John Robins

What was the response to your full Taskmaster series?

People were very positive about my series. I think there was a really good dynamic between all the all the contestants and a nice mix of different approaches. People have pointed out that my tactics were pretty methodical and focused, and I wasn’t there to win any friends, I was there to win. But I like that, you know? I think it's nice to have someone who takes it a little bit too seriously and it's also nice to have people who fail in hilarious ways. It's nice to have people who come at tasks from completely different angles. You certainly wouldn't want five John Robins on one series.

And how was the experience of watching it going out along with the rest of the country?

There were some good memes for the series and it was nice to see my own memes being shared. It was a reminder of what a huge part of people's lives Taskmaster is. When you're filming it, you're very in it, you’re part of the process. You're inside the tent. And then you're reminded, when it goes out, of what a huge programme it is.

It’s quite rare that you have a programme that so many different types of people can watch and enjoy. Taskmaster is very inclusive, which I really like, and in a world where our algorithms are feeding us more and more niche stuff, it's quite rare to have a programme on a terrestrial channel that literally every family can watch, including the bleeped version for younger kids.

It's one of the few shows where people can still come together and go, “Did you see that thing last night?” and talk about it, because the rest of the time we’re all in our own curated entertainment feeds. I assume everyone listens to the same podcast as I do, but it's just not the case.

Was it nice to watch knowing that you were going to have another chance at it, by doing Champion of Champions?

I think that was the best bit about winning: you get another day of this. My favourite part of the whole experience was doing the tasks: I just love how they make my brain work. I love being challenged by the ones I'm not very good at. I struggle when it’s, “Do an impressive thing for ten minutes” or whatever because my head goes blank. Or anything to do with arts and crafts or making things or painting, I really struggle, and I get very embarrassed, but it's nice to have to overcome that.

When you say, “Your time starts now”, there's no chance to go, “God, what are people going to think?” you just have to do it, which is quite freeing. 

The tasks that are more methodical or logical or having to solve a problem suit me better, because I spend my spare time doing silly games and puzzles. But either way, yes, it was nice knowing I was going to get another chance to do both types of tasks.

Did you feel any more confident going into Champion of Champions, having already done a full series?

Well, yes and no. There was one I thought I’d be brilliant at, but you watch it back and you go, “No, that’s not very good, that was a mistake.” There was another one I was annoyed about.

What did you think of your fellow competitors?

I’ve known Andy for many years, and I think it's important to have a belligerent older member of society on each series of Taskmaster. I like how his brain works; he's one of those people who might take things in a different way to the rest of us. 

Sam makes you feel pedestrian as a comedian. You're next to him thinking, “Well, I could never use that sort of lexicon on panel shows, because I will seem like I'm mad”, because he's always taking things in an area you were not expecting. The Champion of Champions record is the first time in years that my face has actually hurt from laughing. I was having to massage my cheeks because he's just so funny. He plays his own game. I feel very lucky to have shared that stage with him. 

Maisie, I know from stand up, and she's got such fantastic energy, and I thought she did brilliantly on some of those tasks.

And Mat, I hadn't met before, but we have a shared love of a musician called Jason Molina, so we were talking a lot about him before the show and, yet again, my costume got upstaged. In my series, I was expecting all the talk to be about me dressed as Freddie Mercury, and then Nick Mohammed came out dressed as Dracula. 

What was the thinking behind your costume this time?

I'm going through all of the iconic Freddie Mercury outfits, of which there are dozens, and this one was the logical next step, short of Live Aid or some of the costumes that would have been too complicated to make. I just knew, as soon as I won my series, that this is what I’d be wearing for Champions. However, it turns out that for one of the tasks I needed to have a bit more friction in my seat than a Freddie Mercury leotard allowed.

You’re very competitive. Were you worried about going up against these four?

I knew that Sam was going to come out with incredible stuff, and Greg would have a few decisions to make when it came to scoring him. 

Mat's a great all-rounder. He's athletic, intelligent, creative. So they’re probably the two I was looking out for.

Were you sad when it came to an end, knowing you’ll never do another Taskmaster?

Yeah, it's very sad to get in the car home and think that's probably my last interaction with the Taskmaster world. It’s been a huge privilege to have been a part of it, and something I'll never forget, but I’m still the highest ever scoring contestant on Taskmaster. They can't take that away from me.

Who else do you think should do Taskmaster?

Josie Long and Isy Suttie. It’s a complete mystery to me why they've not been on as they’re both absolute shoo-ins, and brilliantly creative minds. I saw Josie’s show recently, Now Is The Time of Monsters, and it’s absolutely fantastic. She’s been doing comedy for something like twenty five years and still coming up with such inventive stand-up shows. 

Isy’s got that brilliant mix of childlike wonder and adult cynicism that I think would be great to watch, and she’s great pals with Josie, so you could have them both in the same series and it would be terrific.

And what advice would you give them?

I would repeat the mantra that I repeated to myself: every task is a trap, and every trap is an opportunity. And, you know, just enjoy the experience, because it’s gone all too soon.

 

Maisie Adam

What was it like watching your original series back, and seeing the public response?

It was crazy because I was in America for all of September, so I was watching it on YouTube in real time, which is how the Americans consume it. I was getting sent all these memes by family and friends, and lots of comments on my socials.

Being on the show really changes how you’re clocked in public, which I knew, but I didn't expect it to happen in the States. I was in New York and people were coming up to me on the subway and on the street, and that was really mad.

In a nice way?

Yeah. Taskmaster fandom is so specific. They’re such a warm bunch and they just love the show. They love the format, the chaos, and they’re really nice. It’s not so much that they’re observant of your specific comedy or stand-up, they just love your participation in a thing that they really have a lot of time for. The fan art was definitely something I didn't expect but that was really great.

So much of your experience comes down to the group that you share it with, and I was so lucky getting matched with Phil and Ania and Sanjeev and Reece, because we fed off each other really well, and found our own roles in what essentially became quite a dysfunctional family dynamic. 

Every week when the show went out, our WhatsApp group would be pinging off, and we'd all be reminiscing about the tasks. It was nice to feel like we were all taking it all in together, because I don't think any of us really expected the response we got.

Are you still in touch now?

Yeah, we're all going for dinner next week. We’re going to see Phil's show at Soho Theatre.  The Swash-chucklers group chat is thriving.

Going back to being spotted in the States: was there a particular mad moment?

I was coming back from a Gotham FC Game in New Jersey with my husband because I'm a big women's football fan. We were on the subway back to Manhattan, and this guy was like, “I'm really sorry, but can I just say I'm absolutely loving you on Taskmaster?”, and he was a New Yorker, which was insane. It was so nice. They were all so positive.

But what’s funny is that maybe five people came up to me in the States. When I got home it was more like five a day.

It must have been nice knowing you were going to do Champion of Champions and having another stab at it.

I know. I was really conscious of that, because in the Swash-chucklers group chat we all talk about what we’re up to and obviously Reece is having a great time with his play at the moment, Phil's going out on tour, Sanjeev is filming various things, and Ania is having a brilliant time, but they were all saying how sad they were that Taskmaster was coming to an end, and I felt really lucky that I was doing it again. Although I was also thinking, “God, I need to start thinking about my prize task for the next one.” It’s been nice to have one more in the bag rather than coming down from the high of my series.

Does it feel different going into Champion of Champions, having done it before?

I definitely had a bit more confidence. What I struggled with at the very start of my series was how alien it felt to be on camera and walk out, open an envelope, read it out, and then start your task. You're conscious that you're on camera, so you need to be sort of narrating your thought process or what you're going to do, but you also don't want to appear like you're playing up to the camera.

In our line of work we go on stage, we say things and people laugh, so we know how it's going. Or if they don't laugh, you know how it's going! But with this, you say things to Alex, who's got his little clipboard, and he’s deadpan and doesn't give anything back, so you don't know where you are with it. You don't know if you're doing well, you don't know if you’re being funny, because Alex doesn't laugh back at you, so it's a bit alien. But you learn to lean into that.

 So the big difference with Champion of Champions was that I knew to expect stony, cold silence back, and I’d learned to ignore how deafening that feels to the stand-up brain I’ve got. I was more confident with that.

What did you think of your fellow contestants?

I was a bit nervous about it because we'd had such great chemistry in my series. I think the others were nervous about that as well. If you've worked for such a long time with four other people, how do you emulate that for just one day and one episode? But we all slotted in really well. It was a nice vibe.

Sam was hilarious. As a stand-up, you think along the same lines as your fellow stand-ups, so you can clock what someone's going to say or where they're going with things. But because of Sam's style, you can't do that. Everything he says is genuinely taking you by surprise. I love him so much. He's fascinating to watch, and he'll just take things completely off the rails and run with it. It’s quite freeing to be around that chaos and that madness.

And the others?

They were great. I’ve gigged with John and I’ve done radio with Andy, I knew their comedic styles and how lovely they are. I’ve only ever met Mathew at the charity football match that Alex organises every year and I was keen to work with him on a comedic level, because he was the only one that I hadn't done that with.

He's always been really pleasant at the charity football matches but that day is so mad, there's so many people, and he's a really great footballer as well, so most of the time we've chatted, it's been “Great pass!”, or something about football, so I was really excited to work with him. I'm obviously a big fan of his work, but I've not worked with him. And obviously, with the rest of us being stand-ups, it was great to be around Mathew and a different kind of tempo.

He’s similar to how Reece was in my series, and I wonder if it’s to do with being a comedy actor or an improviser that lends itself to that, because Mat can really ramp up the energy and have abundant enthusiasm or overwhelming anger, but at the same time, he's very giving with space for people to chip in, as was Reece. He’s a very giving person to be on a screen with because he’ll encourage whatever it is you're doing.

What was the defining moment of your series?

Oh, God. So many. Probably getting angry and throwing the box in the air and forgetting that I'd ever encountered the Chesham United mascot. My smug face from the Duck task seemed to go viral, and certainly mine and Reece's dynamic in the twins task of terrifying each other. I think the studio-defining moments were also down to my anger and Greg's point scoring system.

Your famous anger is back in the Champion of Champions series, isn’t it?

Honestly, I went into it being like, I’m going to learn from my series and be cool, calm and collected. I remember turning up to the house for Champion of Champions on day one, and I was like, stay calm, and I think I did manage it for the first one. Then for task two it all went out the window. Then on the studio day it unravelled even more because it’s all down to Greg’s judgement. 

Tell me about your costume.

So my thought behind dressing as Sandy from Grease for my series was that she stops at nothing to achieve her ultimate goal. She changes completely who she is, her entire personality, she even takes up smoking, to come out on top. On reflection that wasn’t a great example to set, because her prize is social status and a man, but it did work for me, because I won.

So for Champion of Champions I wanted to channel a woman from a musical who comes out on top, who achieves everything, but maybe sets a better example than Sandy. I thought of Annie but that was a bit weird, and I couldn't be doing with the ginger wig. Then I thought of Sally Bowles, but I don't really have the dexterity or flexibility to showcase Sally Bowles.

Then I landed on Fraulein Maria from Sound of Music, which is a great musical, and you can't knock that she wins, right? She not only escapes Nazi Austria, but she bags Christopher Plummer, who's quite the dish. She steps in as an incredible nanny and stepmother – the ultimate challenge, let's be honest – and somehow, amongst all that, manages to whack out a bunch of incredible songs, fend off the saucy Baroness who's got her eye on Captain von Trapp, and make outfits out of curtains with no sewing machine. The woman's an icon.

She was a great option. I found her outfit frumpy, but very moveable, much more forgiving than the Sandy one. And because I’d spent so little on the Sandy one, which was very cheap and flammable, and showed my knickers quite a lot which were constantly halfway down my bum, I thought I’d go all out and buy an actual woman of the cloth outfit with the big cardigan and the big long skirt and the very sensible shoes. It was good.

Now that you’ve done Taskmaster twice, what advice would you give to anybody taking part in the show in future?

Oh, that's a great question. My advice would be to not overthink it. You’ve been booked because they want you, so just do it as authentically as you can. I do have a competitive streak but it works great for something like Taskmaster, which is competitive.

Also you can trust them. There’s a lot of thought that goes into who they’re going to put you in a series with. It’s genius to put someone like me, who’s highly strung and terrible under pressure, with somebody like Sanjeev, who's so laidback he’s horizontal and would stroll out of a burning building. So, don’t try to be something you’re not – they know what they’re doing. You’ve been booked for the qualities or the flaws that you possess, so bring them to the table.

Who would you like to see on a future series of Taskmaster?

I'd love to see somebody like Dawn French. She's so funny and has great comic timing.

And I'd really like to see Lindsay Santoro, who is one of my favourite stand-ups at the moment. I don’t even need to see her on stage, I’d happily just sit and watch Lindsay just experience life. She’d be a dream on Taskmaster.

Mathew Baynton

What was the reaction like to your full series?

I don't think I've done anything before that’s made me post as regularly on social media, which I don’t generally do. That's partly because I'm genuinely such a fan of the show, and it felt like such a treat and a privilege to be part of it. Ivo Graham said this once on the podcast, that there’s this wonderful window from the day you’re booked to the day the next series airs, where you’re “in Taskmaster". It’s only when the next series begins that you think, “Oh, I’m not in it any more”, but it’s a long window because you do the tasks, then the studio shows, then you watch it go out. It’s really stretched out.

The tasks are brilliant and then, in the studio, you get the joy of seeing the tasks played out and realising how stupid you've been, or how stupid the others have been, or both.

Then when it actually goes out on TV, you find out how the edits have come together, and what studio madness has made the cut.

It’s such a lovely audience, the Taskmaster fan base. So it was only positive, really. I guess for me, it was interesting that there was an element of a demographic that didn't necessarily know me from other stuff. 

I’m surprised by that. I’d have thought most people know you, as your shows are family favourites.

Yeah, my shows are definitely watched by families, but I think Taskmaster is also watched by a lot of cool people in their late twenties / early thirties, maybe some people who were too old to be watching Horrible Histories when that came out and therefore haven't necessarily followed my career. People might be aware of me without having watched stuff I’ve done, so I’ve noticed new people recognising me.

It's always funny when you get recognised because there’s a little game you can play of, “What’s this going to be?”. I’m quite good at guessing if it’s going to be Peep Show or Ghosts, but Taskmaster’s definitely folded in some new types.

Taskmaster fans are nice: have those experiences been pleasant?

Absolutely. What was interesting was – and I'm thinking of a specific exchange here where I was at a food stall, and the girl who was serving me handed me my order and said, “I’m watching you in Taskmaster”, and the tone was almost like she was saying, “I've seen you in private” because they’ve seen you being vulnerable. But I went onto the show knowing that I was totally open to being embarrassed, I dived into it.

No kidding! Some of your most defining moments were definitely not the actions of someone who’s shy or afraid of looking silly.

I know! I said to myself before we filmed anything, “Don’t be afraid to look silly, don’t be guarded, don’t try and keep your dignity”, but, looking back, I wonder if I said it to myself so much that I ended up going further than I necessarily needed to. I think my brain instinctively went towards embarrassment whenever I opened a task.

I said on Champion of Champions, “Let’s not dredge up the kink nightmare again” because that task actually made headlines about “viewers left shocked by un-airable task” or whatever.

The thing about the yogurt-licking task is that the choice was between being “least dignified” and I thought if I had competition I’d have to really go for it because other people would be eating off the floor or whatever. But as it turns out, everybody else went for “most dignified” and so I really needn’t have gone quite so overboard. I wasn’t even competing against anyone in that category.

I think I gave the impression that I was enjoying something that looked deeply kinky but, luckily for me, Phil Ellis has since dressed as a baby which was pretty kinky so it’s nice to know I’m not the only one.

It’s only afterwards that you go, “No one but me is responsible for that happening. No one made me do that. Those were all my decisions.”

You said at the time you were worried about going to the school gates after that particular task aired. So, tell us: what happened when you did get to the school gates?

That’s the funny thing: when you're in the house, you’re focussed on the tasks and you dive into it, not necessarily cognisant of the fact that it will go out on TV, and in fact it will be TV that sticks around. It’s there on demand, it’s on socials, and it will stay there.

I can confirm that the headmistress at my daughter's primary school is a Taskmaster fan. After the first episode went out she said “I’m loving it, I’m so happy to see you in there”, and the next week she’d say, “It was so funny last night”, and in my head I was thinking, “Just you wait”, and counting down the weeks until the yogurt-licking episode went out.

In the event, she wasn’t all that shocked. I think she was enjoying the fact that I would be embarrassed, but she wasn’t horrified.

But, like the yogurt-licking, nobody is making you make these decisions. You didn’t have to wear the shorts again.

No, but I felt like it would be cowardice not to wear them. And John Robins’s harlequin outfit left nothing to the imagination so I think my tiny shorts were in good company.

I guess my hang-up, which has probably been clear in this interview, is that I'm a comic actor and a writer, and I've never been a stand-up or an improviser, so I had a slight fear coming into Taskmaster that it’s a show for comedians, and I'm not a comedian.

So I probably needed a little bit of a crutch, hence my costume which made me look silly, and that made me feel like I was wearing a mask, or that I was one step from my day-to-day self, which was helpful.

Did you go into Champion of Champions more confidently, because you’d won your series?

No, I never felt confident. I happened to win a lot of tasks in the first three episodes so it made me look like I was a good competitor who was leading the entire series, but I had some really bad episodes and some terrible tasks, so it could quite easily have been me lagging behind until clawing my way to the top.

So, to answer your question, I didn't really go into Champion of Champions feeling like a champion. I just thought that, for some reason, I won my series, but I can’t put my finger on the reason.

How did you get on with your fellow Champion of Champion competitors?

They’re all brilliant, obviously. Sam was on some sort of transcendent wave of inspiration. I felt like I left my body and was just watching from the audience. It was so funny. By the time we'd done the prize task, my face was already aching from laughing so much. It was a privilege to be adjacent to him.

I don't think I could process it at the time, and I don't think I've been able to process it since. I'm genuinely fascinated to watch it when it’s on TV and see what the hell was happening because, in the moment, I was bewildered.

I’m going to choose my words carefully, but Maisie wasn’t always dominant in her series. I loved her series because they had that amazing three-way tie-break. On this, she took me by surprise from the get-go because her prize task was so sophisticated and well-conceived and detailed. I was like, “Wow, she’s not playing”, you know? I realised she was taking this pretty seriously, which took me by surprise.

I knew that John obviously had been very open and public about his desire to win. I was worried about whether that would be genuinely bothering him! He went to a lot of elaborate lengths.

How do you feel you did overall?

One of the interesting things about Taskmaster is that panic and “task-blindness" you get when you read out your task and your brain just shuts down. It’s a bit like the way you sit at home and watch University Challenge and you can answer loads of questions, but if you were in the studio, you’d probably do badly.

For the final task, for example, I heard the wording, but in my head I understood it to be something completely different. My brain latches onto one word in the task and that’s all I can think about and I end up completely misinterpreting the whole thing. I did it in the series a couple of times too, like when I kept my finger on my lips the whole time because it said, “Put your finger on your lip”, and I overthought it completely.

Who would you like to see doing Taskmaster next?

Dawn French. I worked with her years ago and she’s wonderful. I mean, you always want one of the line-up to be that kind of Jo Brand, Sanjeev, “I don’t care’ type, which I think Dawn might be, but she’d also be completely hilarious and brilliant.

And what advice would you give her?

She doesn’t need my advice but generally I’d say I don't think you can prepare, you just have to try and be open. You can't avoid being yourself, even if you try to present yourself in a certain way. Because across the number of tasks that you do, you're going to be exposed – in my case, both physically and metaphorically!

 

Sam Campbell

What has the response been like to your full series of Taskmaster? I'm not someone that people approach or talk to – I'm very much a loner and a drifter. I did a show in Manchester because I was on Taskmaster, so I’m not someone to sneeze at.

If I can level with you, Taskmaster’s not my sort of show. I prefer not to be involved. I just want to relax, watch movies and not get forced to do these strange missions in special envelopes. I find it bizarre that the nation’s interested in this kind of thing. I believe it to be a sickness. 

I mean, Alex Horne is a total bean counter, a pencil pusher and a teacher’s snack. You know what he said to me when we were in the make-up room? He said, ‘Last night I got the Taskmaster theme song stuck in my head”. Isn’t that an odd thing to say? Can you imagine if Matt Groening said, “I’ve got The Simpsons theme stuck in my head?”. I just find Alex really freaky. He looks like a bowling pin. He also got bumped up two grades at school. So when he was eleven, he was hanging out with thirteen-year-olds. That’s worth looking in to.

You didn’t want to do the show, but you did find yourself back for another stab at Champion of Champions. How come?

It’s confusing. I don't know what was going on. They said, “You've got to come back. We need you back.” I don’t know why. Sorry.

There were a few occasions on Champion of Champions where you did a great task, but it wasn’t necessarily the task you’d been asked to do. Were you confused throughout the filming?

Greg kept asking me to explain my actions. I think I get under that guy's skin. I think he has honestly always had it in for me. His ego is becoming unwieldy. His head is getting so big that cheerleaders are getting their pom poms from the top of his beanies. I just rub him up the wrong way.

He can’t have it in for you, because you won your series.

Yeah, I honestly think that was some kind of fix. There are so many hush hush things happening. Maybe that was to pay off something? Worth looking in to.

Moving back to Champion of Champions. Your prize task might be one of the best in Taskmaster history.

Oh, thank you. That's nice. So I decided to do that [and] hopefully is not creepy. Am I coming off creepily? Damn.

If you want to, you can write in your feature, “I’m sitting in a café with that nasty little creep, Sam Campbell, he’s reading Lolita and being strange”. I don’t mind what you write if it helps sell newspapers.

You kept hugging Mat Baynton during the record.

Oh, my God, did I really? I honestly don't remember. Nobody remembers that. Was he okay with that? 

He is an actor by the way. He treads the boards I’m told. He can tread on me anytime. I want him to use me as a paddle board. Are you going to keep that in? If you want you can say, “I sat down with evil rotter Sam Campbell, and what began as a very creepy interview, just got really creepy”, if you like.

Thanks. How did you get on with the other contestants?

Andy Z gives me the willies. He has such a huge entourage. He was there with like thirty bodyguards. I think they were taking phone calls. He's a wheeler and a dealer. Maisie is the real deal. I get really jealous of people like that. She has a very cohesive worldview, and she knows who she is, and she's really funny. I just do not trust her. I went through her dressing room bin and found some very interesting receipts.

John’s very cunning. I think he plays games on his phone, like ‘name the tube stop’ and ‘match the charger to the charging port’. He is a clinical miracle.

You mentioned on the show that Lou Sanders is your landlady. Is she a good landlady?

She's amazing. She's trying to move off grid and live in a wood and help injured animals so I’m trying to buy the house off her because my stuff is already there so I won’t have to move it in a van. If anybody can explain stamp duty to me, please contact me.

How was Greg?

Two words E Vil. I might write a tell-all book about all the things that really happen on Taskmaster.

I want to do After-Darkmaster, a secret version of the show where it’s not all fun. It’s set at midnight and in some of the tasks, people can actually die, like Hunger 

Games.

What was your costume for the show?

Oh, yeah. That was because I watched a Jerry Lewis movie called The Bell Boy. I love bell hops and that great trolley they have for luggage.

I liked Maisie’s outfit. Nuns can go either way. They're either so gentle and kind, or they're the most evil, horrid people. Maybe Maisie’s outfit will lead to an uptick in nuns. I feel like they're struggling to get new nuns, and maybe Maisie Adam will help people enlist into the sisterhood and go and join some of the – what are they called? 

Is it covens? No, that’s witches. Convents?

It would be cool if witches and nuns had a tournament. I guess they hate each other, right? Because it’s good versus evil. I think the witches would win because they’d use dark magic.

My favourite nun is Mary MacKillop. She was our first saint in Australia. It’s good to have a favourite nun. To be a saint, you don’t just do one miracle, you have to do two.

 

How does Champion of Champions differ from doing a full series?

It just takes me away from things I’m trying to focus on. I want to make a whole building out of the material mood rings are made from. So you’d have a giant building that changes colour to match the mood that everyone inside it is experiencing.

But I had to do this instead. It is quite fun, but I also think I'm being made fun of, and it’s making me very on edge. I don't like being questioned and put under the microscope.

Well, you never have to do it again now, at least.

Oh, but I still want to be involved with Alex. The show’s on in 120 countries and the guy just turns my pupils into dollar signs. He has deep pockets.

You did just describe him as a creepy bowling pin, though, so you might have blown it with him.

I honestly don't think I should be in England. I'm a simple-minded country boy. Can we pretend the last half hour didn’t happen? Can I just retract everything and say that I'm very thankful to the various parties that are involved? I’d like to host my own spin-off. The animals of the zodiac competing? Or maybe something to do with animals that are about be extinct? They’re trying to bring back the mammoth, apparently, because they have the frozen DNA.

Watch Champion of Champions on C4 catch-up

 

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