taskmaster fresh is the plethora of absurd tasks that come straight from the mind of Little Alex Horne himself – and he has a clear favourite from over the years.

“People normally say the more sort of bigger, memorable ones, like painting a horse while riding a horse,” he told us. “But there’s one I really like, which was when a buzzer went off, they had to go and put on a boiler suit, but it went off midway through a task when they had to tie themselves up. So they were sort of surprised.”

As for Greg? “When they had to impress a mayor, a town mayor. I love the open-ended tasks where they can go anywhere with it, and just plonk a mayor in a seat and say, ‘Impress him’ – I always go back to that as my favourite ever task.”

In 2017, the Champion of Champions special was announced, inviting back the first five winners from Taskmaster to battle it out for a life-size trophy of Greg Davies’s headless body – a coveted edition to the golden Greg bust.

The show continued to go from strength to strength, amassing a global cult following among fans and a string of TV accolades, including a BAFTA earlier this year. The format has also translated to a string of international versions, including Belgium, Sweden, Spain and Norway.

Alex Horne admits that he has been surprised by “almost everything” about Taskmaster’s journey over the years, particularly when it comes to how far-reaching it is now.

“I spoke to somebody yesterday in Mexico who watched it because they found it on YouTube, and they really wanted to get a Mexican version going,” he said. “I mean, that’s pretty surprising. Any time you hear of anyone having watched it, I’m surprised, but especially in another country.”

Greg added that they often hear from people all over the world who have discovered the show online. During lockdown in the UK earlier this year, Alex launched #HomeTasking to encourage people to have a go at tasks from the safety of their houses.

“We were on a Good Morning America-style show in some obscure part of the States,” Greg said. “They were talking about the fact that a family got into the top 10 of #HomeTasking, so that was exciting.”

In perhaps its biggest move yet, a Bake Off-style channel hop came knocking and Alex and Greg have set up shop on Channel 4 for the 2020 series. Providing easy comedy fodder for the series 10 trailer, the broadcaster originally missed a trick when Alex was pitching the TV format all those years ago, but after watching its success from afar, Channel 4 has now seen the error of its ways.

Now that Taskmaster has a new primetime home, we’d expect an even bigger audience to become acquainted with its many charms. But what do Alex and Greg see in the show’s future?

“I anticipate that we’ll ultimately fully take over Channel 4, and it’ll be the only show on the channel – that all of their daytime and evening programming will be us,” Greg said.

“You’ll be able to go, ‘What are the terrestrial channels in the UK? It’s BBC One, BBC Two, ITV, Taskmaster, and Channel 5,'” he added.

Ultimate world (and beyond) domination seems to be the plan, as Alex then set their sights on taking over Google and the internet, while Greg decided that they will be “the first people to fly to Mars and set up a colony” before (as suggested by Alex) re-naming the planet “Task-Mars-ter.”

Whether high in the sky or on solid ground, the Taskmaster takeover is showing no sign of slowing down. And, unlike an underwhelmed Greg Davies scolding a contestant’s poor efforts, we’re not cross about it.