Taskmaster Series 20 Episode 2: The Stats Round Up

Oi! You! Yes you! Get off my land/this whimsical statistical blogpost! This place is rotten with spoilers for the latest episode of Taskmaster! Don’t go past this picture of Joe Lycett smiling maniacally if you haven’t seen Taskmaster Series 20 Episode 2!

He went too big too soon.

Reece Pulls It Out The Bag: some sharp mouth-based detective work, a pea-brained subjective task and a remarkable haul of bonus points means that Reece Shearsmith (last week’s second worst contestant) scores 22 points (4.4PPT) and leaps into the series lead ahead of a French lady playing the accordion on the back of a donkey dressed as a chicken (AKA Maisie Adam)!

Let’s make like Super Sanjeev and rotate slowly and powerfully into some STATS!

• Reece has scored 35 points from the first two episodes — that’s the 14th best start ever. That might seem underwhelming, and that’s because it sort of is (especially if we contrast it with last series’ winner, Mathew Bayton, who was already on 42 at this point in the series). However plenty of excellent contestants were on 35 points after two episodes — Series 15 champion Mae Martin, Series 9 champion Ed Gamble and the all-time points record holder, Series 17’s John Robins — although in the interest of balance I should also say that there are also some less than excellent contestants on that list too. Tim Key and Munya Chawawa both scored 35 in their first two episodes and would go on to do pretty badly in their series (and also cheat, so I’d keep an eye on Shearsmith to be honest).

• At the other end, Sanjeev’s score of 9 (1.8PPT) means that he’s the first contestant this series to post a single-digit episode score AND means he’s on just 21 — this is the fourth lowest score in the history of the show after two episodes, ahead of only Joe Wilkinson, Jamali Madix (both 20) and Charlotte Ritche (17). While it’s not a great start for Sanjeev, it’s worth saying that all hope is not lost — Andy Zaltzman scored 21 after two episodes and would go on to win Series 18. Although John Kearns also scored 21 after two episodes and would go on to confuse the antenna on the caravan for a small ladder, so swings and roundabouts.
• There is currently a 14 point gap between Reece in first and Sanjeev in last — this is pretty much the exact average gap at this stage in the series (14.26). It’s too early really to make any predictions about how close the series will be, but suffice to say that we don’t immediately have a Daraesque figure to dominate the series — in Dara’s series there was already a 26 point gap between first (obviously Dara) and last (obviously John Kearns) at this stage. This series does have some strange parallels with Series 16 — a youthful player (in Series 16’s case, Sam Campbell) wins the first episode of the series before being pegged back by one of the older contestants in the second episode (Julian Clary in Series 16). Like Reece, Julian was on 35 after two episodes — and like Maisie, Sam was right behind him on 33. Sam went on to have an outrageous third episode where he scored 24 and took a lead he wouldn’t give up for the rest of the series — so no pressure Maisie…
• Onto the prize task (“the object that is hardest to describe”), and much like Series 19’s “the biggest anticlimax”, this was a bit of a counter-intuitive prize task — what would usually score low points (a failure to describe an object) is what you’re aiming for here, and something nice and clear would score poorly (like, taking an example at random, The Treaty of Versailles). In effect this task was asking contestants to bring something baffling or confusing, making it a twist on Series 7’s “Most Confusing Thing” prize task. That was won by Jessica Knappett’s “IUF That comes the raven!” t-shirt — the first of two raven-based prize task wins in the show’s history, the second coming last week with Reece’s fortune telling raven.
• The prize tasks followed a similar thread to last week — Reece and Maisie took the top spots, Phil and Sanjeev the bottom and Ania sat in the middle. This means that Reece and Maisie have 9 points from prize tasks and Phil and Sanjeev have 3 — it’s only the second time in the history of the show that two contestants have scored so highly in the first two prize tasks of the series (after Series 7, when both Rhod Gilbert and Phil Wang were on 9, and Jessica Knappett and James Acaster were on 3). It’s quite rare for the gulf in prize tasks to be so apparent so early — usually at least one or two contestants swing to the opposite extreme they managed the week before (IE, in Series 17 Joanne McNally followed up her 1 in the first week with a 5 in the second). In fact, Series 7 aside, the only time every contestant has earned a second episode prize task score that was within one point of their first episode was in Series 4, when Hugh Dennis was beginning his noble crusade to become the Worst Prize Tasker ever, and Noel Fielding was leaping ahead with maximum points. So with that in mind, does that mean the Series 20 prize task order has calcified after just two episodes? Not necessarily — in Series 7, Kerry Godliman would recover from her mediocre start to rise to the top (thanks mostly to Rhod Gilbert overdoing it with that picture of Greg) and while Hugh would never be able to overcome his poor prize tasking reputation, Lolly Adefope would overturn Noel Fielding’s lead (and become the best prize tasker of all time by PPT). So there is time for Ania, Phil or even Sanjeev to improve their position (if they stop bringing in boxes of shit, Treaties of Versailles and handheld tools for focus and relief respectively).

• Phil brought in the Treaty of Versailles — no-one has ever brought a treaty in as a prize on Taskmaster UK, but Laura Daniel in Taskmaster NZ Series 2 did bring in two different versions of the Treaty of Waitangi (one in Maori and one in English, the latter version granting wildly different rights to the colonisers). Like Phil, she received 1 point (although unlike Phil she had actually read the treaty before bringing it in). Sanjeev did fractionally better than last week with his fidget toy — he’s the third contestant to bring in a fidget toy (after Russell Howard and Munya Chawawa brought in fidget spinners in Series 6 and Series 14 respectively), although Sanjeev’s toy did look remarkably similar to the game “Bop-It”, which John Hannah brought in as a prize task in the first New Year’s Treat in 2021 (and received 1 point for his troubles).
• Ania Magliano received 3 points for her “box of shit” (description courtesy of Greg Davies) which contained, among other things, a lightbulb, a foil heart balloon and some broken pottery. This was Ania’s second 3 point prize task in as many episodes — other contestants to score 3s in the first two prize tasks include former champions Sam Campbell and Sarah Kendall (good news for Ania) as well as Jack Dee, Jo Brand and Victoria Coren Mitchell (bad news for Ania). As an entry, the box bore similarities with Stevie Martin’s ornate box of tat from Series 19 (in the “biggest anticlimax” task) — although Ania came in harder against Greg’s judgment (claiming that he was impressed but he was trying to fight it due to his “childhood”). She earned one more point than Stevie managed, possibly due to this bravery — will she pull this tactic out again? Well, she’s already revealed she’s Greg’s daughter on the show so what else does she have to lose?
• Reece scored 4 for his baffling display case of a reclining doll with the head of a faceless owl, a sentence I fear will be upsettingly mundane by the end of the series. It’s his second bird-based prize task in a row after last week’s fortune telling raven (I believe that makes him already the most bird-centric prize tasker of all time). While 4 is a decent score, he has lost a bit of ground on his comedy partner Steve Pemberton: Steve had a perfect score after two episodes (following Peg Mavis in Episode 1 and his poem written on an upside down calculator in Episode 2), and already we can see a difference in styles between the two men — Steve favours “doublers” (crafting prize tasks with a second part to delight Greg, a term coined by budding Taskmaster expert Jenny Eclair), while Reece is going down the more traditional route of “bringing in weird shit he has lying about his house”.
• The 5 points were secured by Maisie Adam (her third task win so far) for her anatomically correct model of a womb (brought in to represent “being in the womb”, something we have all experienced but cannot describe). Much like her prize last week, this did have an obvious weakness — namely that, while no-one can describe the feeling of being in the womb, many people can accurately describe the womb itself (especially if armed with an anatomically correct model of a womb, the actual prize which Maisie brought in). Much like last week, none of the other contestants went for this mode of attack — it remains to be seen if this is just a case of second episode jitters and they will start to pipe up in later episodes, or if the gang is unwilling to cause a stink and be ostracised as a result (something neither Andy Zaltzman nor Ardal O’Hanlon worried about), or indeed if someone did make a stink and then they ended up editing it out of the show. I would say that Episode 3 may be the turning point (that was the episode when Andy Zaltzman called out Rosie Jones/Jack Dee for the “rocket/a rocket” indiscripency) — fingers crossed they start to cause a stink soon. Not for the show’s benefit, more because much like Alex Horne I’m a messy bitch who lives for drama.

• On to the first filmed task (“identify Alex’s five things”), and this was a twist on a favourite format, where contestants have to try to identify items without being able to fully inspect them — going all the way back to Series 1, there was “identify the contents of the pies without breaching the pastry” (AKA, the task where Frank Skinner became the Pie Whisperer), while over the years the contestants have had to work out bizarre flavours of baby food (Series 6), liquids (Series 13), ice cream (Series 14) and jelly beans (Series 15). This is the first time, however, that the contestants have had the option of picking one (and only one) sense to use in a task — in that way it shares similarities with the first task of Taskmaster NZ Series 5, where contestants had to pick three of their five senses to lose for the next part of the task. Although that task didn’t use a “facial gloryhole” (Greg’s words) and was all the weaker for it.
• Somewhat surprisingly it was Reece and Maisie (the taste twins) who came out top here — Reece in particular getting “plain yoghurt” and, more upsettingly, “human teeth” spot on. It’s Reece’s first filmed solo task win of the series, achieved in the first task of Episode 2 (coincidentally also when Steve Pemberton won his first solo filmed task in Series 17). Maisie, meanwhile, grabbed 4 — it means that she has scored 14 from a possible 15 in solo filmed objective tasks (clearly an area where she is going to dominate. Phil and Sanjeev both went for “hearing” and Phil, inexplicably, managed to get “fabric stapler” — his ear-based heroics (and cramp from maintaining that painful position with his ear jammed into the wall) only grabbed him 3 points (his lowest filmed solo task score across the first two episodes, a remarkable achievement given that he is also yet to win a task). For the third time this series, Sanjeev came last in a task — despite answering none of the questions correctly, Sanjeev still scored 1 point (a quirk of the Taskmaster scoring system, which also benefitted Fatiha El Ghorri in the first live task of Series 19 when she failed to get any raisins in her wine glass but still scored a point). Ania, meanwhile, finished with 2 points for her efforts with her nose — it means that she’s averaging 2.00PPT in objectively judged solo filmed tasks, the second worst total of the series (behind Sanjeev, obviously, who is on 1.33PPT). If she wants to start climbing up the table, she’ll have to make sure that part of her game is up to snuff/sniff.

• On to the second task (“hook a duck, silently read the duck’s superpower…”) and it was here that we were introduced to the teams — Reece and Maisie as the Team of Two; Ania, Phil and Sanjeev as the Team of Three. Somewhat strangely it’s the third series in a row where the Team of Two has been made up of one older man and one younger woman with a moderate age gap between the two (Jack Dee & Rosie Jones; Jason Mantzoukas & Stevie Martin; Reece Shearsmith & Maisie Adam) — before Series 18, this split had only happened once before (Series 10, Richard Herring & Daisy May Cooper)*. It’s worth noting that both of the Team of Two are currently leading the series — as a reminder, there has been no champion from the Team of Two since Series 10 (Richard Herring), and the Team of Two has not outscored the Team of Three since Series 14 (AKA the series where the production decided to punish Dara Ó Briain for being too good at the show by pairing him with John Kearns and Fern Brady). Since that series, the Team of Three has outscored the Team of Two in team tasks by a score of 163 to 102. Can Reece and Maisie turn the tide! I think they can! (Insert picture of Reece Shearsmith saying “I think you’re lying” here).

*Technically you could argue that Series 4 (Hugh Dennis & Mel Giedroyc), Series 6 (Russell Howard & Alice Levine) and Series 12 (Alan Davies & Victoria Coren Mitchell) meet the criteria for this split as well, but I’d say they’re all too close in age — effectively the vibes of all of the above Teams of Two is Crotchety Old Uncle and Cool Niece (or, in the case of Daisy, Furious Teenage Daughter).

New most awkward team meeting?

• As it happened, we didn’t get a great sense of how either team did here as they were both disqualified. It’s the first time ever that both teams have been disqualified in the first team task of the series, and only the second time both teams have been disqualified in a team task (after a particularly terrible task involving balls in Series 12). It’s the (by my count) the ninth time every contestant has been disqualified in a task across the whole show’s history, with the first taking place in the last live task of Series 8. Having their mass disqualification event happen in Episode 2 is a fairly ignominious start for the Series 20 bunch, although worth saying that they’ve still got a long way to go to beat the worst offenders — in Series 10, the contestants managed to all be disqualified in two separate tasks, and score just one point between all of them in another (where Daisy May Cooper was given a pity point for getting an egg relatively close to the frying pan).

• The contestants were not allowed to reveal their “superpower” to their fellow contestants during the task. As such, this had similarities with another team task in Series 17, where all the contestants were given a secret task to achieve during the team task — and it ended up completely distracting Steve Pemberton and Nick Mohammed to the point that they forgot what they were supposed to be doing entirely. One could speculate that that was what happened here — the task itself (move flour away from the pile) was fairly simple, but everyone seemed to get hung up on how best to use their superpowers, which possibly led to the mass disqualifications. This is also the second task to involve a big plate of flour, after Series 14’s “put five grapes in the little bowl” task, where contestants were supposed to dig through the flour to find grapes (which weren’t actually there) — both John Kearns and Phil Ellis finished these flour-based tasks with their faces covered in flour (John from digging through flour, Phil from thrusting his face into the flour at the end in frustration).

• On to the third task (“take the most surprising thing out of this bag”) and this was a task with a few parallels to previous ones — in fact, it’s the sixth time where the contestants have had to do something that is the “most surprising”. Previous iterations include “surprise Alex when he emerges from the shed” (Series 3), “do something surprising with this duck” (Series 4), “put something genuinely surprising inside this chocolate egg” (Series 6), “get the most surprising thing delivered to the Taskmaster House” (Series 13) and “Place something somewhere surprising” (Series 19). In fact, the Series 13 “surprising” task even had the same task delivery system — an umbrella being lowered down by a string to the delight/fury of the contestants. Despite this, all the contestants came up with original and new ideas for this task, and it was a really high quality task from almost everybody involved (ahem, Maisie).
• Ania and Reece both took home the 5 points (the first time this series that Greg has deviated from conventional scoring, which is worryingly early to be honest) — Ania for her excellent message within a bean within an orange within jam within a can within a chicken, and Reece for his stunning two-hander (where he pulled himself, a meal and a task for him to complete out of the bag). Both used props which have been used frequently by other contestants — Ania’s chicken was the same one Johnny Vegas used to terrorise a paper version of London in Series 10 (and also the same one Ardal O’Hanlon tried to pass off as a duck in Series 13), while Reece’s “pea-brained baby” was a baby head used by Ed Gamble both to hide an aubergine and to be part of his death metal cult in Series 9, as well as a member of Sam Campbell’s three-eyed gang in Series 16. R̶e̶e̶c̶e̶ ̶a̶l̶s̶o̶ ̶d̶e̶s̶e̶r̶v̶e̶s̶ ̶s̶p̶e̶c̶i̶a̶l̶ ̶m̶e̶n̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶a̶s̶ ̶(̶I̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶n̶k̶)̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶f̶i̶r̶s̶t̶ ̶e̶v̶e̶r̶ ̶c̶o̶n̶t̶e̶s̶t̶a̶n̶t̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶a̶c̶t̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶h̶i̶m̶s̶e̶l̶f̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶a̶ ̶t̶a̶s̶k̶ ̶-̶ ̶I̶ ̶c̶a̶n̶’̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶n̶k̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶a̶n̶o̶t̶h̶e̶r̶ ̶e̶x̶a̶m̶p̶l̶e̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶T̶a̶s̶k̶m̶a̶s̶t̶e̶r̶ ̶U̶K̶,̶ ̶a̶l̶t̶h̶o̶u̶g̶h̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶T̶a̶s̶k̶m̶a̶s̶t̶e̶r̶ ̶N̶Z̶ ̶S̶e̶r̶i̶e̶s̶ ̶2̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶r̶e̶ ̶w̶a̶s̶ ̶a̶n̶ ̶e̶n̶t̶i̶r̶e̶ ̶t̶a̶s̶k̶ ̶w̶h̶e̶r̶e̶ ̶c̶o̶n̶t̶e̶s̶t̶a̶n̶t̶s̶ ̶h̶a̶d̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶p̶l̶a̶y̶ ̶a̶s̶ ̶m̶a̶n̶y̶ ̶r̶o̶l̶e̶s̶ ̶a̶s̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶y̶ ̶c̶o̶u̶l̶d̶ ̶(̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶M̶a̶t̶t̶ ̶H̶e̶a̶t̶h̶ ̶c̶r̶e̶a̶t̶e̶d̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶c̶h̶a̶r̶a̶c̶t̶e̶r̶ ̶D̶e̶t̶e̶c̶t̶i̶v̶e̶ ̶R̶e̶g̶i̶n̶a̶l̶d̶ ̶B̶a̶t̶h̶g̶a̶t̶e̶)̶.̶
• EDIT: THIS IS WRONG AND BAD INFORMATION, an absolute diabolical one here from Old Jackie B! Thank you to reddit user questioningfool08 and Bluesky user Ehrun Pembish for reminding me — there was an entire task in Series 13 where the contestants had to have a meeting with themselves which I have somehow entirely blanked from my brain. Apologies to EVERYONE.
• I believe Reece is also the first contestant to set himself a task in a task — although other contestants have set tasks for Alex (John Robins in Series 17 in the thumb war task) and for each other (Susan Wokoma with her “victim-based” mischief in Series 16, setting the ‘mice’/’fish’ task for Sam Campbell).

• Phil Ellis and Sanjeev Bhaskar both did well, scoring 4 and 3 respectively — Sanjeev is the first contestant to reference world heavyweight title champion Ingemar Johansson in a task (I know, who would have thought it?), and in fact I think it is the first time a professional boxer has been referenced on the show since Series 10, when Greg Davies mentioned Chris Eubank in relation to a horror injury Richard Herring suffered while making his beermat tower (honestly what kind of useless stat even is that). Phil used the fish (and fishing rod) that was previously seen in Series 17, when the contestants had to work out what was on the end of their fishing line — although he kicked it up a notch by putting a photo of a drunk Greg Davies inside. He also gave out Greg’s birthdate and his personal phone number — an unsettlingly personal thing to pull out, and thus a similar tactic to Alice Levine in the Series 6 task “put something genuinely surprising inside this chocolate egg”, when she put Alex Horne’s PIN in.

• For the second week in a row, Maisie scored 1 in a filmed subjective task — and for the second week in a row, that was down to the fact that she fundamentally misunderstood a crucial aspect of the task (namely that she was not in the bag in the first place and was not really pulled out of it). This is becoming a bit of a worry for Maisie — she’s the fifth contestant to score 1 in the first two filmed subjective tasks of a series (along with Paul Chowdhry, David Baddiel, Daisy May Cooper, Judi Love), and none of them went on to win their series. In some ways it’s surprising that she scored so low — usually, a female contestant speaking French in a task scores quite well (Rosie Jones presenting “le goose” in Series 18, Sally Phillips performing her moving French story, ‘Le Chat est Boing Boing”). It seems not even Maisie’s accordion playing and shaky reciting of “un to dix” could save her this time…

• On to the live task (“guess how many things the Taskmaster’s assistant has on him”), but the contestants didn’t take to the stage, staying in their seats instead. Usually these “remain sitting” live tasks take place later in the series — this is the first time we’ve had one as early as the second episode. Maybe the show was worried Sanjeev really was going to take a nap and wouldn’t make it to the stage?
• While Ania techically won the task, it was Reece who (confusingly) scored the most points after picking up the bonus for being exactly ten out in one of his guesses. Reece scored 8 points here — it’s the first time a contestant has scored more than 5 in a task since Series 18 (when both Jack Dee and Babatundé Aléshé used their hot dog bonuses to good effect to score 8 and 10 in tasks respectively).
• When Sanjeev guessed sixty forks and it was revealed there was fifteen on the tray, Greg said that there would have to be thirty five forks underneath the cloche — Alex quickly stepped in to say the correct number (forty five). It’s the second time in two episodes that Greg’s maths skills have been the subject of debate (after last week, when Alex’s DxN score involved some quick multiplication and Greg got a bit brassed off that Alex was implying he didn’t know his nine times table). As it happened, there were no forks under the cloche, only marbles (presumably Alex had been to Qrs Tuvwxyz’s forks and marbles convention, as seen in the final filmed task of Series 16).

All Time Leaderboard

• Still very early days, of course, but Reece Shearsmith finds himself third on the all-time leaderboard with a PPT average of 3.50 — he’s a fair bit behind Dara and only just ahead of Sarah Millican in fourth (and forty places ahead of Steve Pemberton, FYI). His score of 22 (4.4PPT) this week was impressive — all the more so because he (and the rest of the cast) were disqualified in one of the tasks. Reece is the first contestant in the history of the show to average more than 4.00 points per task in an episode despite being disqualified in one of the tasks (although obviously we should point out that that high score was due to his 5 bonus points in the live task, without that he would have scored a respectable but not groundbreaking 17). Despite his grumpy persona in the studio, he’s built his success on tasks there — he’s scored 18 points in studio tasks (averaging 4.50PPT), one more point than in his filmed tasks (an average of 2.83PPT). That’s not to say that Reece is over-reliant on certain kinds of tasks — in fact, he’s so far the only contestant to have won a subjectively judged filmed task (‘pull something surprising out of this bag’) and an objectively judged filmed task (‘identify Alex’s objects’). Reece has shown that he’s up for the creative, subjectively judged tasks and the ritual humiliation tasks — a very potent combination in a competitor. Of course we can’t get carried away — like Reece, Steve Pemberton also found himself in the lead after two episodes (and with four points more, in fact), but he would end up getting blown out of the water by John Robins (and a few catastrophic tie-related disqualifications). Can Reece outdo his comedy partner and win the whole thing? I can’t say based off of Episode No 2. And we probably won’t be able to say based off of what happens inside Episode No 3 or No 4, but maybe inside No 9*?

*yes yes that was a long walk for a tiny glass of water

• Last week’s leader Maisie Adam followed up her first episode win with a fairly unimpressive 14 (2.8PPT) — she’s currently in 14th place on the all-time chart with a series PPT of 3.30 (nestled between Guz Khan and Kerry Godliman). Unlike Reece, Maisie has her clearly defined strengths (prize tasks where she’s averaging 4.50PPT; objective tasks where she’s averaging 3.67, comfortably the best in the series) and a clearly defined weakness (subjectively judged filmed tasks, where she’s averaging 1.00PPT). She’s at two extremes with objective and subjective tasks: at the moment she’s scoring 25.07% fewer points in subjectively judged tasks compared to objectively judged ones. That’s the second biggest discrepancy between objective and subjective tasks in the history of the show — only the technically excellent but much maligned Hugh Dennis has a worse record (scoring 31.34% fewer points in subjectively judged tasks). It’s hard to say right now whether Maisie’s subjective tasks are underperforming (IE, they’ll pick up to match her objective task score) or her objective tasks are overperforming (IE, they’ll slide to match her subjective task score). My fear is the latter, given how long it took her to actually understand the “pull something surprising out of the bag” task, and that one of her objectively judged task wins last week came from her panic-honking a horn. In the words of that weird French lady on the chicken donkey, “je ne sais quoooooi!”

• Greg’s daughter, Ania Magliano, repeated her score from Episode 1 — another 15 (3.00PPT) to give her an average of 3.00PPT, almost bang slap in the middle of the pack (52nd, level with Munya Chawawa, Frankie Boyle, Dave Gorman and Jason Mantzoukas). She’s the seventh contestant to get the same score in her first episode as her second, after Sara Pascoe, Sian Gibson, Bridget Christie, Desiree Burch, Morgana Robinson and Noel Fielding — although she’s the first to score two 15s in a row. After last week’s avalanche of 3s, she only received one this week (in the prize task) — she swung fairly impressively, with two 5s coming after a 2 and a disqualification in the team task. It’s hard to know what to expect with Ania: so far her prize tasks have been middling, her live tasks have been exceptional, and her filmed tasks were, until the final one of this week, rather unspectacular — in fact, before the final one of this week, she was the only contestant to fail to score more than 3 in a filmed task. However, her sensational set of reveals with the chicken/can/jam/orange/bean/message demanding fatherly responsibility from Greg changed all that — she’s won as many tasks as Reece and Maisie now and can’t be counted out in the race for the head as a result. I mean we’re only two episodes in, you can’t really count anyone out. Apart from Sanjeev.

• Last week’s runner up, Phil Ellis, had a worse time of it this week, scoring just 9 (1.8PPT) — he’s got a series PPT of 2.50 which puts him a worrying joint 91st on the all-time chart, alongside Charlotte Ritchie. Phil is having a decidedly bad time of it in the studio — he scored 4 last week (2.00PPT) and 2 this week (1.00PPT). Maths fans will notice he’s scored 6 points from the four studio tasks so far — that’s two points fewer than Reece scored in this week’s live task alone. Phil is yet to win a single task of any kind this series (the only contestant left who hasn’t done so) — but what’s really weird is that, despite all this… he’s actually doing quite well? If you take out the studio points and look just at filmed tasks, Phil is currently leading the series with an average of 3.80PPT, despite not having won a single filmed task. If Phil can stay ahead in this metric, he has a real shot at winning — in thirteen out of nineteen series (68.42%), the contestant who was best at solo filmed tasks has also been the champion of the series. Obviously he’s currently being let down by his prize and live tasks — if he can avoid bringing in the Treaty of Versailles again and bump up his prize score a bit, he could start to climb up the chart. The man can hear a fabric stapler, he’s clearly got a bit of talent…

• Finally, lovely tired Sanjeev Bhaskar posted the kind of score he threatened to do last week — 9 (1.8PPT) — leaving him with a series PPT of 2.10, putting him rock bottom of the all-time leaderboard (it’s early days, there’s still time for him to overtake Roisin and Katherine at the bottom, channel the fighting spirit of Ingemar, Sanjeev…) It wasn’t a great episode from Sanjeev, although once again he did pretty well in the subjectively judged filmed task — he’s currently averaging 4.00PPT in that metric, level with Ania and Phil at the top (with Reece just behind and Maisie very very very far behind him). In objectively judged tasks it’s a different story: he’s averaging 1.67 PPT, the lowest score ever — even behind perennial underachievers Sue Perkins and David Baddiel (1.96PPT). To make matters worse, both Sue and David offset their poor objective score by being fairly good at prize tasks (or at least, eliciting pity points through prize tasks) — Sanjeev, with his big blanket and his fidget toy, is yet to reach their heights, averaging just 1.50PPT there. Of course, there is time for things to improve for Sanjeev — once again we should remember that Andy Zaltzman was also on 21 points after two episodes of Series 18 and went on to win. More surprising things could happen! A can full of jam could tell you you have a daughter! You don’t know!

And Finally

• In the team task, the cast were turned into beautiful rubber ducks, complete with their show outfits. The show has made mini versions of the contestants before, although usually it’s after the series in question — the Series 7 gang (James Acaster, Jess Knappett, Kerry Godliman, Phil Wang and Rhod Gilbert) were turned into knitted characters who live in the cage in the caravan now, while the Series 14 team (Dara Ó Briain, Fern Brady, John Kearns, Munya Chawawa and Sarah Millican) were turned into tiny action figures who (I believe) still live in the corridor leading up to the lab. The ducks were so good that they replaced the cast photos in the final leaderboard of the episode — I believe this is the first time every picture has been changed on the leaderboard. The only other time I can remember a contestant’s photo being changed was in Series 16, when the final leaderboard featured Sam Campbell’s peroxide blonde hair which he showed off for the final episode of the series. One other nerdy thing I noticed about the ducks — the Team of Three had a choice of any of the ducks to hook, whereas the Team of Two could only choose from Reece and Ania (IE, the only ducks the Team of Three didn’t pick). As a result, we can work out that the Team of Three filmed their team tasks before the Team of Two. Will that have an effect on how the teams do? No! Is it an interesting thing to point out that Taskmaster fans will enjoy? Also no! Do I just want to mention this so I can justify a picture of Ania as George Michael? Absolutely.

For more stats, facts and figures, push your tongue through a picture of Greg’s nose and gobble up a spoonful of plain blue yoghurt. Or just click here for the Terrifying Spreadsheet!

And don’t forget to listen to this week’s Taskmaster The People’s Podcast with me and Jenny Eclair, where we get into a debate about whether they were real human teeth or not! (I’m Team Yes They Were Because Why Would They Lie But Also Oh God, Why Were They Real)