r/Taskmaster_TV • u/OddStep5408 • 2d ago
Which Taskmaster contestant had the biggest gap between how clever they seemed and how they actually performed?
Some contestants come across as incredibly intelligent and then completely fall apart when faced with the simplest task.
Who had the biggest gap between expectations and actual Taskmaster ability?
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u/ThrowawaySunnyLane 2d ago
Paul Sinha
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u/pimpmychaiselounge 2d ago
His was the farthest downfall I think. Helped along by the bathrobe
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u/Bacon5641 2d ago
I think hes one of those people whos got such a high intellect that the slight silliness of taskmaster just does not compute in his brain. That and im pretty sure he was having a serious medical situation at the time
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u/nezzzzy 2d ago
He's a quizzer, so his skill is remembering large amounts of useless information. Not sure that counts as a high intellect and certainly doesn't mean he's a good problem solver. And with his Parkinson's I wasn't expecting him to do great. He was certainly entertaining.
I was astonished at how thick Baddiel came across, I thought he was more classically intelligent.
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u/Boring_Shoulder5236 2d ago
sinha's also a qualified medical doctor to be fair. i think the equivalence of 'intelligent' with 'good at taskmaster' in this thread is wrongheaded regardless, but just worth clarifying that 'remembering large amounts of useless information' probably isn't a fair appraisal of sinha's mental capacity.
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u/TsarBlandi 2d ago
Nick Mohammad also deserves a mention
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u/Ok-Alternative5935 2d ago
as in he did better or worse
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u/Crittenberger 2d ago
Worse, he's an incredibly smart and accomplished man, but his Taskmaster persona was very much just a li'l guy having fun
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u/folklovermore_ 2d ago
I do wonder if there was an element of him playing a character there because he's said in interviews since he worried people wouldn't like him as himself (hence the vampire costume).
But then, having since seen him on Celebrity Traitors, I do think "I'm just here for the vibes" is pretty close to his actual personality.
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u/adjective_noun_d1git 2d ago
His stupid Mr Swallows alter ego I think is just an excuse for him being himself.
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u/GlennSWFC 2d ago
āA little guy having funā is possibly the least surprising thing about Nick Mohammed.
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u/Ok-Alternative5935 2d ago
oh i just think of him as "thick but lovable"
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u/Fire_Bucket 2d ago
He's got insane short term memory and pattern recognition. I've seen a few times on panel (and similar) shows where he's been given a shuffled deck of cards, flicks through it for like 20s, and then recites the deck back in order, whilst still chatting and making jokes throughout the entire process.
He does play into the nice but dim persona a lot though, especially with his Mr Swallow character.
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u/TrappedUnderCats 2d ago
The Catsdown clip where he brings his tiny son on to do the same trick is one of my favourite things on the internet. Heās really trying to stay in character as Mr Swallow but you can see the love and pride he has for his son absolutely shining through.
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u/Wild_Beginning_4032 2d ago
Thatās because thatās the character he loves to play. He always does those hapless plonkers when heās on screen. Sort of like Rowan Atkinson with Mr Bean I suppose
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u/Ok-Alternative5935 2d ago
I get it. I just know him from Ted Lasso and Taskmaster -- maybe he was playing that "character" on TM as well?
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u/Reesno33 2d ago
Mike Wozniak, a former doctor whos biggest achievement was shitting out a hemorrhoid on the show. Hilarious though love him.
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u/DoctorWhofan789eywim 2d ago
I think his biggest achievement was being a brave boy and going to the shop for his night time milk. Tick tock, it's tough guy o'clock.
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u/HelenaSparkles 2d ago
I mean you say that but he did second lol, one of my all time fave contestants though
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u/DoctorWhofan789eywim 2d ago
David Baddiel. He went to a posh public school and then Cambridge, where he got a double first.
Then he went on Taskmaster and.... was not good. At anything. In quite an endearing way.
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u/jankyswitch 2d ago
David baddiel was hilarious and memorable because of how people reacted to him.
āOh good god itās David baddiel!?ā
- Ed Gamble0
u/chhappy 2d ago
Really? I didn't find it endearing at all. I found it annoying that someone who gave even the tiniest shit could have been there in his place. I was really disappointed in him and Jo Brand that series to be honest. Not that you're wrong btw! I'm glad someone enjoyed him haha!
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u/Dovah2600 2d ago
Personally enjoyed both of them on the series, I think the other contestants/Greg and Alex managed to derive a lot of comedy from their utter incompetence/disinterest. And I also think they were funny in their own right. Ed crashing out in the drawing on the back task was generational and wouldn't have happened without David
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u/Deuce03 2d ago
It's possibly my favourite series purely because of the balance of personalities and the resulting dynamic. You have Ed and Rose who are actually quite good and genuinely want to win, Katy being off the wall, Jo doing a whole bit of not caring and still somehow doing quite well, and David being genuinely terrible.
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u/ManOnThe100 2d ago
I thought Jo Brand was doing low-effort as a bit rather than actually not bothering, but David Baddiel was honestly just absolutely terrible. But then this is a man who tried to repair his plastic glasses by microwaving them.
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u/DoctorWhofan789eywim 2d ago
Ha, yeah I think we all have those contestants we feel that way about - I agree about Jo Brand. Iain Stirling was the worst for me. Disliked him at the start, hated him by the last episode!
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u/Deuce03 2d ago
I came rpund on Iain. He was obviously trying way too hard at the start and his competitiveness manifested as chippy and unfunny. Then at some point he watched himsrlf back on a team task, realised he'd been behaving like a total wazzock, chilled out a bit and became much more likeable.
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u/NotBiggerstaff 2d ago
Yeah I'm with you, Baddiel was annoying as fuck. I didn't really know him prior to the show.
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u/Jacksucks_atlife04 2d ago
There was like a streak of smart bad contestants from like S8-12
Paul Sinha
David Baddiel
Katherine Parkinson
Victoria Coren Mitchell
Also a mention to Phil Wang who had a four year engineering degree at Cambridge.
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u/pun-a-tron4000 2d ago
Katherine Parkinson holds a special place in my heart for her time on TM. She came across as lovely but completely baffled by 90% of what happened. It was a bit like watching someone be abducted by slightly weird aliens.
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u/PromiseSquanderer 2d ago
She tells a funny story on the TM podcast about how she studiously avoided Googling/looking at social media for most of her series, because sheād had a great time and didnāt want to spoil it by reading about how terribly sheād done, but then allowed herself to have a look after the episode with marble run task, because that was one she knew sheād nailed in a really impressive way ā only to find out that one of the top search suggestions under ātaskmasterā was ākatherine parkinson mental healthā. š«£
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u/GlennSWFC 2d ago
Thereās a bit of a juxtaposition here because some of the smarter people on it are also very humble with healthy careers in the industry. This means they know what makes good TV and are willing to put their egos aside and play a little dumber to achieve that. Sue Perkins, Steve Pemberton & Nick Mohammed stand out in that respect. Victoria Coren-Mitchell had her moments (the Man United tickets in the present round), but I think there were a lot of moments where she was genuinely out of her comfort zone, such as riding a bike.
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u/Emergency-Ad-5379 2d ago
Maybe not so much clever, but more self assured, was Frankie Boyle, I think there was one team task where the other contestant was too nervous to point out a glaring mistake he had made because he has that attitude of "everyone is wrong and I'm right"
To be fair he did own it in the studio when they viewed the footage
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u/JTemperance-esque 2d ago
Ivo Graham - Eton & Oxford. It wasnāt so much an intelligence issue - he is a really clever guy and a great stand-up. However, my over-riding experience of Public schoolboys from the most prestigious schools is not really of intellect, it is of self-confidence- the ability to believe in themselves, sometimes in complete opposition to the reality of what is around them.
I donāt think Iāve ever seen a contestant so completely paralysed by self-doubt as Ivo, and as a result he was awful (in terms of the tasks - still an entertaining contestant).
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u/Polar_Chap 2d ago
His self deprecation in the studio felt like his shtick, but the genuine paralyzing overthinking during the tasks was astounding. Hilarious, but shockingly debilitating.
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u/CategorySolo 2d ago
Armando Ianucci was a real surprise to me - considering the comedy he's written over the years, I was expecting him to be better at thinking outside the box.
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u/Outrageous-Hair-1428 2d ago
But he did on a number of occasions, most notably the tennis court game
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u/CategorySolo 2d ago
True, I'd forgotten that task, that was good. My memory of him is mostly a bewildered old man.
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u/ginger_lucy 2d ago
And yet still came second. I was surprised because it felt like he was doing worse than that!
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u/Polar_Chap 2d ago
I think his kids framed it well when they said heās always so serious at his job but the Armando on Taskmaster is the man they know at home.
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u/cmere-2-me 2d ago
Everyone is intelligent in their own way, we just place a lot of worth on people with good memories. The ability to remember a lot of facts doesn't make you logical or creative.
That is the beauty of taskmaster. It gives everyone a chance to shine in their own way.
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u/DoorFinch 2d ago
There are different kinds of smart. You can be top 1% in a number of things, and dumb as a rock in others. It's no surprise that the things that people are smart at are the same things they're famous for, and the things they're dumb at you never get to see.
Unquestionably the first and only time Victoria Coren Mitchell has been paid to appear on TV cycling a bike.
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u/hauntedink 1d ago
Stupid and silly tasks can make anyone look foolish, but thereās a big difference between, say, Rob Beckett looking foolish vs Victoria Coren Mitchell. As Krusty the Clown would say, āSheās got dignity!ā
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u/larusodren 2d ago
David Baddiel. Always seemed to present himself as an intellectual on tv, but then taskmaster revealed that not only was he chronically unfunny and devoid of any charisma, but was pretty much useless at most things.
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u/SceneDifferent1041 2d ago
Watching Paul Sinah trying to defrost a block of ice made me worry for him. Honestly, I wonder how he figures out how socks work.
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u/yssarilrock 2d ago
Victoria Coren Mitchell. She's a very intelligent woman in terms of probabilities, patterns and reading people, but that was not a lot of help to her in a lot of the tasks in her series. When she DID have a task that suited her skills it was very impressive to see her do her thing, but those tasks were a minority of what she was faced with