Taskmaster
Billy Monger’s Big Red Nose Day Challenge
Rating: 
Admit it, you had a go, too. And it’s not as simple as it looks. There’s no shame in it — everyone who tuned in as Taskmaster (C4) returned felt the urge to spin a cushion on one finger, like a magician twirling a plate on a stick.
Stand-up comic Jamali Maddix made it look so easy. Challenged in one of the show’s daft games to do something ‘impressive’ with one hand beneath a desk, he set a cushion whirling like a Frisbee.
Compere Greg Davies sneered, until he tried it himself. Apparently, the trick is to fold a crease into the cushion first but . . . nope, I still can’t do it.
Usually, Taskmaster players praise each other and sometimes gang up on Greg, like rowdy children ragging a teacher. Greg Davies is pictured above with the show’s creator Alex Horne in October
There’s no doubt, after ten weeks of enforced boredom, my threshold for fun is set very low. When a future generation asks: ‘What did you do in the lockdown, great-grandfather?’
I shall reply: ‘We made our own entertainment, spinning cushions on our fingers —and we counted ourselves lucky!’
Taskmaster is a welcome dose of fun, even if the five rivals are seated so far apart that they have to cup their hands and shout to make their ad-libs heard.
They’re competing to win a misshapen bust of Greg’s head, his ‘golden bonce of victory’ — and early signs are that this intake will be viciously competitive.
Usually, Taskmaster players praise each other and sometimes gang up on Greg, like rowdy children ragging a teacher. But this lot are already fighting among themselves.
The final task of the episode was to build a tower by stacking metal buckets. Call The Midwife actress Charlotte Ritchie picked up a beanbag and hurled it at Mike Wozniak’s teetering effort, with dead-eye accuracy. I bet she’s lethal at a coconut shy.
Soon, they were all lobbing beanbags and buckets. The only one to complete the task was Australian comedian Sarah Kendall — a sensible prefect, shocked to find herself lumped in with the remedial class.
Other tests included carrying stacks of crockery while riding a scooter, and building a trap to catch a radio-controlled rat. Lee Mack’s, combining a bathtub, a cricket bat and a tennis ball disguised as a lump of cheese, was a marvel of Heath Robinson ingenuity.
It’s all innocent fun, with the atmosphere of a school sports day running out of control. Billy Monger’s Big Red Nose Day Challenge (BBC1) was far more gruelling.
The 21-year-old is an inspiration, but my muscles ached just to watch him tackle his charity ultra-marathon.
Billy, a former teenage racing driver, lost both his legs after a high-speed crash, days before his 18th birthday.
His determined fight to race again has been charted in a previous documentary that left me agog with admiration for this cheerfully dauntless young man.
The 21-year-old is an inspiration, but my muscles ached just to watch him tackle his charity ultra-marathon
This time he was raising money for charities including a boxing gym for troubled youngsters, and doing it the hard way — by trekking, canoeing and cycling 140 miles on prosthetic legs.
His task was made much harder by Covid. There were no crowds along the route to cheer him on.
On the final day, dragging himself in near silence around laps of Brand’s Hatch grand prix circuit, there were only his parents and sister, hollering encouragement. Billy’s sporting heroes, including footballers and Olympic athletes, had to send pep talks via video.
It was another reminder of how difficult, in unimagined ways, lockdowns are making life.
But Billy wasn’t quitting. ‘It wasn’t until I had my accident,’ he said, ‘that I realised how precious life is. I don’t want to let one setback define me.’
The boy’s a star.
Political fantasy of the night: Diane (Christine Baranski) danced for joy in The Good Fight (More4), as she woke up in an alternative universe where Hillary Clinton was U.S. President. How long, I wonder, till the Beeb floats a sitcom in which Jeremy Corbyn is PM?