I love when people ask "how did you learn this skill?" I just started, there's no secret. that's it. a vast majority of the time the only thing holding you back is your trepidation to start.
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.
in light of it being pride month and yesterday’s most recent example of greg being, well, greg, i wanted to highlight something that happened at the s22e2 taping i was at three weeks ago…
and accidentally ended up writing an essay. whoops. sorry. also contains light spoilers for s22 so skip this if you don’t want to see them.
there is an openly gay contestant on s22, well, two, but i’ll be talking about one specifically. he is your sort of… average white middle-aged gay male. the prize task this episode was to bring in something the taskmaster would NOT be jealous of. this man’s time rolls around, what does he bring in?
he brings in a football captain’s armband from some football cup or other, perhaps from team UK, except, it’s a pride edition so the armband is in rainbow colours. i obviously can’t remember what he said verbatim, but his main reasonings as to why the taskmaster wouldn’t be jealous of it were a) it’s football related, which ok, fair point, we know greg hates football but also b) it’s rainbow and therefore gay and god knows the taskmaster wouldn’t want anything gay right? he didn’t say it like that, but the implication was very heavy.
i don’t know if anyone else who’s reading this was also at the same taping, but if you were, feel free to say what you thought of this or how you interpreted this moment. to me, it seemed this prize and its reasoning really wrong-footed greg. you could see the gears in his head turning on how best to respond to this without saying outright just how wrong the contestant is, how bad this bit is, and/or outing himself. greg really is an excellent actor, and played his irritation off fairly well, but i think you could tell he was kind of put out by this implication of, at worst, homophobia, and at best, being straight. it actually reminded me so much of the paul chowdhry “buy a gift…” task moment, which led to the famous “i like women, i like men, it’s all good” statement we all know and love. and greg was similarly consternated this time, but… this time around, the contestant went at it with so much more of a pointed and odd, strangely homophobic undertone (i feel) than paul, that greg was not just mildly irritated and able to make a quip but actually put off. so congratulations to this contestant for drawing greg’s ire!
when greg tried to make a joke of it, tried to gently prod at said contestant and question his reasoning, the contestant was kind of irritated at the fact that this joke did not land the way he thought it would. i don’t know if he thought the taskmaster audience would enjoy the kind of locker room-esque bro-ish homophobia of the joke (which, definitely not) or if he could buddy up to greg à la wink wink nudge nudge you’re not gay and we’re bros right? but rest assured, it did not work in any case.
greg diffused the tension caused by this flop by making some gay kinky sex joke in the vein of wanting to be captain or being called something or other (read: during sex slash in a gay way) and saying something about hating football but loving this. again, i can’t remember what he said verbatim, maybe we’ll see when s22 airs if they haven’t cut most of it. that diffusion mostly worked, and said contestant did then have the social awareness to realise what was going on and stop digging himself a deeper hole.
i came away from this thinking: a) internalised homophobia is one hell of a drug, especially in gay men of said contestant’s generation, still, unfortunately, b) good for greg for shutting the contestant’s nonsense down in the discreet and professional way he did and c) my god, how could someone misjudge a situation and a person and dig themselves a hole that badly? things returned quickly and quietly to a “normal” dynamic after greg asked the next contestant what they brought in and moved everything on, but it still felt so fucking awkward for a while after.
thankfully, unsurprisingly, i can report that said prize ended up scoring fairly low. two points, iirc? the reasoning being, greg ended up saying it like this himself, why wouldn’t he want a rainbow armband that makes him the captain? or something to that extent at least. he definitely subtly signaled to the contestant that he was Not Having It.
what’s the point of this all? i don’t know if there really is one... but in light of greg being ever more quietly open and making little jokes (in a positive way) it felt relevant to share and also made me very happy to see him holding strong against homophobia in this way and these times. even if that homophobia is coming from inside the house.
every once in a while i will feel a great pressure to exist, but then i just have to sit back and relax and remind myself 'oh wait, you already exist without even trying. GOOD JOB.' i think this realization can be a huge relief
i have started watching taskmaster because I genuinely didn't believe the psychosexual d/s relationship between alex and greg could possibly be as wild as people were saying.
here I am, 6 days 9 seasons and 2 episodes later, watching greg order alex to open his mouth before shoving handfuls of intensely sour sweets in there.
Literally found out my kid had a new-to-the-school teacher instead of one of the usual suspects and immediately: "Who the fuck is this guy? Who is he?"
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