Latest news with #MocktheWeek
Scottish Sun
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Scottish Sun
Frankie Boyle's net worth revealed as wealth soars
Although he made the bold claim that he thinks money is "pretty pointles s" despite his fortune IN THE MONEY Frankie Boyle's net worth revealed as wealth soars COMEDIAN Frankie Boyle boosted the value of his personal company to more than £4.2 million last year. The stand-up's firm has just posted a healthy set of financial figures. 2 Frankie Boyle's wealth has soared in the last year Credit: PA:Press Association 2 The comedian's earnings have skyrocketed since 2005 The Glasgow-born comic's earnings have rocketed since he shot to fame on the BBC panel show Mock the Week in 2005. Boyle, 52, has earned a fortune from television appearances, documentaries and sell-out tours. Latest accounts for his company McShane Karate show the firm has total assets of £4,953,846. That is made up of £2,340,357 held in an account, £964,980 owed by debtors, tangible assets of £1,386,957 and a £261,552 investment portfolio. The company owes £734,023 to creditors within a year leaving it with shareholder funds of £4,219,823 - almost double the previous year's figure of £2,233,288. Boyle set up the London-based firm in 2014 and the accounts cover the period up until August 31 last year. Despite his earnings, Boyle has previously described money as 'pointless' and said he did not enjoy splashing out on so-called luxuries. In an interview with fellow comedian Frank Skinner, he said: 'I think ultimately money is pretty pointless. 'When you get to the point that you have money you realise that luxury and that whole idea you were sold of 'Oh it would be nice to go on a cruise', well it really isn't. "It's like being at a China Buffet King on roller skates for two weeks. Frankie Boyle leaves fans in stitches over outfit on Taskmaster 'And these meals that they sell, a romantic meal on the beach and then there's sand on your food and that table moves in the sand and the waiter is smoking a fag. 'None of it is any good. It's like trying to eat the picture of a burger off a menu, it's all just a sales pitch.' Boyle won a Bafta Scotland award in 2023 for his Channel 4 documentary Frankie Boyle's Farewell To the Monarchy. His debut novel, which is called Meantime and is set in Glasgow, was published in 2022 and he completed a UK stand-up tour last year. Last year, he revealed he is considering quitting stand-up to write 'cosy crime' novels.
Yahoo
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
The Show I Thought I'd Hate (And Learned to Love)
For ages, various friends of mine recommended that I check out Taskmaster, a British comedy game show in which a group of five comedians earn points by completing a series of silly challenges. The show, which first premiered in 2015, has crossed the ocean in recent years to become a word-of-mouth hit, with fans drawn to its comic hijinks and nonsensical premise. Yet every time my friends nudged me toward Taskmaster, I'd wrinkle my nose. Making the program sound exciting is tough: The idea of stand-up comics and character actors improvising art projects and undergoing physical trials doesn't seem like it'd be very fun to watch. And more important, I spent much of my youth in England; as I'd repeat to anyone who'd listen, I left the country to escape series like this one. Taskmaster is what's known as a panel show, a format that is a pillar of British TV. It's as foundational as the pre-dinnertime soap operas or the smoldering costume dramas that are exported to Masterpiece. Series in this genre are typically simple and cheap to produce: A committee composed of several comedic entertainers make fun of current events (Mock the Week, Have I Got News for You), answer trivia questions (QI, The Big Fat Quiz of the Year), or suss out which of them is telling the truth (the aptly titled Would I Lie to You?). The panelists' goal is to amuse one another as much as they do the audience. This type of comedy series can be good background viewing, but it's also overwhelmingly homogenous—both the rotating casts and the bits often start to feel repetitive. So the thought of diving into Taskmaster didn't initially appeal to me, even with the more competitive angle; after all, plenty of panel shows ostensibly revolve around a game, even if winning it doesn't matter. The Taskmaster setup, I discovered, is special, despite the glancing similarities to programs of its ilk. After enough hounding by some pals—British and American ones—I gave in and fired up an episode. (In the United States, the series is available to watch in its entirety on YouTube and Pluto TV.) At first, I was at most mildly amused by the seemingly traditional panel-style proceedings. But I was properly hooked after the comics were issued a bizarre prompt: 'Create the best caricature of the person on the other side of the curtain. You may not look at the person. The person may only say yes and no.' [Read: The game show that parodies your to-do list] Strange requests of this nature, I soon learned, are Taskmaster's bread and butter. The activities are overseen by the titular Taskmaster, Greg Davies, and his assistant, Alex Horne. Horne is the show's creator, but on-screen, he plays an eager second fiddle to Davies, who presides over each episode with imperious fury. Davies judges the panelists based on a combination of in-studio and on-location challenges. The ones undertaken onstage follow set rules: First, guests present the funniest answer to a ridiculous request (such as finding the 'most interesting autograph on the most interesting vegetable'); then they take on a dare that unites them in some sort of tomfoolery. The remote tasks, however, are the series's centerpiece. Sometimes, the premise is straightforward—finding creative ways to fill a tub with water or slide the furthest distance, for example. Sometimes, it's a more subjective concept, where who wins is totally up to Davies's personal taste. And sometimes it's a puzzle of sorts, a fiendish brainteaser designed by Horne and his team to get the best, most infuriated reactions from the participants. The contestants watch edited clips of their performances together, giving them the chance to see—and poke fun at—how they each accomplished the challenges. The seemingly impossible assignment Horne and company have set for themselves is to create a weeks-long tournament focused on what appears to be a mundane idea. The stakes are somehow ridiculously low—the winner essentially just receives bragging rights, along with a comically ugly metal bust of Davies's head—and incredibly high, for comedians looking to boost their notoriety. But the revelations that emerge, such as which comedian has a surprising level of artistic talent or a particularly creative approach to problem-solving, are more than just hilarious. The panelists handle their tasks seriously; each prompt yields very different results, and the methods they choose offer a small, fascinating glimpse into the inner workings of their brain. Watching how they go about keeping a basketball on a treadmill without touching it is as much part of the joy as hearing the jokes they tell about it afterward. I started with Season 4, because it had several guests I recognized—the comedians Noel Fielding and Mel Giedroyc were well known when I lived in England, and the actor Hugh Dennis has memorably popped up in international hits such as Fleabag. Taskmaster almost always throws some up-and-coming British comics into the mix too; the variety makes for an exciting change of pace from the stagnant casts populating the panel shows I remember. The serialized format also helped me become a fan of the performers I was less familiar with. The emotional investment builds naturally, with the audience following the contestants week to week. [Read: The comic who's his own worst enemy] The show even seems willing to expand its own comedic sensibilities. Season 19, which began airing last week, features a notable American player—the actor Jason Mantzoukas, a podcast and sitcom legend who's probably best known for his work on The League and Parks and Recreation. Only one other American comedian, Desiree Burch, has been on Taskmaster before now; unlike Mantzoukas, she is established in the U.K. and has lived there for more than a decade. American humor can often be more brash than British comedy, which is cloaked in irony and self-deprecation. So far, however, Mantzoukas's high energy is gelling well with the show's competitive bent. The first episode—which, like every installment, landed on YouTube the day after its premiere—makes clear that his anarchic style would stand out against Taskmaster's vibe of enthusiastic curiosity, what with its big, brassy score and fast-paced editing. That spirit does take some getting used to. For its first few years, Taskmaster was a cult program even within the United Kingdom. It has since cultivated a loving fan base and expanded into a global franchise, with editions produced in New Zealand, Finland, and Croatia. By contrast, a spin-off made for U.S. audiences in 2018 flopped. Yet the producers seem to believe that the American audience is only growing, as bringing in Mantzoukas, putting every episode online, and announcing the Season 19 cast at an event in New York City all suggest. Instead of Americanizing it, however, it's best to emphasize Taskmaster's most easily translated quality: its sense of novelty. With reinvention baked right into the concept—new participants each season, new tasks each episode—it stays fresh and compelling far longer than the average British comedy game show. I still swear I'll never watch another panel series, as cute as the clips that come across my social-media feeds sometimes are. When it comes to Taskmaster, the efforts made to win over someone as resistant as me have worked: I'm now as fervent as the folks who urged me years ago to check it out. Article originally published at The Atlantic
Atlantic
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Atlantic
The Show I Thought I'd Hate (And Learned to Love)
For ages, various friends of mine recommended that I check out Taskmaster, a British comedy game show in which a group of five comedians earn points by completing a series of silly challenges. The show, which first premiered in 2015, has crossed the ocean in recent years to become a word-of-mouth hit, with fans drawn to its comic hijinks and nonsensical premise. Yet every time my friends nudged me toward Taskmaster, I'd wrinkle my nose. Making the program sound exciting is tough: The idea of stand-up comics and character actors improvising art projects and undergoing physical trials doesn't seem like it'd be very fun to watch. And more important, I spent much of my youth in England; as I'd repeat to anyone who'd listen, I left the country to escape series like this one. Taskmaster is what's known as a panel show, a format that is a pillar of British TV. It's as foundational as the pre-dinnertime soap operas or the smoldering costume dramas that are exported to Masterpiece. Series in this genre are typically simple and cheap to produce: A committee composed of several comedic entertainers make fun of current events (Mock the Week, Have I Got News for You), answer trivia questions (QI, The Big Fat Quiz of the Year), or suss out which of them is telling the truth (the aptly titled Would I Lie to You?). The panelists' goal is to amuse one another as much as they do the audience. This type of comedy series can be good background viewing, but it's also overwhelmingly homogenous—both the rotating casts and the bits often start to feel repetitive. So the thought of diving into Taskmaster didn't initially appeal to me, even with the more competitive angle; after all, plenty of panel shows ostensibly revolve around a game, even if winning it doesn't matter. The Taskmaster setup, I discovered, is special, despite the glancing similarities to programs of its ilk. After enough hounding by some pals—British and American ones—I gave in and fired up an episode. (In the United States, the series is available to watch in its entirety on YouTube and Pluto TV.) At first, I was at most mildly amused by the seemingly traditional panel-style proceedings. But I was properly hooked after the comics were issued a bizarre prompt: 'Create the best caricature of the person on the other side of the curtain. You may not look at the person. The person may only say yes and no.' Strange requests of this nature, I soon learned, are Taskmaster 's bread and butter. The activities are overseen by the titular Taskmaster, Greg Davies, and his assistant, Alex Horne. Horne is the show's creator, but on-screen, he plays an eager second fiddle to Davies, who presides over each episode with imperious fury. Davies judges the panelists based on a combination of in-studio and on-location challenges. The ones undertaken onstage follow set rules: First, guests present the funniest answer to a ridiculous request (such as finding the 'most interesting autograph on the most interesting vegetable'); then they take on a dare that unites them in some sort of tomfoolery. The remote tasks, however, are the series's centerpiece. Sometimes, the premise is straightforward—finding creative ways to fill a tub with water or slide the furthest distance, for example. Sometimes, it's a more subjective concept, where who wins is totally up to Davies's personal taste. And sometimes it's a puzzle of sorts, a fiendish brainteaser designed by Horne and his team to get the best, most infuriated reactions from the participants. The contestants watch edited clips of their performances together, giving them the chance to see—and poke fun at—how they each accomplished the challenges. The seemingly impossible assignment Horne and company have set for themselves is to create a weeks-long tournament focused on what appears to be a mundane idea. The stakes are somehow ridiculously low—the winneressentially just receives bragging rights, along with a comically ugly metal bust of Davies's head—and incredibly high, for comedians looking to boost their notoriety. But the revelations that emerge, such as which comedian has a surprising level of artistic talent or a particularly creative approach to problem-solving, are more than just hilarious. The panelists handle their tasks seriously; each prompt yields very different results, and the methods they choose offer a small, fascinating glimpse into the inner workings of their brain. Watching how they go about keeping a basketball on a treadmill without touching it is as much part of the joy as hearing the jokes they tell about it afterward. I started with Season 4, because it had several guests I recognized—the comedians Noel Fielding and Mel Giedroyc were well known when I lived in England, and the actor Hugh Dennis has memorably popped up in international hits such as Fleabag. Taskmaster almost always throws some up-and-coming British comics into the mix too; the variety makes for an exciting change of pace from the stagnant casts populating the panel shows I remember. The serialized format also helped me become a fan of the performers I was less familiar with. The emotional investment builds naturally, with the audience following the contestants week to week. The show even seems willing to expand its own comedic sensibilities. Season 19, which began airing last week, features a notable American player—the actor Jason Mantzoukas, a podcast and sitcom legend who's probably best known for his work on The League and Parks and Recreation. Only one other American comedian, Desiree Burch, has been on Taskmaster before now; unlike Mantzoukas, she is established in the U.K. and has lived there for more than a decade. American humor can often be more brash than British comedy, which is cloaked in irony and self-deprecation. So far, however, Mantzoukas's high energy is gelling well with the show's competitive bent. The first episode—which, like every installment, landed on YouTube the day after its premiere—makes clear that his anarchic style would stand out against Taskmaster 's vibe of enthusiastic curiosity, what with its big, brassy score and fast-paced editing. That spirit does take some getting used to. For its first few years, Taskmaster was a cult program even within the United Kingdom. It has since cultivated a loving fan base and expanded into a global franchise, with editions produced in New Zealand, Finland, and Croatia. By contrast, a spin-off made for U.S. audiences in 2018 flopped. Yet the producers seem to believe that the American audience is only growing, as bringing in Mantzoukas, putting every episode online, and announcing the Season 19 cast at an event in New York City all suggest. Instead of Americanizing it, however, it's best to emphasize Taskmaster 's most easily translated quality: its sense of novelty. With reinvention baked right into the concept—new participants each season, new tasks each episode—it stays fresh and compelling far longer than the average British comedy game show. I still swear I'll never watch another panel series, as cute as the clips that come across my social-media feeds sometimes are. When it comes to Taskmaster, the efforts made to win over someone as resistant as me have worked: I'm now as fervent as the folks who urged me years ago to check it out.
Metro
29-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Metro
Katherine Ryan: 'I spiralled when the audience refused to laugh at my jokes'
Katherine Ryan might be one of the best-known comedians in the country, but she recently faced the brutal response from an audience who refused to laugh at her jokes. Best known for appearing on shows including 8 Out of 10 Cats, Never Mind the Buzzcocks, A League of Their Own, Mock the Week, Would I Lie to You?, QI and Have I Got News for You, the 40-year-old is now one of the stars of the new game show Silence is Golden. The premise of the six-episode series is pretty simple. Hosted by Dermot O'Leary, each episode begins with broadcaster U&Dave giving the studio audience £250,000 to share between them. All they need to do to keep it is to keep completely silent and not make a sound. That means no talking, no laughing and no gasping. Standing between them and the prize money are comedians and team captains Katherine, Seann Walsh and Fatiha El-Ghorri, who help lead a group of acts to wage war on the audience. If they get the prize pot to £0, they get to give it to charity. Their tactics are hilarious and sometimes completely underhanded, with one scene in the premiere episode leaving an audience member in shock as Katherine brings out her dog and sarcastically threatens to harm him if the woman doesn't react. Despite her best efforts, Katherine's attempts to break the audience members was an uphill battle – and even impossible at times. She said it was brutal realising their pre-prepared material 'wasn't working'. 'Anything you prepare for on this show doesn't work, and we went into it thinking we are competent stand-up comedians,' she said. 'But when they weren't reacting I was absolutely spiralling and that's why we were just trying whatever we could.' 'It's really unnatural to have an audience who are stone faced…we were incredibly destabilised. We were doing and saying things that we wouldn't normally say. We're usually very prepared doing standup, but we could not prepare for this and had to be adaptable.' However, she added: 'I know that our job was to take the money but then I did see them really celebrating, which was nice. I felt like I worked for an insurance company, and I knew that I was on the side of evil.' Meanwhile Seann explained: 'Even though you're aware that they are being paid £250,000 to not laugh at you, you think that might take off some of the sting when you're there, and it doesn't. They're just staring at you and the money doesn't matter. It feels as awful as it would if they weren't being paid at all. Yeah, it's absolutely horrific. But it's great to watch the other comics struggle.' Katherine and Seann also had to grapple with contradictory feelings of wanting to see the audience win some cash but also ensure they carried out their job to make them react and lose money. 'These guys are under a lot of pressure because, you know, U have said to us at the start, we don't have £250,000 pounds to give away. Like the channel's going down if they failed,' Dermot joked. But with such a massive amount of money on the line, the audience members were incredibly determined and were not impressed if someone broke. 'One thing that we didn't expect going into the show was that they were going to start turning on each other, which is such a huge part of the show and that grew naturally,' he laughed. 'We thought that the interval was actually a chance for them to kind of relax and unwind and what we didn't know is they were going to start turning on each other. And shouting! It's a great piece of television.' Throughout the process Dermot also gets the chance to try and bribe the audience members with money or prizes. If they speak, they can secure an individual prize, but doing so results in the group losing money. 'You can see them just kind of going, 'I'm just gonna go for myself'. So, I'd come on and go, 'ok who wants to do xyz for 200 quid and one would be like ME!'. Then the rest would go 'oh no that's just cost us 10 grand' and this one guy is like, 'I don't care, I've got 200 quid'.' More Trending Katherine went on to share that the 'desperation' on show in Silence is Golden also resulted in a 'authentic' series unlike any other game show seen before. 'You get to see people's natural reactions when it comes to greed and then when it comes to desperation, like everyone is at their most authentic because we don't know what to do and we just have to win,' she said. 'So, it's a real fight or flight series and then we were forced to throw the most unimaginable, surprising acts at the audience. It's not like anything else you'll see and is such a fun concept.' View More » Silence is Golden starts on Monday May 5 on U and U&Dave. Got a story? If you've got a celebrity story, video or pictures get in touch with the entertainment team by emailing us celebtips@ calling 020 3615 2145 or by visiting our Submit Stuff page – we'd love to hear from you. MORE: Comedian Milton Jones cancels tour dates after devastating prostate cancer diagnosis MORE: Katherine Ryan reveals the savage reason Stephen Hawking rejected her MORE: Bitter war over Benny Hill's £7,500,000 fortune revealed
RTÉ News
28-04-2025
- Entertainment
- RTÉ News
Comedian Milton Jones reveals he has prostate cancer and cancels tour dates
Comedian Milton Jones has revealed he has been diagnosed with prostate cancer and has cancelled a number of tour dates as he undergoes surgery. The 60-year-old, who is known for his appearances on Mock the Week, said his cancer was treatable. He added that a number of further tour dates would be rescheduled. In an Instagram post, Jones said: "Thanks for your support and respecting my privacy during this time. "This decision has not been taken lightly, trust me. "Abnormal service will resume as soon as possible and I'm looking forward to being back out on the road again soon - though probably not on a bike!" Jones said cancelling the shows was a "difficult decision". He said he would be "undergoing surgery soon", adding that he would "need time afterwards to fully recover". Olympic cyclist Chris Hoy, who has stage four cancer after his prostate cancer spread, was among those responding to Jones's post, saying: "Really sorry to hear it mate, best of luck." Fellow comedian Al Murray said: "All the best Milton for a speedy recovery." Announcing the cancellation, Jones said: "I'm so sorry about this but I need to announce the cancellation of several dates from my ongoing Ha!Milton Tour. "Ticket holders for the cancelled shows will be contacted directly by the venue box office." Jones said all of the dates currently planned for autumn would be unaffected. Prostate cancer develops slowly, so there may be no signs for years, but signs may include an increased need to urinate, straining while urinating, and a feeling that the bladder has not fully emptied. Jones's career has seen him perform on Live at the Apollo, Lee Mack's All Star Cast, and Michael McIntyre's Comedy Roadshow.
