Transformative Taskmaster | Ep 14 | Taskmaster in the Classroom: A Conversation with Ali Struthers and James Blake-Lobb

VO: Hello and welcome to Transformative Taskmaster, the podcast by fans, for fans, and about fans. This week, TK talks Taskmaster Education with Dr Ali Struthers and James Blake-Lobb. It’s a long chat about what Taskmaster Education and Taskmaster Club are all about, and how the show is used in schools as a teaching tool.

TK: Welcome, James and Ali to the Transformative Taskmaster podcast.

Ali: Hello, hello.

James: Thank you, good to see you.

TK: All right, so, just out of the way, let’s get a brief rundown on who the both of you are. James showed up first. So, James, if you want to kind of introduce yourself and what your role is here.

James: Yeah, sure. My name is James. I am the co-head of Taskmaster Education, with Ali, with Doctor Ali Struthers. Over to you, Ali.

Ali: Oh, right. That was a very quick introduction.

James: Yeah, they said brief, right?

Ali: Okay, so I’ve got to be quick. So yeah, I’m Ali, I’m the other co-head of Taskmaster Education. I do that for two days of my working week. And for three days of my working week, I am a university lecturer at Warwick Law School. But parts of that involves running School Tasking, which is slightly different to Taskmaster Education. But I will come to that later. I’ve got a few different hats.

TK: Awesome. We will cover the different branches that are under Taskmaster Education, but can you give me your elevator pitch for what Taskmaster Education is?

James: Yeah, is that me? Okay, I’ll do that. We take the joy and wonderment and silliness of Taskmaster, and we use it with young people to develop creativity, problem solving, reasoning, and many other really vital soft skills. 21st century skills, I think you have them in the States, don’t you? Are they the 4 C’s that you have as the 21st century skills? But that stuff, we use it to develop those skills with young people of all ages. So they have a lot of fun, super engaging, whilst learning some vital life skills.

TK: Nice. Ali does that pretty much cover it? Do you have anything to add?

Ali: I think it does, I’m sorry, my daughter is whining at the door so I wasn’t actually, I’ve just sent a text to my husband to say please remove my child from the room. I’m sure James covered it all. And once she’s removed, I will be absolutely listening.

James: This is a classic meme. Is it the BBC guy that had his daughter?

Ali: It’s like the BBC. It’s the reality of juggling work and parenting life, isn’t it? It’s reality, right? But yeah, James is very good with the elevator pitch of what we do. So I’m sure he absolutely nailed it.

James: Well, thanks.

TK: Awesome. We do have a couple different branches under the Taskmaster Education umbrella, such as School Tasking and Taskmaster Clubs. What are all the different branches and how do they differ from one another?

James: So the Taskmaster Club is something that myself and Ali run together, and it began life as an afterschool club. I don’t know, do you do that in the States?

TK: Yeah.

James: So in the UK, kids stay at school for an hour or so after school. And they might go to a football club, soccer club, or they might go to an art club. And they can also now go to Taskmaster Club as well, which is great. And so primary school kids, mostly sort of aged sort of 7 to 11, that was kind of where it started then. But now it’s it’s broader, it’s being used for secondary school kids, so from 11 to 15 as well. It’s being integrated into the curriculum and it’s also being used in special ed schools for children with social, emotional, mental health difficulties. Really helps them build their teamwork and problem solving. So Taskmaster Club is a club that anyone can buy anywhere in the world and run with the kids in their school or their setting, whatever that might be, or home-ed network or however it is. And it is, Alex Horne – who you may have heard of – sets the tasks from the Taskmaster house. So it’s him authentically, mostly in the lab, but generally around the place, setting tasks. And the teacher, or whoever’s running the club, gets to take on the role of the Taskmaster and be super judgmental for their young people and tell them… for objective tasks, really easy, if you’ve built the highest tower, it’s really easy to see which one’s taller. But for the best piece of artwork made out of toilet roll or loo paper, what do you call loo roll?

TK: We call it toilet paper.

James: Toilet paper. Okay, good – that, just so you know what we’re talking about. If it was the best piece of artwork made out of toilet paper, much more subjective. And sometimes a nine year old might think they’ve done a great job, when in fact, when compared, they might not get five points. And, so it’s a bit trickier for the Taskmaster. The teacher gets to take on the role of the Taskmaster, with Alex setting the tasks via a video, and you get teaching resources to go with that. And there are four tasks per session. It starts, as is tradition, with a prize task, which the children – this is the bit that really develops the speaking and listening skills, the reasoning skills. So if I said to you, I don’t want to put you on the spot, because I haven’t had time to think about this. But if I said, what is the best thing with wheels, I want you to bring that in. The best thing with the wheels. Have you got a thought off the cuff or is that too? I tell you what, if I give you some examples, maybe you can choose which one. You can be the Taskmaster. That’s probably kinder. And it’s all about the reasoning, like I say. So it might be an airplane is the best thing with wheels because we get to travel the world and we get to experience different cultures and try different foods. And another group might say, no, an ambulance is the best thing with wheels because it helps saves people lives. And then someone else said, no, no, no, Toby’s wheelchair is the best thing with wheels because it gives Toby independence. Now, you as the Taskmaster, have to decide which of those is the best thing and which is… What do you think? What would be the best one?

TK: My initial thought was a car, because that’s your typical mode of transport or something like that. But I do really like the wheelchair one, because you don’t realize how inaccessible the world is until you are in that position, so that would definitely be a good what we in the education business call a ‘teaching point’.

James: For sure! And really hard if the Toby in the wheelchair is in the room and they’re referencing that kid. To then go, no, one point for him! That’s not okay, ambulances are better. So it kicks off like that. So it kicks off with the prize task. Then there’s a warm up task. Oh, the big difference with Taskmaster Club is that all of the tasks are team tasks. So it’s all about developing teamwork. And that’s the big difference from the show, which does have the sort of the downside that often the groups of kids are in the same room. So for week one, they look around and go, oh, that’s a good idea, let’s copy a bit of that. Whereas on the show they all do them blind. And that’s beautiful to see, the different approaches. But as they go through it, they learn that actually copying someone else is not going to get you the big points. And trying to think more creatively, that’s what really helps. So it starts with the prize task, then we have a warm up task which is just a quick task of six or seven minutes. Then there’s the main task. The main task they get longer for. They get ten minutes to prepare it. It might be you’ve got to build something, design something, choreograph something or act something out. Whatever it is, they have to put this together and then they’ll all get time to show their performance, or they’ll attempt their sporting maneuver or whatever it might be. So the tasks are really varied. And then there’s a lovely bit after the main task and they’ve scored that. They’ll then have sort of 3 or 4 minutes to watch part of the show, heavily edited. So it’s U-rated and it’s okay for… Like if there was anything in it that could be possibly, think of your most sort of conservative school setting and think, could this offend anybody? We take it out. We just make sure it’s not in there, but what it does do… So the main task that we do is based on the task that we show.

TK: Okay.

James: So it might not be exactly the same, because not every primary school has a cement mixer. So we can’t exactly do that task. But it might be about devising your own game, using something. So then we’ll show them what the comedians did, and they will then get to go. Oh, okay. Right. We can try it like this, or can we think differently, or think more creatively? And that’s a really different approach. And often, isn’t that cheating? Well, all the information’s on the task, and it didn’t say you couldn’t do that. So they start to sort of bend the rules a bit. And over the weeks of attending the club, they start to see it a bit differently and understand that there are different ways to approach a similar task. And just because that group over there were doing it one way, actually your way might be better. So they see that. And then the final task is the ‘if you have time task’, which as it says is if they have time to do it because some, some clubs they whizz through and there’s a little bit of time left at the end. And other times they have to pick up all that carnage that they’ve created in the classroom. It’s never that bad, honestly. Yeah. So, so there’s four tasks in every episode. And then at the end of each episode, Alex sets the prize tasks for the next session, so that they go away and think about what the best thing with wheels is or whatever it might be. And then they either bring that thing in, if it’s Toby’s wheelchair, they can do that. If it’s an aeroplane, they might have to just explain it. But it comes back to that justification. So that’s what Taskmaster Club is and that is available for anyone that works with young people anywhere in the world from elementary or whatever grade they are. It works across the board, because it’s the way the children approach the task that differentiates it, right? It’s not that the task can be done, any of us can approach these tasks, we’ll have a different way of doing it. So it works for all ages because they’re quite broad. But yeah, that’s Taskmaster Club. But I should definitely hand over to Ali for what School Tasking is, and how that’s a bit different.

TK: Sounds good.

Ali: Yeah, and I don’t have a child at the door anymore, which is a good thing. I guess just picking up on the Taskmaster Education thing. Maybe nice to mention that we have a few other things going on as well. So we have content and a children’s magazine, for example, called AQUILA, which is a UK based children’s magazine, where we set tasks and an activity every second edition. So every second month, which is really fun. And we love partnerships with people. So we’ve had loads of really fun collaborations. As part of Taskmaster Club, we quite often have collaborations. And so we worked with this great YouTube channel called Kids Invent Stuff, which you may or may not have heard of-

TK: Yeah.

Ali: Where they take children’s invention ideas and they make them, they’re brilliant. And you’ve probably seen Alex Horne, testing our invention at the Taskmaster House.

TK: Yes.

Ali: So we collaborated, but they came and they set the prize tasks for an episode of Taskmaster Club, which was to design the best invention, or to help Alex be the best Taskmaster’s assistant ever. So the winning entry was this wonderful drivable bath that shoots out tasks and poops out ducks.

TK: It was so cute!

Ali: It was great fun. We almost killed Alex, we didn’t kill Alex, fine, all good. But we’ve had some other really nice task setters as well. We’ve had Hannah Fry setting a maths-based task. Are you familiar with Hannah Fry in the States?

TK: Yes.

Ali: Maths professor, very, very clever lady. And we’ve got the amazing Dame Doctor Maggie Aderin-Pocock coming on for the upcoming block of clubs. She’s a very, very accomplished space scientist, and she loads of cool stuff for kids. She writes amazing books for kids, and she’s setting a space-based prize task. So that’s always fun bringing people in, doing some lovely collaborations. We have collaborations with other people doing amazing things with kids as well. Been working with Chance to Shine, who are a cricket charity trying to get kids playing cricket across… oh, you don’t like cricket really in America?

TK: No, we don’t.

Ali: I get it, we don’t play it in Scotland either. I’m Scottish, so I’m with you.

James: It’s on the rise. It’ll be taking over soon!

TK: It’s coming.

Ali: I’m sure it’s on the rise. So Andy Zaltzman’s involved in that. He’s set the kids some really fun tasks.

TK: Oh that’s exciting.

Ali: Because he’s a cricket aficionado. So we’ve had some great competitions and partnerships going on with other organisations. We’ve got one going on with a company called [Too Simple?] at the moment as well that everybody can get involved with. So loads of really fun. The great thing about being involved with the Taskmaster universe is it’s so much fun and it’s so joyful that everybody wants to work with you. So we get to work with really cool people, which is fantastic. But School Tasking, I will briefly mention School Tasking, I won’t go into a huge amount of detail. So I’m an academic at Warwick University, but I’m also Director of Widening Participation. I don’t think you use that term in America. It basically just means taking universities out into local, less advantaged areas, working with schools that traditionally don’t have a lot of children who progress to higher education. So we’re going out, we’re taking the university out to those schools and showing them how amazing it is to learn about these things that we’re doing in universities. And to hopefully inspire them or encourage them to just even consider higher education as an option for them. So School Tasking is an outreach project, we call it outreach, when we when we go out into the schools. And it started, because I’m a Taskmaster fan, in 2021 I just thought, well, wouldn’t it be fun to use the format of Taskmaster? Because it’s so joyful and it’s supportively competitive in the most wonderful of ways and so inclusive. I thought, well, I’ve got to see if we can use this to do more outreach work with younger children. Outreach work tends to be done at what we term secondary education, where the kids are thinking about that next step, whether they’re going to university or not. But I’ve always been of the mindset you need to do that earlier, because kids can have fixed their ideas by the time they get to secondary school. That university is not for them, or it’s not the trajectory that they would be on, they might not have even considered it. So you need to get the kids enthusiastic from a young age. And I think a lot of universities are now realizing that. Oh yeah, okay, we need to be going out into schools. And Taskmaster is so much fun. I was like, I’m going to use Taskmaster with the schools that we work with, and tested it with a few of our local schools. James was a teacher at the time, and we had his kids, in his school, who are our Taskmasters. And I at one point, it just occurred to me that I should probably ask permission for this. So I got in touch with Alex, just said, “I’m doing this. Is this okay?” And he was basically, it’s probably fine, but let me just check. And it got sent to the powers that be at Avalon. And they got in touch with me, and I thought, “Oh, I’m going to get into trouble!” But they were so enthusiastic and they said we’d love to work with you, we love what you’re doing. And that’s how kind of Avalon got behind the project a little bit and were really supportive of what we were doing. And then Taskmaster Education was born through that relationship and working with James. And so that was all really lovely. And School Tasking has now grown, just because everybody loves the joy that it brings, I think. So it started, as I say, at Warwick. We piloted it at Warwick with six schools. Then we did a double pilot year where it was running at Warwick University and also at the University of Edinburgh with the brilliant Lindsay Jack, who is just a wonderful human being who took it up to Edinburgh. And that was the start of the spread. And it now runs at 34 universities across the UK and Ireland. And they all work in regions. The kids do tasks that are law-based because it’s a legal outreach project and people say, what’s law got to do with Taskmaster? And my come-back is always, “Taskmaster is a show about law. You don’t realize it, but it’s all about arguing about what a rule means.” It’s all about trying to argue-

James: That Frankie Boyle series.

Ali: Yeah, I’m trying to argue that your interpretation of the words is correct and the other person’s is not, and trying to impress a judge! It couldn’t be more a show about law. It’s basically like law and order.

James: Basically.

TK: The same thing, yeah.

Ali: So we teach them a little bit about law in a really fun way. They do a task based on that learning. Then the universities, they work in a little region together. So we split the country into six different regions. And Ireland has a region as well. And then the winning school from each of those university competitions competes in a regional final, of which there are only 6, in fact there are 7, because the North splinters into two. Then, the winners of each of those finals comes to Warwick University. We’ve got a big art center on campus. We do essentially the grand final, which is hosted by Alex. And by that point, the kids have earned the right to just lark around on stage with Alex.

TK: Right.

Ali: They just do amazingly fun tasks like throwing bean bags into his hat or hiding in the auditorium, or some new ones that we’ve got planned for this year. So I won’t give any spoilers about those, but that’s happening next month. So School Tasking is just this joyful sort of competition that works with children who very often don’t have these kinds of experiences. They’re quite often reserved for schools that have a lot of money, or schools that have a lot of time. And we say, “This is just for you guys.” It’s for the schools that are quite often overlooked or miss out on these kinds of opportunities.

TK: That’s really fun. We kind of have a similar thing, I mean the United States are huge, massive country. So I’m sure it differs between states. But when I was living in, I was going to university in Pennsylvania, which is over on the East Coast, and we kind of had a similar thing, but we were all musicians. So we came in and did a concert for inner city schools type of thing. And then we got to show off our instruments afterwards and everything like that. And it was really cool. Taskmaster definitely is such a fun thing to be able to do and give yourself and the kids, you’re allowed to do these things, that you normally wouldn’t be allowed to do, like give them permission. So do you find that, what percentage of the kids would you say have seen Taskmaster already when you go into the schools? I’m sure you go in and you’re like, how many of you have heard of Taskmaster?

James: Very, very few to begin with, absolutely. We have what’s called a watershed here. I don’t know if that makes sense, but it’s a post 9:00 show. Because there’s adult themes and content, and we have a bleeped version that goes out as well where all profanity is removed. But yeah, it’s definitely not a kids TV show, right? As much as we’re using the concept of it, to aim at young people, it’s definitely not. That’s not what Alex had in mind when the show was devised.

TK: Yeah.

James: So no, I’d say very few to begin with, but they soon get the idea. And, having Alex on the screen the whole time is great. As they go through the sessions, they see the clips from the show, they really get to know it. We’ve also had, as well as the bleeped version, we also had Junior Taskmaster last year as well. That was very much it was that sort of 10, 11 year olds, that were taking part in that.

TK: 9 through 11, I think.

James: That’s right, yeah. So it was like year five and six in the UK that were able to apply for it. Which again, it’s getting a few younger fans engaged early on. But no, I wouldn’t say a lot of them know it before we get there. Those that do really get it and have a great advantage when it comes to thinking in that way. And they always, “Do we need to look under the table?”

Ali: You can’t always tell the kids that are familiar. I had a great experience once going into a school where-

James: They don’t trust us, that’s the trouble!

Ali: Where I said, I think this was in a School Task, I said to the class, I was leading one of the sessions. And on the screen was the photo of Greg and Alex, and I said, “Does anybody know who that is on the screen?” And one of the kids went, “It’s Little Alex Horne!!” I’m like, yeah, you’ve seen the show. But you can tell. You’re like yeah, yeah, okay.

TK: Now with the addition of Junior Taskmaster into the Taskmaster universe, did that show airing bring any additional excitement to the kids in the Taskmaster Education programs? Were they like, oh, I’ve seen Junior Taskmaster or was it pretty much the same, numbers-wise?

James: Yeah, it definitely helps in terms of the pupil recognition of the show. The people that are signing up for the clubs obviously aren’t the kids anyway. It’s the enthusiastic Taskmaster fan teachers that are going, “There’s a what?! We can do Taskmaster, what?! With kids? Brilliant, we’re bringing it to our school.” So it didn’t have a huge difference in that respect. But actually, there are certainly some children, you need to know which ones they are. But there were definitely some children that were in that series that have also attended Taskmaster Club. And I kind of feel like they got their training with us before then getting to be on Junior Taskmaster. Yeah, there were some kids that have done both.

TK: That’s cool, that’s awesome. Did you get to be involved with the production of Junior Taskmaster outside of those kids or not really?

James: Not so much the production, we were lucky enough to attend some of the recordings and we helped with the pilot in terms of recruiting a little bit. Because we’re working with these schools, so we’ve got a bit of a network with children that are that way inclined. That understand that way of thinking, that might be good at it, that might have a bit of a background in understanding how Taskmaster works. So, yeah, we helped a little bit with that, but no, it’s definitely a different arm. The TV production side of it is not our specialist subject, we’re the educators.

Ali: The casting team came along to see some of what we were doing in action, which was nice. It gave them a nice sense of how children were reacting to tasks. That was quite a nice element, that they were keen to see Taskmaster with kids in action during that casting process. The casting team were absolutely lovely, and they were very engaged, and they asked us a lot of questions. But they’re very competent, they went off and did it without us. But it was nice that they got to see what we were doing as well a little bit.

TK: Right, convenient to have a pre-pilot pilot almost, for them to check out. That’s cool. Now you were saying that some of the goals for Taskmaster Education is to get students to be like, oh maybe I should go to university, or maybe I should get into law or study law. But what other things are you finding that children benefit from the program in other ways?

James: So from Ali’s perspective, definitely. We’re starting from a law view and university. For me, we started off, I started off using it in my school during, we have an anti-bullying week once a year, and we wanted our children in our school to be communicating with each other in a positive way and just being a bit nicer to each other, right? Because kids are kids, but sometimes, maybe a little bit too forthcoming with their opinions. And we need to sort of like soften how they approach them, right? And to get the best out of each other. So that’s where we came to it from. But the sort of unintended side effects of this thing have gone way beyond anything that any of us could have imagined. There’s been clubs using it for all sorts of reasons. We’ve talked about teamwork and resilience and creativity and problem solving, but we’ve now got special schools using it as well. So, particularly the social, emotional, mental health side, it’s really helping certain young people that really struggle. One Head I’m thinking of particularly was speaking to me about it saying, “Our kids really aren’t great at problem solving and teamwork, not good at all.” I was like, “Oh, has it not worked well, then?” But he said, “No, it’s exactly what we need. There just aren’t programs out there like this that we can bring into the school and develop those exact skills that are so crucial in this increasingly automated, AI-driven society. That by the time our young people are leaving to get jobs, they really are going to need those interpersonal skills, and be able to we had to read a room, and work together. That’s the stuff that’s going to make them employable.” And, so yeah, there’s that stuff, what else? Attendance. That’s a weird one I wasn’t imagining, but if used as an intervention, particularly in secondary schools, used as an intervention. And saying, well okay, we’ll get them in on Tuesday afternoon, we’ll make sure they’re in for Taskmaster Club, and then they’ll also be in for something else. Like I say, it’s going far beyond anything we imagined when we started to create these silly, fun tasks – that actually the positive impact it’s having is crazy.

Ali: Yeah, the really nice thing about it, whether it’s Taskmaster Education, Taskmaster Clubs, School Tasking, whatever program it is that we’re talking about. The really beautiful thing about it is the same as what is beautiful about the show – it’s not any particular skill set that is prioritized or that does particularly well at Taskmaster Club. Every child, no matter what their talent or skill or interest, they will bring something to their team. And they will have that moment of contributing and finding something that they’re really good at, finding something they’re really passionate about. And I think that’s what makes it so wonderfully inclusive. And it is just the same as the show, right? As in, Jack Bernhardt has done these stats that the academic types, the Oxbridge types are not necessarily the ones who do best at Taskmaster.

TK: Yeah.

Ali: Because they may be too cerebral, and actually you need a little bit of practical skill and a little bit of common sense. So that’s quite nice, in that it’s not always the academic kids that do well, it’s not always the sporty kids. It’s not necessarily the talented orators or the musicians. Everybody gets that moment of, “I’m going to nail this task. This is the task for me.” And that really can build up children’s confidence like nothing else, because it’s unique in that way. In other clubs, they tend, it’ll be a musical club or it’ll be football club, or it’ll be this. And if you’re not good at that particular thing, you’re not going to get that confidence boost by going, and you’ll get better over time. But there will be people who have a natural talent, and who are going to constantly outshine you every week. Whereas in Taskmaster Club, they might outshine you one week and be absolutely terrible at the next task. “I’m going to nail this one.” So that’s I think what we find, is that it’s just like the show. It’s so uplifting and it really does bring out the best in children. We get feedback from teachers that essentially says, “These kids, if they’re quite under-confident to begin with, and things like the prize task where you do have to justify your choice and you may have to speak in front of the group. They quite often say that they don’t want to do it the first week, and they’ll get somebody else to talk. And then as the weeks go on, maybe as they get a bit more a bit more competitive and a bit more like, ‘oh, we could win’ – that confidence builds. They’ll have the ability to just say, this is this is what I’ve brought, and this is why it’s great.” And that I think is so nice to hear, when we get that feedback that children are coming out of their shells. And we saw this in the School Tasking project as well. As James said, even with your Taskmasters, right? Some of the Taskmasters weren’t necessarily the most confident kids. And then they went up on stage in front of a thousand people and were judging the tasks and kind of owning James. I think we should give them this score. It’s so nice to see. It’s just so wonderful to see.

TK: Yeah, one of the tricky things about being a teacher, is that you have to set curriculum that you have to teach, right? And there’s only so much time that you get to teach a certain thing. And there’s only so many ways that you can explain it, before you’re like, we have to move on, and everybody learns differently. And it’s just so hard because you want every kid to succeed. But every kid is different. Every kid is an individual person. So having them be in a situation where it’s like a Taskmaster, like you can take this and run with it. Whatever your brain says, this is what makes sense to me, that’s what I’m going to do. That’s so freeing for the kids, I bet. And it reminds me, there was a kid that I had. He was in, I don’t know what it would be for you, year three, maybe third grade?

James: Sort of seven years old?

TK: Yeah, he was eight. And I was running a talent show, because I was a music teacher for that school. And, so I was running a talent show, and it was basically open auditions. And so a bunch of kids came in and they hula hoop or play an instrument or whatever. And this kid came in and he’s like, I’m going to do some magic tricks. But because they’re magic tricks, I can’t show you all of my tricks because, that’s going to like, give it away. And I was like, oh, okay. As long as it’s appropriate, I’m sure it’ll be fine. And so I didn’t get to see his his whole set basically. So when the talent show came around, we were in the auditorium and I was way in the back in the sound booth because I was running sound for it. And this kid comes up and he does a couple, just basic magic tricks and, it’s fine. And then he’s like, okay, for my final act, I am going to get out my magic wand and I’m going to make a magical creature appear out of thin air. And he has had this big piece of cardboard laying down in front of him this whole time that he’s doing the set. And so he’s like, can I get a random member from the audience to raise their hand and give me a magical creature? And, this kid in the front row who has clearly been a pre-chosen to raise her hand.

James: The plant.

TK: Yeah, yeah. And so he’s like, you random person that I definitely don’t know. And so she’s like I want a unicorn. And he’s like okay, one unicorn coming right up. And he waves his magic wand and he lifts up the piece of cardboard. And it is this like horribly drawn stick figure fat unicorn. And it’s the funniest drawing because it’s clearly so bad. And he goes, “What? I’m only eight!” And I lost my mind laughing in the sound booth. I was like, that’s the funniest thing I’ve ever heard anyone say in my life. It was so meta that he was aware that he was just a kid. Oh my gosh, it was so funny. But you can’t teach that kind of thing, you just have to let kids be kids, just say what they have to say.

Ali: Sure! And their personalities will shine through. It’s wonderful, it’s so wonderful.

James: And literally every time we write an episode, we plan tasks, we discuss them at length about how might this work, and what are we actually expecting the kids to be doing in this, and how will it work with different age groups in different settings? And literally every time the kids do something completely different than we thought they were going to do. Because we’ve all got different brains and we’ve all got different experiences, and off they go!

Ali: And and it’s great, isn’t it? That they have an outlet for that, and lateral thinking and thinking differently is rewarded in Taskmaster Club. But it’s not necessarily rewarded very much in the education system generally, doing something different is not necessarily rewarded. You’re meant to just toe the line. Whereas in Taskmaster Club, “Yay! You’ve done something absolutely off the wall. We love it, five points.”

TK: It reminds me of this, I don’t know if you’ve seen this, but there’s a picture online and it’s a math problem, and it says “Find X,” or something. It’s like, “Here’s an equation, find X.” and the kid has just circled the X. It’s like, “I found it!”

James: Done!

Ali: Full marks!

James: Can’t argue with that, yeah.

TK: Obviously we can’t really, I guess depending on where you’re teaching, sometimes you can get away with being like, “Okay, that’s clever enough that I’m going to give you the marks”.

James: It’s probably not on the official mark scheme.

TK: You probably won’t be able to get away with that on your SATs. Well I don’t know what you guys have over there.

James: Yeah, we have, we have SATs for Year 6s.

Ali: But we don’t call them that, we call them “sats”, don’t we?

James: SATs, we say the word, yeah. And we’ve got GCSEs for Year 11s, so 15 year olds, and A-levels beyond that. We’ve got our own system of punishing children. Testing, testing children, sorry.

TK: Now, you recently published an article on School Tasking, all of the things that have been going on and all of the effects, the positive outcomes and stuff. Are you going to be following the long term outcomes of the students who have been involved with the program?

Ali: That’s a wonderful question. It’s one of these things that would be so magnificent to do, but it’s so difficult. Because obviously, my actual job is a researcher. So with School Tasking, it’s mainly about the fun, and if the kids have fun. That’s what I’m really interested in. But equally, in order to justify my existence as an academic, I do do research alongside. So we are tracking certain aspects of what the kids are doing. So we track the changes in their legal knowledge, and we track the changes in their perceptions of higher education when they start and at the end of the project. And then we revisit some of these things a year later and how much they still remember about the things that we taught them. But some universities are – this is getting into the complexities of university study – But there is a way in universities of tracking, long term, your impact on children, and whether or not they then go on to higher education, whether or not they go on to study law. It’s called a “heat tracker”. It sounds more exciting than it actually is. And we can input that data, but the problem is there’s no causal link. You can’t say, yes, doing that when they were nine made them want to go study. There’s so many other influences on them in that time.

James: The proceeding ten years, yeah.

Ali: So actually, for me, the most important things for me are twofold. That we do make them think that law is fun, because law is, I’m sure it’s the same in the States, it’s an elitist profession. It’s difficult to get into. You need to have connections. You need to have money to be able to do things like become a barrister. You need to be able to pay for a tenancy and, pupilage and this kind of thing. So it’s to make people believe that law is for everyone. We therefore widen access to legal education, and also then to the profession. Great, wouldn’t that be magnificent if we get a more diverse judiciary, for example. Brilliant. But that again is this sort of pipe dream. But if we can just make them think law is fun and interesting, that might be the spark that makes them think, “Oh, that might be something I can study.” Brilliant. But the other thing we want to do is just build positive connections between universities and their local schools. We just want children to engage with the universities on their doorstep. And quite often the fancier the university, the less likely they are to engage with the schools on their doorstep. That’s not something that I think is a great thing, I think the universities should be engaging with their local communities and trying to be out in those local communities as much as possible. And that’s what we’re trying to do, because all of the universities involved, they all work with their local schools. They can’t work with schools in other regions. We just say that’s not allowed, you have to work with the schools that are next to you. So those are the two things that I’m really passionate about – getting them thinking law is fun and it is engaging and it could be for them, but also just thinking that the university on their doorstep is fantastic. And if they go on to study law at university, great. And if they think university is not for them, great, it doesn’t matter, you know what I mean? It’s just that we planted that idea that, if they want to, it’s there, they’re capable. And, genuinely, kids are amazing. They’re so good. They should replace Greg. Don’t tell Greg I said that! [all laughing]

James: Whoo, whoa, whoa, what?! Oh my word.

Ali: But they’re so good at reasoning. Genuinely, they will understand a point of detailed reasoning in a way that I think adults don’t, because they’re so driven by rationality, one of the main things, but mainly, fairness. They’ve got this innate sense of fairness that we all lose when we become adults, don’t we? You don’t have that sense of really, “Oh this isn’t fair.” Kids are brilliant. Sorry, I don’t mean that Greg should be fired. I take it back.

James: That’s not that’s not the official Taskmaster Education line on Greg’s role as Taskmaster. We still very much believe in Greg.

Ali: I suppose he could keep his job, that’s fine. I’m going to incur the wrath of Greg, now aren’t I?

James: Check the inbox.

TK: I know that Greg has done some guest appearances at schools and he obviously used to be a teacher. And so there’s some videos out there of him and Alex going into some schools and, just meeting the kid Taskmaster, which is the cutest thing, watching Greg talk to the kid Taskmaster, being like, “You’ve gotta have an iron fist.” It’s adorable. But I know he’s probably not as involved in Taskmaster Education as Alex. God knows how he does everything that he does because the man’s got 80 things on his plate per hour.

Ali: I think he’s got a time traveling watch, it’s the only explanation.

TK: I think you’re right. So how was it going from being a fan of Taskmaster to actually working with Alex? Were there any big surprises or anything? Because as far as I can tell, he’s just the sweetest guy.

Ali: He is. Genuinely this is the question I think I get asked more than anything else, is “what is Alex really like?” I get asked this all the time. I was doing an event last week when three separate people were like, “What’s Alex really like?” and you feel like you’re not giving an interesting answer when you’re like, “he’s really nice.” He’s as nice as he seems on TV. But he genuinely is. I had to give a speech when he got his doctorate, which was very nerve wracking. But the way I put it, and this is what makes Alex – sets him apart from other people – is that he has this really unique way of making everyone that he encounters feel important and valued and that you’re not inconveniencing him in any way. And this manifests, and I’m sure you’ve heard everybody saying, that he’ll just say yes to everything, and we need to be a bit careful about this. We know that if we ask him to do something, he will very kindly say yes, so we need to always be conscious of only asking him to do the things that we really need him to do and not bothering him with all the other things that would be lovely for him to do, but we mustn’t. So I think it’s that, I think he does make people feel like they’re valued and they’re worthy of his time. I assume, I don’t know many celebrities, but I assume this is a relatively rare personality trait, that people just feel like he’s giving them time and he genuinely cares, and you’re not an inconvenience to him and that’s what’s nice in his personality.

James: I think that shines through in the show as well. I think contestants, comedians, love going on the show and they have a positive experience. And even when, they don’t do great in a task and Greg might be a bit cutting about them, it’s always done in such a loving way, and it’s always edited that everyone comes out at the end of that series. You’re feeling warm about them, right? Certain contestants you might start with, you might think, “Oh, I’m not sure about them yet,” but by the end of it, you love all of them. And that comes from Alex, and the team around the show, that they really care about what they’re doing. Definitely when we first started working together, it was surreal. This show that we had adored for so long, and then getting to meet Alex and work with Alex, it was crazy. But, they’re really warm and welcoming. So, it’s been, as you would hope, Alex is just as lovely as you’d hope. We had a surreal day the first time we went to the house. But now, it’s a job and we’ve got to get on with it and do the best we can. It’s as lovely as you’d want it to be. And I think that shines through. I think if it wasn’t the case, the show wouldn’t have had the longevity that it’s had, and it wouldn’t have the level of support that it does around the world. Goodness knows, for me, it feels like such an English thing, the humor of it and the people that are on it, and I know they’re not all English, but it just feels like such a sort of silly English humor thing. But the fact it translates around the world – How did you get into it? How did you discover Taskmaster and what appeals to you about it?

TK: I think my best friend who lives in New York, sent me a link to it or something. And he’s like, “You’ve got to watch this. This is right up your alley.” And I think this was around when Covid hit. I think a lot of people started with Taskmaster during the Covid years because –

Ali: It was a comfort, right?

TK: We all needed a comfort show to watch, basically. So we just started binge watching all of the series of Taskmaster. And Alex’s sense of humor, is exactly my sense of humor, puns everywhere. I know a lot of people, like Greg hates the puns, but I love the puns. I think they’re so funny. And also, as a musician, he’s got his band, The Horne Section, and their music is so great. It’s funny because right before this interview that we’re having now, I just interviewed for the podcast, Mark Brown, who’s the saxophone player for The Horne Section. It’s just such a wholesome show because you can do so poorly, and people will love you anyway.

Ali: They’ll probably love you more.

TK: I feel like that’s very different from American television, because a lot of American television, when you when you have shows that are kind of reality shows, they edit it in a way that there are villains, that are people that we specifically have edited to make them look bad, which doesn’t feel great. And so I don’t think there’s ever been a contestant where Taskmaster has specifically edited them to make them out to be a bad person. Sure, you may have messed up this task really bad, but we only edited it that way because it’s hilarious and it’s going to make good television and everybody is going to laugh with you.

Ali: It’s all done in good jest, even if it’s really bad. You’re made fun of, but not in a really scathing, or cutting, or horrible way. It’s all in like, nudge-nudge, wink-wink, “That was ridiculous,” sort of way.

TK: It’s like, “We’re laughing with you, we’re not laughing, well, we kind of are laughing at you, but we’re also laughing with you.” Obviously Alex is in charge of writing the tasks for the main show. So is it you guys that write the tasks for Taskmaster Education, and how does that process work?

James: It’s a bit of a team effort, I suppose. It very much starts with Alex, as in the show. So that’s absolutely where we get a lot of our inspiration from, as well as the books and the board game and the cards and everything else in the Taskmaster universe. So there’s that that feeds into it. There’s also the other series as well. We have the National Curriculum here, so as a primary school teacher, I have to teach certain skills. So I will come at it with, actually we do need to cover this in the history curriculum in year six. So actually if I can weave in a bit of that, there’s a bit of that going on. There’s an awful lot that goes into the mixing pot. My process, and it might be slightly different for Ali actually, because we tend to, when we’re struck by inspiration, we might write an episode of Taskmaster Club each, and then go a bit of back and forth with it and tweak the wording, or just bin something because the

Ali: The other person goes, “I don’t know what this means.”

James: “Yeah, you are aware that’s absolutely rubbish, right?” We try and be vaguely kind to each other when we’re doing that, but also don’t sort of accept things. If we’re not happy with it, if it’s not right, we will just keep going with it. So there’s a lot that goes into the melting pot. For me, I think I do start with the show, because the main task in the show is what we base… Sorry, the main task in Taskmaster Club is based on a clip from the show. I will start with that, and I think, okay, what they’ve done on the show, can I do it exactly? Can I tweak it to make it work with lots of different aged children? And then from that, that will then tell me what the theme of that episode’s going to be. So it might be that it’s a music task. Okay, so we’re going to have some other music tasks around that. So the episode becomes a music-specific episode of Taskmaster Club. It might be about history, it might be more of a physical one. Or it might be completely random and be all about plastic bags or just depending on what the task is. So we have different themes – sometimes very much curriculum-based, others just random and Taskmastery. I think that’s my process. Is it much different for you, Ali?

Ali: No, I think it’s very similar. In a way though, probably in a very minor way, spoiled us watching Taskmaster. Because we are constantly watching Taskmaster and thinking could we use task, and we’ll be WhatsApping each other, “This’ll be a great task for the club.” But sometimes, the one that springs to mind was the puppet, make the best puppet assistant for Alex. And we both messaged, this could be a great task! And then every single thing was entirely inappropriate for children!

TK: Oh, no.

Ali: They all ended up doing something hideously inappropriate. I’m like, right, well, we better scratch that one then.

James: If there’s 1 or 2 inappropriate attempts, we can edit them out or we can tweak it.

Ali: But when all five, yeah.

TK: That’s tricky, yeah.

James: But if all of them are just completely, you know, then yes, it was a nonstarter.

Ali: I think we’re both sitting there, aren’t we, just thinking: ooh that’d be a good one, oh that’s be a good one, and liaising about it. So in some ways it’s making us watch it more closely, and in other ways probably ruining the viewing experience.

James: But it is important to us that it is linked to the show, we’re not just going, oh, I’ve done this fun thing in my class, or I saw this thing at a Scout jamboree or whatever. We’re getting inspiration from Taskmaster because it needs to be authentic to Taskmaster. For us, but also for the Taskmaster universe. Because if we were doing stuff that was completely unrelated to what was going on on the show and it wasn’t authentic with Greg and Alex and the feel of the show, then it wouldn’t be Taskmaster Education. It needs to be definitely based on what’s going on on the screen.

Ali: So we borrow a lot of tasks from the show. But then one time the show borrowed one of our tasks, and we were absolutely delighted, weren’t we?

TK: That’s so exciting.

James: I don’t know, has that ever been officially acknowledged, or do we just tell ourselves that? I’m not sure.

Ali: Well, it was exactly the same task.

TK: Which one was it?

Ali: It was recreate a famous painting, it was brilliant. They all did really well, Rosie Jones’ series, yeah, we did that one.

TK: Honestly, that one is one of my all-time favorite tasks of all time because they were so good!

Ali: They were so good, they were all like five, weren’t they? I think Rosie maybe got 4 and all the rest got 5. We were actually in the studio I think, and when it came up, we were like-

James: I remember this! Where have I heard this before?! [gasps] We wrote it!

Ali: That was cool.

TK: That’s awesome. That was such a gorgeous task, the one that Emma did, I’m still obsessed.

Ali: It was beautiful. They were all just so good, weren’t they? They were spectacular.

TK: Just amazing. So you guys, James, are you in the UK? England?

James: Yep. Correct, yes.

TK: And then Ali, you’re in Scotland, you said?

Ali: I’m not in Scotland, I wish I was in Scotland.

James: She wishes she was in Scotland.

Ali: I’m an expat, I moved to England 13 years ago. I’ve gone all fuzzy, what’s wrong with my mic? I’m sorry, my mic fell off my head.

TK: Obviously Taskmaster is a very UK thing, especially the Greg and Alex one. Obviously there are different iterations of it across the world. Are there any plans for taking Taskmaster Education to other countries such as the United States or Australia, or any other countries outside of the UK?

James: Yes and no. Taskmaster Club is available in all of those territories. We do have schools in the US and Canada, in Australia, in Germany, in Asia, all over the shop, people are running Taskmaster clubs. It can be done there. But we at the moment don’t have any plans to recreate it using… because it’s such an Alex thing? Taskmaster is huge in Scandinavia for example, but not the Greg and Alex version. There would need to be some sort of reshoot with the local Taskmaster’s Assistant. Making the tasks and things like that, in their language. We’d love to do that. It’s not something on the agenda at the moment. We were fortunate enough in the summer we did a show at the Edinburgh Fringe, and we had some guest Taskmasters. So Mark Watson from series four, five?

Ali: Four?

TK: Five? I keep thinking it’s five, but I might be wrong.

James: I want to say five, I’m going to take TK’s word for it. I feel like TK knows best.

Ali: I’m not claiming to know best. I bow down to greater knowledge.

James: Mark Watson was one of our Taskmasters in Edinburgh. And the other one was Paul Williams from New Zealand. [collective gasp]

Ali: They were both brilliant, brilliant Taskmasters. They really owned it.

James: He’s so well cast. You can’t recreate Alex, and he is himself and he’s authentic, but brilliant. I really like the New Zealand version actually as well.

TK: It’s so good.

James: I’ve got a bit of a crush on that Taskmaster guy as well. My word. What’s his name?

TK: He’s very attractive. Jeremy Wells.

James: Jeremy Wells, yes, my word. What a presence. Yes. Sorry, sidebar.

Ali: You digress, James!

James: I really do, I really do. That doesn’t often happen. Paul was great, Paul was lovely. And again, like Alex, just as lovely as you’d hope. It would be wonderful to do different versions around the world. For now, you’re stuck with the Alex version. But you can do that anywhere as well.

TK: That’s good to know. Recently, Taskmaster Education ran a raffle to help raise funds for the program. Is there any way that listeners and watchers can help support the program, or are any other raffles planned for any time soon?

Ali: That’s probably a me question. The raffle… so again, this is where we have to be careful with differentiating between Taskmaster Education and School Tasking. School Tasking is a not-for-profit. It’s very much funded… I’m like Oliver Twist sometimes, going round trying to do fundraising or trying to get sponsorship or trying to kind of raise research funds in a way to be able to do it. The raffle was… it was so kind, Alex essentially said that he would offer that as a prize, what a prize, you get to go to the Taskmaster House, you get to have a cup of tea with Alex, every Taskmaster fan’s dream. So a massive thank you to Alex for that. It allowed us to continue this year on the same trajectory, it allowed us to move kids around the country and to feed these kids when they come to the events and do everything else. So, the raffle-

James: Sorry, you should really clarify that you are moving them around the country to go to Taskmaster to do tasking. You weren’t just…

Ali: Not child trafficking, we weren’t child trafficking!

James: Just trafficking kids! It’s what Greg wanted!

Ali: Okay yeah, I’ll clarify that point. To put children on coaches to have a lovely day out. When they need to go to events around the country. Thank you, James, that saved us a headline splash. So we’re hoping that we can do that going forwards. Because Avalon are really generous in allowing us to support the project through a variety of different ways, and licensing the brand for us to use, and supporting us with that kind of thing. So watch this space. I’m hoping that we might be able to do something similar again. But the lucky winner, I’m sure the visit must be happening next month or the month after, so we will look forward to hearing how it goes. It was a very popular thing. There’s not really a way of donating or supporting in that way, but when raffles are open, spreading the word and buying tickets. And it all helps, it does allow us to continue doing what we’re doing and giving these kids such an amazing experience.

TK: Sounds good. I did buy a few tickets, even though I was like, “I’m not flying all the way to England just to have tea.”

Ali: We had so many US entries, we had so many.

James: If you’d won though, you would have a serious chat with yourself, wouldn’t you?

TK: I probably would have asked myself whether it was possible to just fly over for a weekend and whether I would hate myself for my travel time being longer than the time I’d spend in the country.

Ali: The absolutely crazy thing was that the winner was UK-based, but all five runner-up winning contestants’ entries were from the US. And I was like, “What are the chances of it?” It was all very above board, because we had to have a gambling license and we had to record everything, and we videoed ourselves doing it. We used a random number generator and everything else. It was unbelievable. Five US runners up and one UK winner.

TK: Guess it all worked out.

James: It really does feel like it’s growing and growing in the US.

TK: It’s huge.

James: You find there are more and more people, like-minded souls that are discovering it.

TK: Greg and Alex do this thing now, they’ve done it the last two years where they go to New York City in the spring or winter. Last year it was a Q&A, and they rented out a 100-person venue, and oh my gosh, it was a mess. Because they-

Ali: Did you go?

TK: No, I didn’t because it sold out in like two seconds. And also I live in California, so going to New York-

Ali: Ooh, quite far away, then.

TK: Yes, very far away.

James: We’re probably closer.

TK: But they came again this year for the premiere of Series 19, episode one, and I did go to that.

Ali: Oh, did you?

TK: Yes, and there was a bunch of, I’m in a Taskmaster group chat. And all of the American people and even some Canada people, we were like, “We gotta meet up, we’ve got to book the same hotel, and do all the stuff. And the venue was 1500 seats, sold out in less than two hours.

Ali: Wow. Did you have your own little Taskmaster convention, then?

TK: Yeah! It was great. It was such a great time, but they clearly have a huge following in the US. It was really fun. I think they still – both of them are still very shocked that they get recognized in the US. They just keep talking about the, “Somebody recognized us at a diner we went to and just gave us free cheesecake. This is the best.” I did actually run into Alex outside of that – they had an NBC Studios interview or something, and we stage-doored them for that. I ran into him and I told him that I was going to be on The Horne Section podcast. Then I went on that podcast, and then he came onto this podcast, which was great. Again, just a lovely human being. And what you say about how he makes everybody feel like they’re being listened to, is very true. He’s such a genuinely kind person, which is probably rare in celebrity fields nowadays.

Ali: Sore sure, 100% think it is.

TK: But he’s always like, “I’m just a guy. I’m not special.”

Ali: He has this thing, I’m not going to give you any of the exact examples, but he has this thing-

James: Are you going to overshare? Have we got an overshare coming on?

Ali: No, I’m not gonna overshare. But he does this thing that I think is so unique in a person, in that if you mention, if you say in passing, the name of somebody to him, he will remember that name and he will then later in the day use that name to the person that you’ve named and make them they’ll be like, “Oh my God, Alex Horne remembered my name.” It’s just something that I think most human beings are terrible at. You know when somebody says, well their name is, and it’s gone in one ear and out the other.

TK: Oh yeah, all the time.

Ali: And you’re like, oh no, I don’t know what your name is. But Alex, in passing, if I’ve just mentioned something to him, he will have clocked that name. He will remember that name, and he will use it to make someone feel special. He’s done it three times now, and I’m like, “This is a real talent. It’s a real gift.”

TK: It is.

Ali: And I think it’s so unique, and I think he deserves to be praised for it.

TK: He definitely does. He actually did this to me the other day because we’d swapped podcasts and all that kind of stuff. And one of my friends who went to the New York City premiere thing, she recently just moved back to the UK, and she went to – they just wrapped up filming series 20, so she went to the episode ten filming of that and then went to-

James: So she knows who’s won! Whoa.

TK: Yes. And then went to the wrap party afterwards, and she went up to Alex, and I had just emailed Alex earlier. One of the other members of his band, the trumpet player, was in California for a concert. So I got to hang out with him and we were chatting and everything, and he was like, “You need to email me and Alex with this artwork that your friend Amanda has done for us.” And I was like, “Okay.” So I did that. And then Amanda ran into him at the wrap party and presumably said something like, “I’m the Amanda that TK just emailed you about.” And he was like, “No, I know who you are.” Very offended that she would think that he didn’t know who she was. And then he mentioned me and my friend who went to the concert by name. And I’m like, that’s wild that he just remembers names, because you can tell me your name and two seconds later I have no clue what your name is.

Ali: For sure, you have to actively remember. You have to actually go, “I’m going to remember what you just said.” Most people are just not talented at doing that. But he’s talented.

TK: It’s very impressive.

Ali: It is very impressive.

James: And he would truly hate this whole conversation and be massively uncomfortable with all this praise!

Ali: He also did place me, this was quite funny though. We were on a call once and I said something about – he was he was coming up to campus for something, and I was like, “I’ll be wearing my School Tasking hoodie.” And he’s like, “I know what you look like. We’ve met you a million times, right?” That was just a ditzy Ali moment. I don’t have them very often, do I, James?

TK: I feel with celebrities, you kind of default assume that they’re not going to remember who you are at all. So whenever they do, you’re like, “Oh, this person brought me up to this other person without me even being there. That’s so cool.”

Ali: And I think he genuinely appreciates his fans. And that in itself is something again to be applauded. I always remember this about Lee Evans as well, used to always be so thankful for his fans. And I was like, “This is lovely.” There are certain people out there who really do seem to appreciate their fans.

TK: Yeah, it is really nice.

James: Are you enjoying having Jason Mantzoukas on the current series?

TK: Yes! I was so excited.

James: Which episode are you on?

TK: We’ve just finished the third episode.

James: Are you enjoying just the small references every now and then, little corrections that Alex gives…

Ali: Season!

TK: Season, Jason. Series, Jason.

James: And the pronunciation or the spelling or something.

TK: We haven’t gotten to the Skittles yet, but I have heard that that’s something that’s coming up.

James: You’re appreciating that, you’re not?

TK: No, I am, because obviously I binge watched all of Taskmaster, and then watched all of Taskmaster New Zealand and Australia and The Horne Section TV Show and listened to all of the podcasts. And I’m three quarters of the way done with the Off Menu podcast with Ed Gamble.

Ali: Wow, that’s an undertaking!

TK: It is 300! I’m 50 episodes away from being caught up. I’m like, “Oh my God, there’s so many.”

Ali: That’s so much of your life!

TK: Luckily because I work at an animal shelter and I get in at 6am, I can just put in my AirPods and just listen to podcasts all day. I’ve picked up on a lot of the lingo from over there. I know what a lot of things are now that I used to not, like spanner. We don’t have that word here.

Ali: If it makes you feel better, TK, being from Scotland, I say words that people down here don’t understand as well. It’s not specific to you guys. I say words, and people are like, “That is not a word, Ali.” And I’m like, “Yes it is! It 100% is.”

TK: I was excited for this series because obviously I knew Jason, but I also knew Mat Baynton because I had just watched all of Ghosts and it’s such a good show. And I was like, “Wow, Ghosts sure does have a lot of Taskmaster people in it.” When they announced the lineup, I was like, “I know two people,” which is unheard of, because I rarely know anybody on any Taskmaster lineup.

Ali: Oh, interesting.

TK: Even the big names like Jack Dee and Frank Skinner, Julian Clary. I had no clue who any of those people were before they went on Taskmaster.

Ali: We do play quite a fun game, because we sometimes see the schedule, because we need to know timings for things. So we sometimes see the schedule ahead of time. And quite often it has the first names of the contestants. So James and I play this fun game of, “Who’s this going to be?” So when it was Jason, and we knew it was an American Jason, we were like, is it Mantzoukas or Sudeikis? Which American Jason is it game. But it’s quite good fun. I normally get the schedule and then James has to guess who they are, and we play a fun little game guess the contestants.

TK: Good times.

James: If you get over to the UK, you do need to go to Edinburgh in August. I suspect you will see… Well, you might need to take out a rather large loan to-

TK: That’s what I’ve heard.

James: -afford accommodation and then go to like 100 shows a day because they’re all that. The people that have been on it, that are going to be on it, they’re incubating their talent in Edinburgh in August. It’s quite the place to be.

TK: I lived in Edinburgh for a semester in college.

Ali: Amazing! I lived in Edinburgh for ten years. When were you there?

TK: 2010.

Ali: I would have been in Edinburgh in 2010! I left in 2012. We were there at the same time.

TK: That’s amazing.

Ali: The thing about the Fringe, though, when you live there – and maybe you didn’t find this if you were just there for a semester – but you don’t get immersed in it in the same way, because they’re just people in your way when you’re trying to get to work rather than really enjoying them. They’re just like, “Why are all these people on the pavement? I can’t get to work.”

TK: Yeah, I was there.

Ali: We go back there as a family to actually enjoy the Fringe, even though I was there for ten years, I didn’t really do much of the Fringe, which is quite ironic.

TK: I was there for a spring semester, January through May, so I wouldn’t have been there for the Fringe anyway.

James: But the 2010 Fringe, was that the second time Taskmaster was ever performed at Edinburgh? You were so close to that.

TK: I was so close.

James: To the birth of Taskmaster!

TK: Oh, I know, yeah.

James: Little did any of us know at the time.

TK: Yeah, seriously. But gorgeous city. I don’t like big cities, but Edinburgh was amazing.

Ali: I will get back one day, I will convince my English husband that he wants to be there? And not in middle England.

TK: We had a flat on the outskirts of a golf course. I forget which one it was, but you could walk anywhere. You could walk to the castle and walk.

Ali: This is the beautiful thing about Edinburgh, it’s such a walkable city. You can walk anywhere, can’t you?

TK: I miss it. But it was cold! It was so cold. I cannot do the cold. I grew up in upstate New York with cold. And now I live in California and it never snows. And I’m like, “If I never see another snowflake in my life, it’ll be too soon.”

Ali: I love being cold.

TK: I hate, I cannot, I can’t stand it.

Ali: I can’t stand the heat! It gets very hot in middle England, it gets up to mid 30s sometimes.

James: Which isn’t very hot, compared to California.

Ali: Compared to California it’s breezy. You don’t work in Celsius, but I like 21, 22. This weather’s perfect for me, beautiful. We’ve got warm spring weather at the moment, TK, and it’s absolutely wonderful.

TK: Amazing. This podcast specifically, we’re a fan podcast, but we also talk a lot about the transformative works that the Taskmaster fandom creates, such as fanart and the puppets. I’m sure you’ve seen the little crochet Greg and Alex and everything. All of that kind of stuff. So either through Taskmaster Education or more broadly as a fan of the show, have you come across any Taskmaster fanworks that have really stood out to you and or do you have any favorites?

Ali: The crocheted Gregs from Alexs are ours! They’re the School Tasking mascots. If the ones that you’re referring to are the ones that Alex has been photographed with on a few occasions. They are made by a brilliant friend of mine who, I just said to her one day, “I’d like you to crochet Alex Horne, please. Could you do that?” And she’s so talented. I’ll show you these as well. I’m an absolute geek-

James: Is this Bridgerton?

Ali: Yeah! She made these as well, a tiny Colin and Penelope.

TK: They’re so good!

Ali: They’re so good, right? So she makes these Alex Hornes, she made 1 or 2, because we give them away to the kids at the final, if they win School Tasking, they get to take the Alex to their classroom as a memento of the day, and then we get a new Alex. But she’s getting a bit fed up, I think, if me giving Alex away. So she did make the Greg as well, so we have a Greg, and Alex has a Greg, but we don’t actually do much with the Gregs. But we keep having to make Alexs and change up their socks and stuff.

TK: That’s so cute.

Ali: She does sell the patterns for those. I can put a link on our social media to her patterns. So there’s that. We also have – I don’t know if you’ve seen the little needle felted ones? So Jo Sinton-Hewitt – who you’re maybe familiar with, she’s been on Jack Bernhardt’s podcast, because she was famous for lunch box tasks. Are you familiar with the lunch box tasks? She became famous in the Taskmaster fandom for putting little – she’ll be really embarrassed that I’m talking about her – but she put little tasks in her son’s lunchboxes.

TK: Oh, that’s so cute.

Ali: So they would go off to school and then they’d have this task. And she was kind of famous in the Taskmaster world for this, she went on the podcast, and she’s one of these… She’s a person who I think is a really good example of: if you want to do something, just put yourself out there. Because she got in touch with us to say, “Are there any jobs going at Taskmaster Education? I’d love to get involved.” And James and I are a very small team. There aren’t jobs at Taskmaster Education, I’m very sorry. Quite a few people do-

James: Don’t encourage that!

Ali: I’m really sorry, we DON’T have jobs at Taskmaster Education. But I did say, I am looking for a School Tasking Co-ordinator. Would you be interested in doing that? And she’s been doing the role now for, this is her second year, for two years, and she is brilliant. She’s the most efficient person. She just gets the project. She’s so creative. And she makes the little needle felted Alexs that she sells on her Etsy store. So if you want, she sent loads of the things to America, I think most of them have gone to America which is really cool. She’s the kind of person, she found that really hard to do. She did something, Mark Watson had a podcast called The Decade, Mark’s Watson’s brave decade, put on your brave hat, something like that. She went on that podcast as well. But it was through that that she was like, “I’m just gonna message and see what happens.” And now she’s firmly in the Taskmaster world.

TK: Nice. Do you know if she was the one that made the five from series seven and they live in the little birdcage in the corner?

Ali: Oh, no she didn’t. I don’t know who made those, actually, we would have to ask Alex who made those. They’ve been there for ages. But she makes the little needle felted ones, because we use them in School Tasking as well. One of the tasks in the regional finals, the kids have to crack a code to get Alex out of the key safe. So they have to release tiny little Alex Horne from the key safe.

TK: That’s so cute.

Ali: So she keeps having to make these, he gets squashed in the key safe, and then she has to fix him, he goes to the field hospital and gets fixed up to go again.

TK: That’s amazing.

Ali: One of the other fan art things that was lovely. And you might know these people, they may have been at your Taskmaster convention in New York. Was the stained glass-

TK: Yes! They were!

Ali: So I made their day, because I clocked that there were stained glass things in the Taskmaster House. I don’t know if you saw them, James, they were sitting on the table? And I thought, oh, they’re beautiful. And then I saw them on Bluesky. They posted on Bluesky, and I was like, “I saw these in the Taskmaster House. They were really stunning. Well done you!” And they were like, “What? What?! In the Taskmaster House?”

TK: Well that’s funny because, so that might have been- okay, so at the premiere they were like, “Can we just pause for a second to bring out these stained glass portraits of ourselves? Because what is even happening?” And they brought them out. And then another person had gifted them a stained glass rubber duck. And Greg was like, “Let me be clear, these were different people that have made these things. We have been gifted two separate things of stained glass.” We got to see them and they were gorgeous. And then we were asking in our little group chat, “Where do you think those stained glass things ended up?” And I think somebody saw your reply on the Bluesky post saying that they’re in the house. And I was like,
“They’re in the house!”

Ali: And Alex jumped in as well. Because I sent him a message being like, “These were in the house and they’re really delighted.” And he, because he’s such a good egg, jumped in and said, “These are brilliant.” The other person I feel I should give a shout out to as a Taskmaster creator is Kimberly of No Context Colouring, are you familiar with Kimberly, who does the coloring books?

TK: I don’t think so.

Ali: She does Taskmaster unofficial coloring books. But I commissioned Kimberley as well, i’m a big fan of commissioning people to do stuff rather than throwing money at Amazon or any other big company. I really like supporting small businesses and creators to make stuff. We pay them well. I don’t want to just have the projects surrounded by tat. So this year for the regional finals, Kimberly made amazing Taskmaster light boxes for the kids to-

TK: Oh wait, I do know who you’re talking about! I saw them and they’re gorgeous!

Ali: They’re gorgeous, and honestly, they were such a spectacle at the finals. I would have my Taskmaster timer and I’d set up the light boxes and be like, “You guys get to win this if you take them out to your classroom.” And they loved it. She’s another brilliant maker, so genuinely, if you’re a Taskmaster creator right there, we’d love to see what you’re creating. Because as a person who runs the project, I have the ability to add these wonderful elements into it and support businesses along the way, as I say, instead of buying stuff from big online shops. We love to support small businesses and what they’re doing. It’s great. So show us what you’ve got! And the other lovely aspect of it is – shout out to Phil Jemmett, who is involved in the project and works in the engineering department at Warwick. He makes the 3D prints. So the kids for the prize task for the Champion of Champions, they create a trophy out of craft materials that I send them, like a polystyrene ball and toilet roll and gold paper, and this and that. They make a trophy. And then Phil, my amazing colleague, makes that into the real trophy for the next year, the winning trophy.

TK: Oh that’s cool!

Ali: It’s manufactured, 3D-printed into a real trophy. And the kids love it, they’re like, “We designed the trophy!”

TK: That’s adorable.

Ali: So message us at the School Tasking social media apps, our social media pages. We’d love to see what you guys create. We do, we love it.

TK: That’s awesome. Those light boxes were so pretty.

Ali: Beautiful, beautiful.

James: Do you get the feeling Greg and Alex are really leaning into that now as well? Particularly with the fanfiction? I feel like before, they used to be a bit embarrassed about it and now they’re – this series particularly – they’re definitely leaning in and playing to that relationship. Encouraging it.

TK: When Alex came on this podcast, the first question I asked was, “Let’s talk about fanfic.”

Ali: That was brave!

TK: And he said, “Finally.” And to be fair, I had emailed him beforehand being like, “Is it okay if we talk about fanfic? Because I don’t want to cross any boundaries or anything.” And he basically said, “What boundaries?” I did ask him if it’s something that him and Greg are actively doing now that they know it is out there and that it exists and he claims that they don’t. But I’m not sure how truthful that is.

James: Have you seen the outtake, was it last week’s episode, I think? There were some outtakes.

TK: Yes.

James: I think Greg was consciously playing up to it.

TK: He actually says that line in his current tour show. I don’t know if you know this. It’s a whole bit that was thrown up online, which is the only reason I know it, obviously, because I can’t go to his shows. You know how you can type something in Google and it’ll autofill the questions you’re trying to ask? One of his bits is that he has a slide up and it says, “Are Greg and Alex in love?” And he says, “No, but…” and then he says the thing that he says in the outtake.

Ali: The thing that he said in the outtake, yeah!

TK: I asked Alex when he was on here, “Have you seen Greg’s show?” Because I wanted to ask him, “What are your thoughts on this?” Because those are some choice words. And he said, “I haven’t gone to Greg’s show yet, but I am planning to.” And I was like, “Okay, well, I won’t spoil anything.” So I just left it there. Little did I know that Greg had already told him, months beforehand. I was like, “Oh.”

James: He says it every week, I’m sure, to him!

TK: I think that we as Taskmaster fans, and especially the folks that write the fanfiction, are very lucky in that they seem to love it and roll with it, because I’m sure a lot of people would be like, “I don’t want to even know that that exists. I don’t want to look at it. I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to hear it.” But they will bring it up. Greg, especially nowadays, will bring it up of his own accord because at the Series 19 premiere in New York City, I think the question was – because they did a Q&A – and one of the questions was, “Greg, can you pick up Alex, please?” And he was like, “You guys are so weird.” So he picks up Alex, puts him down, sits down, and he’s like, “There’s a lot of fanfiction written about us.” No prompts for this at all. It was so funny. I think they’re really rolling with it these days.

Ali: They’re leaning in, they’re leaning into it, aren’t they?

TK: They are leaning in. I don’t know what goes through their heads or how much direction they’re given with it because whoever’s running their socials is really leaning into it. I don’t know if you saw the Valentine’s Day thing that they put out, but it was like, “We hope you find the Greg to your Alex.” And I was like, “Okay… Couples goals.”

James: Is it a… healthy relationship?

TK: That’s a good point actually.

James: I don’t know which way you’d like..? Yeah, maybe.

Ali: Don’t think about it too much, James!

TK: Best not to do a deep dive right now. Thank you both so much for coming on and talking about all of your interactions and Taskmaster. It sounds like so much fun, and it sounds like you’re so lucky to be able to just do that as your job now.

Ali: It is! Honestly, TK, we just get to have loads of fun every day and it’s so different every day as well. And he’s all right to work with, sometimes.

James: We’re not great as Brits at sort of bigging ourselves up. So whenever we talk about it, whenever I talk about it, it feels like I’m just showing off. We’re lucky. It’s a great job to have. It’s a real privilege.

Ali: You’re always playing it down, aren’t you?

James: Oh no, it’s nothing. It’s great. It is great, it’s a one of a kind type thing. We are really fortunate. If there are any educators over in the States that want to get involved with Taskmaster Education, please do look us up at Taskmastereducation.com and drop us a line at info@Taskmastereducation.com and we’ll happily talk to any school leaders or district educator people and we’ll tell them the impact that it can have on young people. It is a lot of fun. But it’s not just a lot of fun. There’s a lot more to it as well.

Ali: We’re also on all the platforms, aren’t we?

James: All the socials!

Ali: All the old social media platforms you can find us on.

James: ALL the social medias. We’re everywhere.

Ali: And thanks for having us, TK, it’s been lovely to chat to you.

TK: Yeah, you too!

James: Absolutely.

TK: All right, thanks so much for coming on.

Ali: Thanks very much!

James: Thank you, bye!

VO: And once again, that was Dr Ali Struthers and James Blake-Lobb of Taskmaster Education. Find out more about it in the links in the episode description. This episode ran extra-long, so visit our Patreon for the full, uncut interview – and don’t forget to subscribe for weekly episodes.