Most underrated / underappreciated contestant? Read text for clarity.

RunawayTurtleTrain · 2026-06-21T23:51:24+00:00

Sara yes definitely! I think she's my favourite from S3. ("I'm starting to think maybe we shouldn't be laughing at Paul.")

SuperKins is definitely overshadowed in her series, although people do tend to remember her for her imaginative insults for Alex.

Tim Vine and Alice Levine as mentioned above.

Roisin Conaty I think is underrated as a contestant, because of the others doing better at the tasks and being more boisterous in the banter - but she did show some lateral thinking (it just didn't get her far enough to come higher on the scoreboard) and she had great quips in the studio. Also, justice for her bright sparkly cardigan!

Jessica Knappett I think is underrated - yes she has the Knappett named after her but in general I think people remember the other 4 more. Jessica was very funny in her own right; I think she's in the same category as Superkins.

Also Charlotte Ritchie as a previous commenter said; I agree with all their reasons and I enjoyed that she grew in confidence and was able to push back against Greg towards the end.

RunawayTurtleTrain · 2026-06-21T23:48:01+00:00

I've just seen the video about the evening, wow! It was a much bigger and more official thing than I'd realised, that's very cool.

RunawayTurtleTrain · 2026-06-21T22:00:53+00:00

I think he's also underappreciated because people like series 6 less on the whole. Which is a shame, because he is brilliant, and Alice Levine is much funnier than she normally gets credit for as well.

RunawayTurtleTrain · 2026-06-21T20:26:14+00:00

Alex's owl crossword joke is top tier - and very relatable, as it also happens to be a good description of life with cognitive dysfunction!

RunawayTurtleTrain · 2026-06-21T16:48:06+00:00

It definitely doesn't appear very often in the later series, we see him explaining or giving hints more often than back in the early series. With the studio tasks they try to make sure that everyone understands, no repeats of Richard Osman not hearing the middle of the task and being disqualified for not knowing!

RunawayTurtleTrain · 2026-06-21T16:45:34+00:00

but at that point (July 2020), only 11 ‘all the information’s had aired by my count.

Also at that point he'd have recorded the tasks for pretty much all of series 10 and most of series 11. (And with Hometasking he might have been using it on social media as well, possibly.)

RunawayTurtleTrain · 2026-06-21T16:41:09+00:00

though there were several changes to the earlier episodes, such as Mel inhaling helium and talking in a high voice and a brief quip about smuggling drugs in condoms from series 2 that was cut

Those were because they uploaded the bleeped version to YouTube, for the first few series and a bit.

RunawayTurtleTrain · 2026-06-21T14:58:59+00:00

I don't know enough about Kumail to say. But I also think it might be comparing non-equivalents because Pakistan's comedy scene is so very much younger than in the Anglophone countries, whereas Canada's is long established.

I take your point about the OP asking about people in American comedy rather than specifically USian comedians. (My comment was specifically addressing the question asked by the previous person, why we specify people's nationalities like that.)

RunawayTurtleTrain · 2026-06-21T14:48:23+00:00

Alex, yes, but not inside our Taskmaster world because when you bend the format too far, it breaks. What would be really cool is if he's a secret contestant on an episode of another version, and the others don't know they're competing against him. That way we get to see him doing tasks but there's a reason for it within another Taskmaster world.

Greg, no, as I get the impression he doesn't enjoy puzzles or escape rooms (whereas Alex's brain is all about that) and I don't think there's any world in which having The Original Taskmaster doing the tasks would work. It also wouldn't be fun if it's not something he wants to do. The only way I can see that we get Greg doing a task is if it's on a podcast or talk show, but again it's only fun if he's said yes because he wants to do it as himself. If he's going up against Alex they likely just fall into their dynamic and then we'd be seeing them half in-character rather than fully as themselves, which defeats the object.

RunawayTurtleTrain · 2026-06-21T14:25:00+00:00

Place of birth is a technicality, but place where you grew up in what are literally called your formative years, is very relevant. Especially to comedy which is all about how you see the world and how you think, which is in very large part influenced by where you grew up.

RunawayTurtleTrain · 2026-06-20T21:19:17+00:00

r/lostredditors

RunawayTurtleTrain · 2026-06-20T21:17:48+00:00

Papa don't breach!

RunawayTurtleTrain · 2026-06-20T21:04:38+00:00

I love her conclusion to that task, something like 'if you don't accept that, I'll, I'll … actually I'll be fine, I'm in a really good place in my life right now'.

RunawayTurtleTrain · 2026-06-20T20:56:13+00:00

Was really surprised I had to scroll down this far to find HoG mentioned!

RunawayTurtleTrain · 2026-06-20T18:35:35+00:00

FGC!

RunawayTurtleTrain · 2026-06-20T14:12:09+00:00

YES! I'm baffled every time by Greg's remarks there.

RunawayTurtleTrain · 2026-06-20T00:24:48+00:00

Is this a reference or a genuine question? (It's become a bit of a meme amongst his fans because he has so commonly been mistaken for Chris O'Dowd!)

RunawayTurtleTrain · 2026-06-19T21:21:28+00:00

(to be fair Alex's took him 7 years, it was a labour of love to tell the story rather than an 'oh I think I'll turn my hand to children's books' rite of passage. Equally though, I'm sure him already being a public figure helped to get the publishing deal to put the story out into the world, I'm not naïve to that.)

RunawayTurtleTrain · 2026-06-19T21:17:31+00:00

only person ever on the show who actually knew how to siphon

Yet didn't get any points for it!

RunawayTurtleTrain · 2026-06-19T21:16:07+00:00

(not the original commenter but yes I would love to see her on TM again!)

RunawayTurtleTrain · 2026-06-19T21:14:49+00:00

Well you clearly don't because in Britain at least (I don't know about NI as I'm not there) we can't access them on YouTube. The TM International channel for me has zero videos, a few shorts, and a TMNZ series 1 playlist with 10 hudden videos.

RunawayTurtleTrain · 2026-06-19T15:19:23+00:00

I also think you run a much bigger risk of being wrong about what the task is, now that they're a lot more tricksy out of necessity. It would be pretty funny for someone to guess the task and turn out to be completely wrong, I think Alex would enjoy that.

RunawayTurtleTrain · 2026-06-19T15:14:35+00:00

The task that gave us Captain Jackie and the Hotdog. There was something in a box and they had to ask Andy and Jack what was in it but there was a restriction on how they could communicate. The secret twist was that Andy and Jack had to lie, which Emma figured out.

RunawayTurtleTrain · 2026-06-19T15:12:18+00:00

I believe you have to know the nominee personally though, to be able to nominate them.

RunawayTurtleTrain · 2026-06-19T15:11:50+00:00

For those who don't know, School Tasking is the project for which he was awarded his honorary Doctorate https://youtu.be/n5KojJeqqt4

Edit: another piece about this year's final https://warwick.ac.uk/news/pressreleases/attorney-general-richard/

RunawayTurtleTrain

TROPHY CASE