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Feb 11

I'm nervous, because @batsintheshadows has requested an analysis of Ross Noble's comedy. Which I will do! But - ooh, tricky. Noble improvises much of his comedy, which works slightly differently to scripted standup.

I need to warm up. So first, I'm going to do something weird.

I'm going to break down a deleted scene from Taskmaster.

This scene features host Greg Davies, assistant Alex Horne, and contestants Sam Campbell, John Robins, Maisie Adam, Andy Zaltzman and Matthew Baynton.

Here's a link to the clip on YouTube

Let's look at a transcript:

GREG Why were you dressed as a bellboy? SAM For fun. GREG Okay! It’s a good answer. And logical. SAM And by the way, Greg, I have a riddle for you. GREG Oh. You’ve already given me one. Let’s have another. SAM A judge is presiding over a case. He declares the man is guilty - of murder, no less. And within that moment, he himself commits a murder. Wh-who was murdered? ALEX [doubled over laughing] GREG [unimpressed expression] Can we just ... move the shot over? Just cut him out? JOHN You know there’s an episode of MasterChef where they had to cut one of the contestants ‘cause he called ... he called Marcus Wareing a cunt. So - there’s an episode where you can see someone’s elbow whisking. But he’s never referenced. You never see his face! MAISIE And you know the wheels have come off this show when we’re referencing MasterChef ... as a SOLUTION. MATTHEW Sam does keep leaning into my ... GREG Yeah, he’s trying to get that sleeve in, because he’s panicking. SAM Just answer my riddle you fat cunt. GREG Five points! I’ve actually lost quite a bit of weight actually Sam, thank you. I haven’t got time for your riddle. There has to be some logic in this. You fucking weirdo. SAM It’s because the judge killed a, um, ant. With his gavel. GREG [rolls his eyes] SAM [stifles laughter] GREG [looks at Alex, chuckling] ALEX [shuffles in his chair] SAM [openly laughs] MATT [laughs] GREG [wipes tears from his eyes] ANDY Sorry - Just, technically, that’s not murder if it’s unintentional. MAISIE Oh my God. GREG I think the suggestion is it was intentional. But I don’t think in the ant kingdom - I don’t think it’s classified as murder. If it is, my mum is a MASS murderer. ANDY That’s involuntary ant-slaughter for me, rather than ... GREG Lovely! Lovely. SAM Zaltzman from downtown! GREG All of this - all of this! - is getting edited out. ANDY Can I call you a cunt as well then?

So far, I've been looking at the way solo performers generate laughter. So let's jump in the deep end and see how SEVEN performers AND a production team do it.

GREG Why were you dressed as a bellboy?

Comedy works differently with multiple performers. In solo standup, the performer must introduce a setup, and pay it off with a punchline. In a group performance, one performer can prompt another with a setup, allowing the other performer to deliver the punchline.

Here, Davies knows that Campbell will have a funny answer, and prompts him for it.

SAM For fun.

With improvisation, it can be difficult to tell if a line is invented in the moment, or whether it was preplanned. Sometimes it's clear - such as when a performer answers a question they can't possibly have anticipated. It's possible that Campbell expected a question about his outfit, and had his answer prepared in advance.

Or maybe not! Or, indeed, maybe he had a DIFFERENT answer planned, and then improvised an answer he preferred instead. Hard to know without asking him - assuming he'd even remember. It can be difficult for a performer to remember the thinking behind a joke even very soon after making it.

In any case, this joke works by anticlimax. Campbell's bellboy outfit is extraordinary, which creates intrigue. Why has he chosen it? "For fun" doesn't resolve the mystery - because, well, yes, of COURSE it's for fun. We knew THAT.

Can you think of a famous children's joke that works like this?

Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other side. The joke works because we anticipate a twist - a punchline that's both surprising and satisfying. The Iack of twist itself becomes the punchline.

People think the chicken joke isn't funny, but here's Sam Campbell getting a laugh from exactly the same format.

GREG Okay! It’s a good answer. And logical.

I'm obsessed with Davies's delivery.

Jokes work most reliably when delivered with authority, clarity, and certainty (though all three rules can be broken). Davies delivers every line he speaks in this way.

You can think of Davies's speech as poetry. A series of efficient, simple sentences, any of which can be interpreted as a joke. "Okay. It's a good answer. And logical." This is structured like a haiku - three lines, the first two examining a subject, the last line providing an insight.

SAM And by the way, Greg, I have a riddle for you.

This is absolutely delightful.

Taskmaster is a very structured show, and the structure's guided by Davies. It's unusual for contestants to introduce a new topic of conversation - and when they do, it's usually a (comedic) challenge to Davies's authority.

This is especially funny from Campbell, whose persona is at odds with our interpretation of him. Imagine this line delivered by someone like Rhod Gilbert - whose intensity and relationship to Greg Davies grants him the authority to challenge him. Sam Campbell, by contrast, is a young, softly-spoken comic, making this a very unexpected challenge for status.

GREG Oh. You’ve already given me one. Let’s have another.

You see? Poetry again. Small, self-contained sentences.

SAM A judge is presiding over a case.

Campbell's delivery is "matter-of-fact" here. After this line, he looks smugly at his fellow contestants, re-enforcing his position as challenger for status.

He declares the man is guilty - of murder, no less. And within that moment, he himself commits a murder.

I'm in awe of the efficiency of this sentence.

We've gone from "a judge is presiding over a case" to "he declares the man is guilty". Which man? Clearly, the defendant, since the judge is declaring him guilty. Campbell can trust the audience to picture a courtroom simply from the words "judge / presiding / case", with no need to be more detailed.

But that's not all. By omitting details, and failing to use the word "defendant", Campbell comes across as someone trying to sound learned, with command over language, but failing.

[Quick definitions: "Campbell-C" is the comedy character presented to us, "Campbell-H" is the human being Sam Campbell]

Campbell-H has written a sentence that sounds like a fool who wants to seem sophisticated. Campbell-C is an arrogant fool who thinks he's cleverer than he is. Because we understand that Campbell-C is a character played by Campbell-H, we find this sentence hilarious. If we didn't subconsciously understand that Campbell-H is pretending to be stupider than he is, this moment would undermine his authority as a comedian.

Wh-who was murdered?

Campbell-C trips over his words as he gets to the end, undermining his smug authority. Here, Campbell-H is allowing his comedy persona to fail. This is funny for the same reason it's funny seeing Sideshow Bob take a custard pie to the face - because the clown had dignity before the fall.

It's an incredibly unusual type of comedy, playing with status, persona, irony, and our perception of Campbell. The fact that Campbell is able to make this work so well for a live audience really blows me away.

And let's take a moment to remember that this masterful bit of comedy is from a deleted scene.

ALEX [doubled over laughing] GREG [unimpressed expression] Can we just ... move the shot over? Just cut him out?

Once again, Davies doesn't waste a word.

But hey, it's not Horne and Davies making us laugh here - it's the editors! To maximise the effect of Campbell's joke, we cut to Horne and Davies reacting.

In solo standup, the laughs mainly come from the performer's persona; from the way their specific characer interacts with the world. In a group performance, the laughs mainly come from interaction; from the performers' relationships to each other.

Campbell has said something funny, but crucially, it's made Alex Horne double over with laughter - which is very uncommon for the often-impassive Horne. Davies continues to play the straight man, unimpressed by Campbell's shenanigans.

Especially for Davies, we have a real moment of improvisation here. It's possible he considered a range of different responses before deciding to play the unimpressed teacher. Then again, many of my friends have been on Taskmaster (three of them are in this clip!), and I'm told Davies has an incredible instinct for the funniest way to respond in the moment.

JOHN You know there’s an episode of MasterChef where they had to cut one of the contestants ‘cause he called ... he called Marcus Wareing a cunt. So - there’s an episode where you can see someone’s elbow whisking. But he’s never referenced. You never see his face!

One of the joys of Taskmaster is seeing such different comedians interact. If Davies is a poet, and Campbell is a clown, John Robins is a storyteller.

(Side note: very funny moment from the cameraman in this sequence, focusing on Maisie Adam just long enough for it to feel weird, before cutting to Robins for the rest of the story.)

One of Robins's comedy superpowers is his authenticity and emotional openness. He finds this Masterchef anecdote hilarious, and allows himself to laugh as he tells it.

We've talked before about the way comedians might sometimes allow themselves to laugh as a way of making the laughter contagious. This doesn't feel like that. This feels like a true, joyful expression from Robins. The story's funny, but what really makes us laugh is how funny Robins himself finds it.

Don't be fooled, though - there is CRAFT here. Even though this anecdote wasn't preprepared, Robins instinctively structures his sentences so the crucial words are at the end. Here's an extremely proficient and experienced comedy writer, making sure he saves the words "cunt / whisking / referenced / face" until the rest of each sentence is out of the way.

We can compare this to freestyle rappers - the way they know in advance what word they're saving until the end of each line, allowing for sophisticated rhyming side-by-side with rich, detailed lyrics.

The word "cunt" is shocking, both within the anecdote and within the Taskmaster studio, so must be saved. Consider this alternative phrasing:

"You know there was a contestant on MasterChef who called Marcus Wareing a cunt, and they had to cut him out of the episode."

You see how much less funny it is? Even though it's the natural way to tell the story. We generally tell stories in chronological order. Contestant swore -> cut from episode. By starting the story at the end, we save the most shocking moment until last.

See also how Robins pauses after the word "whisking". This is a sentence fragment - but the image is funny, and the pause allows us to enjoy the image.

"But they never reference him!" might be the natural way to phrase the next sentence, but Robins instinctively phrases it to end on the word "referenced", and ends with "you never see his face!", which is even funnier than the contestant not being referenced, since it's more visual (we can imagine the absence of face) and it ends with a monosyllabic word ending in a consonant.

MAISIE And you know the wheels have come off this show when we’re referencing MasterChef ... as a SOLUTION.

I absolutely love this joke. This feels like the Maisie Adam who's a Mock the Week stalwart.

A truly improvised joke - but of course, she had time to plan. Robins's story takes several seconds to tell, and that's plenty of time for Maisie to plan her response.

It's immediately clear that the story's about MasterChef cutting a contestant, which itself was a response to Davies asking to cut Campbell. At the time of recording, MasterChef had been the subject of much controversy in the UK, with two of its hosts being accused of abusive behaviour.

The natural joke here, I think, is something like, "I'm not sure we should be taking ideas from MasterChef."

But Adam comes up with a much funnier, more sophisticated joke. She affects to believe that Davies's suggestion to cut Sam was inspired by the MasterChef incident. The joke is now deeper than a cheap shot at MasterChef, becoming a self-deprecating joke about Taskmaster being chaotic.

I love the phrase "the wheels have come off" - a nice, natural turn of phrase that's unusual enough to maintain our interest during the setup. Maisie's pause after the word "MasterChef" gives the audience time to absorb the setup. And her emphasis on the word "solution" makes the punchline clear, and boils down the concept of "one TV show inspiring another" into a single word.

MATTHEW Sam does keep leaning into my ...

Baynton is a sketch and sitcom writer predominantly, and I like this moment, where he sets up the conceit that Campbell is trying to ensure he makes the cut by leaning into Baynton's shot.

GREG Yeah, he’s trying to get that sleeve in, because he’s panicking.

Davies runs with Baynton's joke. We know this idea better from improv - "yes and". YES, Campbell is invading your shot, AND it's because he's panicking.

Though Davies is speaking to Baynton, he's creating an opening for Campbell. There are two natural ways for Campbell to respond - he can either make it clear he is indeed panicking, or he can deny that he's panicking.

SAM Just answer my riddle you fat cunt.

Or there's that, I guess.

Campbell's bluntness is funny even before the swear - since improv is all about working together and following each other through flights of fancy, it's very funny to insist we go back to the riddle.

The swear is brutal and shocking. It works as a callback to Robins's story (a callback being a joke that's funny because it references a shared moment from earlier) - but the word is so strong that our initial reaction is shock at the host being called a cunt.

GREG Five points! I’ve actually lost quite a bit of weight actually Sam, thank you.

I love the repetition of "actually", conveying the idea that Davies - usually a master of words - is on the back foot, presumably because he's self-conscious.

I haven’t got time for your riddle. There has to be some logic in this. You fucking weirdo.

More poetry!

This is the final payoff to Campbell's challenge to Davies's status.

We're not doing the riddle. I'm the host and there's a format and we're sticking to it.

"You fucking weirdo" is like signing a letter - a final insult that works as a full stop. We've talked already about the way Davies delivers sentences with authority, and here we see why this makes him such an effective host.

SAM It’s because the judge killed a, um, ant. With his gavel.

Turns out Campbell still had one more twist to go. After all that, the answer to the riddle is utterly stupid.

Once again, he allows himself to trip over his words (comedians train themselves not to say "um" unless it's purposeful).

Really interesting technique here. If the sentence ended with the word "ant", it would sound like a normal joke. By ending on "gavel", Campbell breaks the rhythm of the line, causing a sense of disorder.

GREG [rolls his eyes] SAM [stifles laughter] GREG [looks at Alex, chuckling] ALEX [shuffles in his chair] SAM [openly laughs] MATT [laughs] GREG [wipes tears from his eyes] ANDY Sorry -

Massive moment here - the humour comes from the edit. By cutting between Davies, Horne, Campbell and Baynton, we're encouraged to feel like this is the end of the interaction. We had a lot of fun, and we've got our resolution. The riddle's been answered. The answer was stupid, but it was an answer.

AND THEN!

Zaltzman has something to say. Note that when he speaks, he's off-screen. Zaltzman hasn't spoken this entire time. We've barely seen him. We've been allowed to forget he exists.

His sudden interjection is shocking, and therefore hilarious - an effect made more potent by leaving him off-screen when he speaks.

Just, technically, that’s not murder if it’s unintentional.

We've had the poet, the clown, the storyteller. Zaltzman is the boffin. The humour here comes from taking a stupid riddle too seriously.

MAISIE Oh my God.

Maisie Adam once again demonstrating why she was so great on Mock the Week.

Adam starts speaking before Zaltzman's finished. Under normal circumstances, comedians try and avoid this - you don't want to talk over each other.

But here, Adam's response actually emphasises and enhances Zaltzman's joke. Since Zaltzman is deliberately being a pedant, it's extremely funny if someone else is exasperated by him. Zaltzman's joke also works by being a redundant continuation of a conversation that had reached a natural conclusion, so Adam's "oh my God" also works to highlight this, with Adam sounding like someone who's just had enough of listening to her family bicker at the dinner table.

GREG I think the suggestion is it was intentional. But I don’t think in the ant kingdom - I don’t think it’s classified as murder. If it is, my mum is a MASS murderer.

Davies is enjoying exploring the idea here! Zaltzman's opened the door to criticising the word "murder", and Davies has an idea for an extra punchline, by changing the paradigm of the criticism.

"I think the judge DID kill the ant on purpose, but I STILL think it's not murder, because ..."

The mass murderer punchline works by extending Campbell's logic to the scenario of Davies's mother exterminating ants, and works efficiently by not even mentioning that his mother exterminates ants, with the audience able to quickly intuit this from the punchline.

ANDY That’s involuntary ant-slaughter for me, rather than ...

Did Zaltzman have this phrase in his head when he first said "sorry"?! Or did he think of this later? The joy of improvisation! We'll never know.

Here's a technique comedians sometimes use. Instead of finishing on the punchline (as we saw Robins do in the MasterChef anecdote), they might put the punchline in the middle ("ant-slaughter"), and keep speaking. This creates the impression that the character (Zaltzman-C; his comedy persona) isn't even aware he said anything funny.

Zalztman-C is a pedant, who uses puns in earnest, and the illusion breaks if Zaltzman-H delivers the punchline with the bombast of a traditional comedian.

GREG Lovely! Lovely. SAM Zaltzman from downtown!

Redundant lines in terms of comedy, but they've been included here by the editor to emphasise the punchline, helping the audience at home connect with the audience in the studio.

GREG All of this - all of this! - is getting edited out.

A very funny final line from Davies, dismissing the entire lengthy sequence out of hand. Repetition of "all of this" helps the audience reflect on how long this sequence has been, increasing the humour of cutting the whole thing.

ANDY Can I call you a cunt as well then?

A final masterful punchline from Zaltzman.

The paradigm established earlier is that calling the host a cunt gets you cut from the episode. Zaltzman reverses this logic - if a sequence is getting cut, it's safe to call the host a cunt within it.

It's such delightful nerdy logic. Of COURSE Zaltzman-H spotted this logical implication. But it's so funny that the softest, gentlest comedian on the show ends this sequence by gleefully using the word "cunt". As with Campbell's high-status arrogance, there's a mismatch between Zaltzman's words and his persona - made all the funnier by the DELIGHT with which Zaltzman delivers the sentence.

(My socials and tickets are here.)

#taskmaster #greg davies #sam campbell #andy zaltzman #maisie adam #alex horne #matthew baynton #john robins #comedy

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