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tellthemeerkatsitsfine · 3 months ago

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I posted that knowing the studio filming dates would be released soon, though if I'd known it would be only one day after I made that post, I'd have waited until we had this information. The dates have now been released - September 18-24 - so we can at least rule out anyone who's performing on those days.

As usual, I've gone to the Taskmaster subeddit to collate all the names they've looked up. Will make a list of everyone they've ruled out and everyone they've found is possible, and I'll put them all here so you can find it without going through each individual post:

Discovered by Reddit:

Ruled out:

- Maisie Adam

- Kiri Pritchard-McLean

- Chris McCausland

- David O’Doherty

- Harriet Kemsley

- Rhys James

- Ed Byrne

- Russell Kane

- Shaparak Khorsandi

- Rachel Parris

- Amy Gledhill

- Colin Hoult

- Laura Smyth

- Sarah Keyworth

Not out:

- Bill Bailey

- Sindhu Vee

- Alasdair Beckett-King

- Elis James (did just get married and might be honeymooning though)

- Tom Davis

- Evelyn Mok

- Matthew Bayton

- Tez Ilyas

- Suzi Ruffell

- Matt Berry

- Natasia Demetriou

- Ria Lina

- Suzy Izzard

- Jason Byrne

- Alice Sneddon

- Matt Forde

- Technically, those dates do not conflict with Last Week Tonight filming, and Alex did say someone better known overseas but a big name... no I'm not getting my hopes up it's obviously not John Oliver

Stuff I’ve looked up (definitely not necessarily a list of people I want to see, or even all people I think are at all likely, just people I thought could be vaguely possible so I looked them up):

Ruled out:

- Ahir Shah

- Nick Helm

- Tiff Stevenson

- I’ve seen a few people express concern that Jimmy Carr might do it, so don’t worry, he’s on tour

- Reginald D Hunter

- Mark Steel

- Marcus Brigstoke

- Andy Parsons

- Milton Jones

- Robin Ince

- Paul Foot

- Lucy Porter

- Laura Lexx

Not ruled out:

- Simon Amstell

- Tom Allen

- Pierre Novellie (to give credit where it’s due it was a friend of mine who looked this one up, and he does have a fairly specifically Taskmaster-sized hole in the schedule so that’s a real possibility)

- Celya AB

- Angela Barnes

- Lara Ricote

- Leo Reich

- Milo Edwards

- Rob Brydon

- Rich Hall

- Adam Hills

- Jessica Fostekew

- Huge Davies

- John-Luke Roberts

- Brett Goldstein

- Alfie Brown has a schedule hole from Sept 17-24 – I can’t imagine they’d cast someone as controversial as him so it’s probably fine, probably (and hopefully) a coincidence that he has a hole the exact size of the Taskmaster filming schedule

- Isy Suttie doesn’t seem to have a conflict, though she doesn’t perform anymore so that doesn’t mean anything, and she also could be honeymooning, I don’t know what Isy Suttie does with her life…

- Tom Rosenthal has a very Taskmaster-sized hole in his schedule

- Michael Legge

- Thaniya Moore

- Ian Smith

- Olga Koch

- Kemah Bob

- Stuart Goldsmith

- Chris Cantrill

- Catherine Bohart

People I mentioned as possibilities in the above post:

- Paul F. Tompkins – I’ve worked out the source of the mistake I described in the above post, that I thought I read that he had a hole in his schedule during filming time. I think actually, someone found he had a hole in his schedule earlier in 2024, during which he could possibly have gone to the UK and filmed the house tasks. He’s now in the UK with a podcast tour until September 12 in Manchester, could easily stay to film Taskmaster in London 5 days later.

- Josie Long – She’s performing in London on September 27. She lives in Glasgow now and doesn’t go down to London all the often, it would make sense that if she had to go anyway to film a TV show, she’d do some gigs while she was there. She was there doing gigs in June when house tasks were probably being filmed, now she has a London stand-up date right after Taskmaster finishes studio filming. And recently followed Alex on social media. I don’t want to get my hopes up too much, but I think this one looks the most likely of all possibilities so far.

- Bec Hill, no gigs until October, on that list of Alex Horne’s recent social media connections.

- Chris Addison – Doesn’t have any clashes as far as I can tell, though that doesn’t mean anything since he never does live gigs anymore.

- Rachel Parris, the other person on that list of Alex’s social media connections, has been ruled out

Okay, everyone, let’s talk Taskmaster speculation. I hate how stuff about the lineup for the following season can overshadow a season before it ends, or sometimes, like in this case, before it starts. It was around this time last year that they announced the Taskmaster season 17 studio filming dates, which perfectly coincided with some live gigs John Robins had canceled, so we all took time to get excited about that s17 lineup spoiler before season 16 had ever begun to air. Now, season 18 hasn’t started yet but we’re already talking about 19.

Spoiler alert, obviously, for vague speculation. I have no inside information or anything, so if you click through, you won’t be party to anything that’s meant to be secret. Just guesses based on publicly available information, which I know some people like to avoid, to preserve the surprise.

First of all, I find this Reddit post from a few weeks ago interesting. That obviously can’t be the exact five person lineup. First of all, Scroobius Pip would be a possible NYT candidate, probably not close enough to comedy for the main show. Secondly, obviously, all-white lineup. Thirdly, there’s no overseas person on the list, and we know from Alex’s recent interview that the season will contain that.

So it won’t be all five, but it could be a few of those. Social media evidence has been surprisingly accurate before, I remember in season 12, people accurately predicted 4/5 names before the studio filming started, just based on who’d recently followed Alex and each other. This may of course be wishful thinking on my part, that such vague social media evidence means anything, because that list contains two people who are on the shortlist of my dream contestants. Josie Long and Chris Addison would both be wonderful on there, particularly if they somehow ended up on the same season as each other.

Josie Long really should be there. She was the only women on the original Edinburgh Taskmaster in 2010, where there were a lot of men. Look at all the men in this video:

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The non-Josie Long contestants there were: Dan Atkinson, Jarred Christmas, James Dowdeswell, Tim Fitzhigham, Steve Hall, Tim Key, Lloyd Langford, Mark Watson, Henning Wehn, Joe Wilkinson, Mike Wozniak, and Tom Wrigglesworth. Josie Long spent a lot of years being the "only girl in the lineup" for lots of things, between when she started stand-up in 1997 and when they invented other female comedians in 2014 (I apologize to Jo Brand for that joke, who also spent years holding it down for women on panel shows before they let women on panel shows, no women were allowed to do that stuff in the 00s unless they were named Josephine). I think she should be compensated for that in the 2020s by being allowed to appear on pretty much anything she likes.

More significantly, she was also on the second of the Taskmaster live Edinburgh shows, in 2011. See if you can spot the odd one out in the contestants from The Taskmaster 2011: Bruce Dessau, Dan Atkinson, Henning Wehn, Joe Wilkinson, Josie Long, Lloyd Langford, Mark Watson, Steve Hall, Stuart Goldsmith and Tim Key. Yes, you are right, the odd one out is Bruce Dessau, for not being a comedian. Was he ever a comedian? It did not occur to me to wonder that until right now, did most comedy reviewers start out their careers as comedians, the way most sports commentators started out as athletes in that sport? I don't know. It's not important. But if he was ever a comedian, he sure wasn't one anymore by 2011, and it is notable that when recruiting comedians for his comedy show, Alex Horne brought in the same number of reviewers who don't perform comedy, as he did of women who do perform comedy.

Obviously the odd one out in the above list is actually Josie Long, as the only woman again. And I say this one is more significant because she made the finals, where she faced off against Stuart Goldsmith in a battle of who could fit the most grapes in their mouth, administered by 2010 champion Mike Wozniak:

and she won:

Mike Wozniak won the first live Taskmaster event, and he's been on the TV show. Josie Long, by rights as a live Edinburgh Taskmaster champion, should be. In addition to her being, you know, a very talented comedian and generally funny person who would be absolutely excellent on Taskmaster.

She has now done two full shows in the last five years, and is working on a third, about how she's very very busy these days, creating and then raising two children, and has moved to Glasgow so getting down for London-based comedy shows isn't so easy, so it's possible that she's been offered a spot on previous Taskmaster seasons and turned it down, which would be fair enough. But she should definitely qualify for an offer, for a number of reasons, some of which are real (I do sort of genuinely think that winning one of the original live Taskmaster events should earn someone the chance to be part of it when it becomes a lucrative television show, but obviously far more significant is that she's a very talented comedian and generally funny person who would be absolutely excellent on Taskmaster), and some of which are not (I was joking about the reparations for female comedians who were on panel shows before that 2014 rule, mostly, I mean it does feel like they should get something).

A friend of mine noticed that some gigs she did in London, back in June, had an odd hole in them that could be shaped like the filming of Taskmaster house tasks, for someone who lives in Glasgow and, if she had to go down to London to film a TV show, would want to make the most of the trip and plan some stand-up gigs around it. That, combined with the social media evidence presented on Reddit (and the fact that she surely has more right to a spot than anyone else who's not been on it yet), makes me think there's a reasonable chance of her being on season 19. I may be starting to believe this theory a bit too much, I need to pull back on that so I won't be disappointed if it doesn't happen. It's two pieces of evidence, but they're both fairly flimsy and circumstantial.

Chris Addison was also on that list of people who've moved into Alex Horne's social media orbit, and there is, of course, lots of precedent in his Tweets for making his feelings toward that show clear. First, a couple of Tweets that let us know he's not off in Glasgow doing his own thing; if he's not been on Taskmaster it's because he's not been given the offer:

And he's tried various Twitter tactics to get that offer, including showing off his knowledge of the show:

Flattery:

Selling his potential, and reverse psychology, combined into one Tweet:

And just implying that his casting is inevitable, like that'll manifest it into existence:

Chris Addison has been campaigning for ages to get a Taskmaster spot, and I think he'd make great TV if that happened. God, imagine a team with him and Josie Long together. How excellent would that be? Oh, and if he's on season 19, that's 2/3 of The Department covered in two seasons. Only one more member of that radio show they'd still need, if only Taskmaster would suddenly decide they're interested in casting someone who lives overseas, is a big name there, but maybe still has some connection to British comedy...

No, obviously I know the "overseas contestant" to whom Alex recently referred can't be John Oliver. They'll be filming the studio portions of season 19 during the peak of the American election campaign, John Oliver's a bit busy these days to fly to England and count eggs or whatever. If it was going to happen, it would have been last year during the writer's strike, when John had just done the Horne Section TV show and could surely have fit in an NYT filming. I'd love to get my hopes up, but not this time.

I am interested in the speculation about who the American will be, though. Obviously my first thought was of Paul F. Tompkins, as he's done the Taskmaster podcast twice, both times claiming to be a huge fan of the show, and backing up that claim by frequently beating Ed Gamble at knowing Taskmaster history. He said both times that he'd love to be on it, has even though about things like what his costume would be.

He was my first thought, and then I read that he's performing in the UK in September, so that seems like a pretty strong case for him. I thought I read at some point that he was doing the Comedy Bang Bang tour and then some other gigs with a possible Taskmaster-sized hole in between, and if that were true, it would be very clear evidence, either he's doing Taskmaster or he's pranking the public into thinking he is. But upon further research I don't think that's true, he'd doing the podcast tour and that's it. I still think he's a very likely candidate, just not as clear-cut as if he were doing one thing in Britain, and then another thing with a hole in the middle. If anyone else has also read that thing that I think I read somewhere that says he's doing that, and you know what that is, please let me know because I'd like to know if I've missed something and that's true after all.

My guess for the American contestant is still Paul F. Tompkins, and I think he'd be fun. Admittedly I only know him from Bojack Horseman and those two Taskmaster podcast episodes, but I generally assume anyone who was in Bojack Horseman is probably cool (partly because that show was a masterpiece, but it's not like Paul F. Tompkins wrote it, so I think that view mainly comes from a subconscious assumption I have that anyone who's ever met Kristen Schaal has to be all right), and he was very good on those Taskmaster podcast episodes.

Either way, I think this is a good time for me to jump on the Paul F. Tompkins bandwagon. I've had his stand-up on my list of stuff to get to for ages, and I think I'll watch/listen to that stuff now. If he's on Taskmaster, then great, I've jumped on a bandwagon at the right time and I'll go in knowing more about him. If he's not, I think I'll still have a good time with his comedy, as I keep hearing how great it is. There really is a lot I don't know about American comedy.

Besides Tompkins, from the vague evidence I've seen, I think Hank Green is an outside shot at the overseas Taskmaster contestant. I don't know what Dropout is and I hope Taskmaster doesn't force me to find out.

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