The pace is hotting up in the current series of Taskmaster with the relative competitive edges of the contestants – Fern Brady, Darsa O Briain, John Kearns, Sarah Millican and Munya Chawawa – starting to show.

The first task in the second show found the competitors asked to print out as many different instructions as possible and laminate them in 20 minutes. I was pretty impressed that all of them, including token duffer John Kearns, managed to laminate at least one. Unfortunately for Kearns, he used the wingding font and when the follow-up task of having to carry out the instructions was revealed he couldn't read what he had written.

Kearns thought his instruction had something to do with 'bum' but that wasn't much help. In fact there were quite a lot of bottom-related instructions, such as Fern Brady having to do a poo (she declined) and Sarah Millican having to remove her pants (also declined). I started to wonder if the tasks were being set by the Viz editorial team.

Next up they had to find five grapes and place them in a bowl. Giving that they were standing in front of a pile of flour at the time they mostly assumed that the grapes were hidden in the flour. Oh, did I mention they were wearing giant paddles for hands? Dara O Briain is showing himself to be the best at thinking laterally, or is it called cheating, and ran out of the tin hut and fetched a packet of grapes from elsewhere. He didn't notice, however, that as well as there being grapes in the flour there were also grapes balanced on the door. Which goes to show there is no point thinking laterally unless you are good at it.

But in fact O Briain disproved my theory by romping home to victory in this episode. The older contestants are often the ones that lag behind but O Briain is one sharp cookie. I can't see him coming last at this rate.

Oh, and elsewhere they had to catch plastic ducks as they fell off a treadmill (don't ask, just watch and enjoy) and in the studio challenge Taskmaster Greg Davies had to guess words from partial descriptions from the contestants (my partner laughed very loudly at the word "Dungaree" and she rarely laughs at any TV). 

Taskmaster, Thursdays, 9pm, C4. And also on catch-up of course.

Picture: Avalon