I've found the perfect day out for fans of Taskmaster

Times

3 days ago

The extent to which Taskmaster has taken over the world is terrifying. There's the main Channel 4 series, of course — a sort of lateral-thinking talent show designed to delight and frustrate its contestants in equal measure. But things have splintered off into a million streams since then. There's a junior version, a book, a board game, a virtual-reality game, a live experience, a version for schools, a version to help the homeless — there is even a range of Taskmaster Christmas crackers.
However, Taskmaster has now decided to come directly to the people. As I discovered during a drizzly Wednesday morning this week at Dover Castle in Kent, there is now an official Taskmaster English Heritage experience. Scattered across 17 sites around the country — from Audley End to Wrest Park — a fleet of postboxes have been set up for the summer holidays. Inside them are envelopes containing a challenge for visitors to attempt.
On the basis of the Dover Castle challenge, these vary wildly in tone and difficulty: one postbox contained a dress-up box and instructions to re-enact a moment in history in 30 seconds or less; another involves balancing as many rubber ducks on your person as possible. The latter is particularly fiendish — despite an early flurry of enthusiasm I quickly came to realise that my body contains no flat surfaces whatsoever. After a minute I had managed to perch only seven ducks on my body, despite laying flat on damp grass. At that point, to compound my utter uselessness, a co-ordinator strolled over to inform me that a large Swedish man had covered himself in 80 the day before.
The genius of Taskmaster (the TV show) is that each challenge is so open-ended you cannot help but think of all the ways in which you'd tackle it, with the most recent tasks including 'do something really cool' and 'eat this yoghurt with the least dignity'. The genius of Taskmaster (English Heritage edition) is that it demonstrates beyond all doubt these things are much harder in practice than in theory.
Take the castle-building challenge, which on paper couldn't have appeared easier. You are instructed to use a trunkful of oversized Jenga blocks to construct a castle that can safely defend a rubber duck from an onslaught of other rubber ducks thrown by the judge (rubber ducks, as you may have deduced, is a primary theme of the event). The smart thing to do here — the thing that my children, aged seven and ten, did — would be to make an impenetrable Jenga shell. But I blanked and gave my castles little windows that were, it turns out, big enough for a rubber duck to pass through. My wife, acting as adjudicator, popped a single duck through the window and the game was over.
This brings me to a separate complaint. Greg Davies is a fine Taskmaster TV host. He is firm but fair and never plays favourites. My wife, on the other hand, had a biological imperative to favour my children's efforts over mine. The dressing-up challenge stipulated that the 'most emotional' re-creation would win — something that my seven-year-old exploited by screaming 'I can't do it' and flinging himself to the floor. Historically accurate? Absolutely not. But emotional? Unquestionably. As such, my wife awarded him maximum points (and my own note-perfect impression of a Second World War warden barely any), and now we're not really talking any more.
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It became clear that despite its huge reach Taskmaster remains a relatively niche interest. At times it felt as though there were the traditional English Heritage visitors (pleasant, middle-class, earnest) then the people who had come to take up the challenges (younger, louder, more willing to cover themselves in ducks). But I suppose that is the point. Once our challenge was over my children, who are not particularly castle-orientated, had a whale of a time exploring the site — an ancient fortress perched on a cliff with secret wartime tunnels and (of less national importance) a really good playground. And who knows, perhaps the more conservative patrons might have been tempted to give the games a shot too — what potentially brilliant cross-pollination this could be.
However, the experience did teach me that professional comedians must have no discernible sense of shame. When they're made to look foolish by a task they're doing it in front of a large viewing audience, while at the Heritage sites the biggest crowd of onlookers you might get is a consignment of slightly baffled Italian students. But even that was enough to send me into spasms of mortification.
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One task resulted in everyone present — me, my wife, my kids and a lovely Canadian family — all speaking in broad American accents. This would have been fine except: a) the only American accent I can do is Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel from The Simpsons; b) three very nice old American women walked past and glared at me; and c) this made me die inside to such an embarrassing extent that I wanted to spend the rest of the day following them around and apologising.
As you may have guessed, I came dead last, beaten by my ten-year-old and seven-year-old. English Heritage promises that the challenges are slightly different at each site, so I might try Battle Abbey in East Sussex next — with a different adjudicator, obviously. My marriage wouldn't survive it otherwise.
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Stuart Heritage was a guest of English Heritage, which is hosting Taskmaster challenges at 17 sites daily until August 31, included in site entry fees; Dover Castle admission is from £29 for adults, £18 for children (english-heritage.org.uk)
Would you try a Taskmaster-themed event? Let us know in the comments