I’ve queued and then deleted all my Taskmaster s22 cast takes because they’ve been either flippant or mean in a way I don’t stand behind, but even trying to be thoughtful about it all I’ve got is “this really sucks and I hate the position I feel I’ve been put in as a viewer.”
I was well resigned to Richard Ayoade appearing on Taskmaster at some point. We live in a world where many people genuinely don’t know J. K. Rowling is a virulent transphobe, let alone that Richard Ayoade went out of his way in 2023 to praise Graham Linehan as a “man of great principle” for writing a memoir about how his descent into transphobia got him cancelled. It’s just kind of one step removed from actually doing something you could reasonably point to as disqualifying, and it wouldn’t surprise me if Greg and Alex are both completely unaware of the whole thing. Greg joked at the BAFTAs about auditioning to play Hagrid, and it gave me the ick for a moment, but I do get that he’s just not in the trenches with us. These are Gen X men who are supportive of trans people but not close to any, and so quite out of touch with the fight for trans rights.
Matt Lucas, though? I know both Greg and Alex have worked with him before and he was probably nice to them personally. But he just absolutely fucking sucks. He is known to suck. He sucks on the record. He’s done nothing to distance himself from either his own shitty past behaviour or his close association with David Walliams. All he’s done is sign up for family-orientated gigs to rehabilitate his image, which is of course part of the point of having Taskmaster on his CV.
So now as a queer TM fan I’m in the position of choosing between boycotting a series of my favourite show which stars an up-and-coming nonbinary transgender lesbian comedian in Chloe Petts, or watching her on a stage with a transphobe complaining about how he doesn’t want to be there while a racist sex pest accuses Greg of being homophobic. These are my choices.
It sucks.
