Top 10 Hilarious Taskmaster Meltdowns

The drawing tasks are always bizarre and this convoluted “draw three lines of an animal” one from series 10 really took the cake. Daisy May Cooper was drawing and Richard Herring guessing, but he was absolutely atrocious. He guessed every animal under the sun, including hamster, as she got more and more irate. Cooper always seems like she’s at least a little bit angry, but this tipped her over the edge. She finally revealed that it was a hippo and lost it asking how he didn’t work out what it was, when everybody on the other team had already announced that they’d cracked it. To be fair, though, it DOES look like a cat.

Allegations of bias struck series 7, with James Acaster saying that Greg was clearly treading Rhod Gilbert as a favourite because they’d been friends for decades. The angriest Acaster moment was during the team task where they had to build an extension, and he found out that Gilbert had opened the garage and not told him and Phil Wang that everything in it was available to build with. The result was a rubbish tent on the side of the house. In another incident, Acaster was livid when Gilbert found a satsuma inside and put it in a sock instead of finding the one Alex had hidden, saying that he should be disqualified.

Another team task, this time Fern Brady, Dara O’Briain and John Kearns were trying to fill a trolley with as much sand as possible while touching each other’s hips. But Kearns was given the secret task to sabotage their team, getting himself five bonus points if the other team won. Fern and Dara were furious as soon as the task began when John couldn’t work out which hip he was supposed to put his hand on and lost their mids when he tipped all the sand out. When his secret task was revealed and it turned out that he’d been successful, there were no laughs from either of them.

All the way back in series 1 and Josh Widdicombe was given some of his own special tasks to complete. He had to count a tin of beans, count a tin of spaghetti hoops, and count all the grains of rice in a bag. In the studio it was revealed that nobody else was given these tasks, just Josh, and that he wasn’t going to be awarded any bonus points for them, either. It was brutal, especially after he went to the effort of getting a tattoo to permanently remember his time on “Taskmaster”. These are easily some of our favourite secret tasks, and Josh could hardly contain his anger when he found out that only he had to do it.

Mel Giedroyc was also given a secret task in series 4. Specifically, this task was designed to break her spirit, as Greg and Alex thought that she was just too enthusiastic and positive. Alex gave her a few minutes to hide a giant, inflatable ball on a football field and watched her slowly unravel. He then revealed that this wasn’t the only ball-related task Mel was given, as she was also made to do a few more back at the “Taskmaster” house, all concocted to infuriate her. Relative to some of the other contestants on “Taskmaster”, Mel didn’t get that angry, but relative to how nice she usually is, she was fuming.

This was easily one of the cruellest tasks Alex has ever devised for the show, placing seven tasks in a circle on the red green and leaving the contestants free to complete them in any order. But the order was crucial, as depending on which way they were picked up, the tasks were easy or extremely hard. Ed Gamble and Jo Brand were destroyed by this, with Brand saying that she was about to have a stroke and Gamble claiming that it was the worst day of his life. In the end, though, they all broke one rule or another, so it ended with vindication for Gamble as he was awarded the full five points.

It’s double trouble this time, as both Iain Stirling and Lou Sanders lost their temper in this task. Paul Sinha looked on helplessly as they shouted and argued with each other. They couldn’t agree on how to approach the task, bickering for ages about whether they should just climb in themselves or rely on objects alone. In the studio afterwards they were still at each other’s throats. The matter was made worse by the revelation right at the end that Lou dropped a book before putting it in the hammock, which the action replay determine she had NOT caught, therefore disqualifying them.

The group was asked to erase an eraser, and both Joe Thomas and Sian Gibson decided they were going to completely rub their rubbers out into a powder – at first. While Joe continued to use his until it was dust, Sian set hers on fire and then threw it into a bush. Elsewhere and Paul flushed his down the toilet, which led to an argument in the studio about whether it had actually been erased or not. Cue this classic outburst from Joe as he argued with Iain. Him apologising immediately afterwards just made it even better.

Alex claimed that this was an easy task, with the contestants sent into the lab and asked to find ten ducks. While Ardal O’Hanlon enjoyed it despite finding next to nothing, other contestants weren’t nearly as patient. Bridget Christie became infuriated with Alex and the bad job he was doing refereeing the task. First of all, he put the task so high up that she struggled to reach it, and then he kept asking her questions throughout. Though she was the only one who got the crafty “canard” clue, she was still infuriated, as was everybody else. More than one tried to rip the fake chickens apart in their hunt for ducks.

This list wouldn’t be complete without one of Ed Gamble’s legendary outbursts about David Baddiel and his superhuman incompetence. More than anybody else, Gamble was infuriated by him, and it reached a climax in this live task. They were asked to draw a picture that was being drawn on their back by their teammate, with Gamble immediately horrified that he’d been put on a team with Baddiel again. He was livid, with Baddiel drawing any old thing and completely ignoring what Ed was doing, and therefore producing a load of rubbish. Time and time again, he misunderstood every instruction he was given. Let us know in the comments who your favourite unhinged “Taskmaster” contestant was.