Taskmaster’s Alex Horne and Greg Davies

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of maximumfun.org and is distributed by NPR.

**Jesse Thorn** (0:21)
It's Bullseye, I'm Jesse Thorn. Imagine a TV show, a game show, a game show where the stakes could not be lower. There are no prizes to speak of, there are no rich guys who are gonna invest in your smart coffee thermos or whatever.
And imagine a game show where each contestant could not be more invested in the outcome of the game. So invested, they will do anything to win. Make and eat an insane sandwich, make a noise without the host identifying who you are, eat the most watermelon, any dumb old thing. The show is called Taskmaster. It's a British show, it airs on Channel 4 in the UK. Here in the United States, you can watch it on YouTube for free. I've pretty much given you the premise of the show. You get a bunch of comedians together, you assign them dumb tasks to do, and then the host decides who did the best job. If you've heard of Taskmaster, odds are that you're part of the show's gigantic, passionate, growing fan base in the United States. Here is a story. We did a live Bullseye recording last year with Jason Manzoukas. Jason, a very successful actor, he's on Brooklyn Nine-Nine and The Good Place and The League and a bunch of other shows. He also co-hosts a huge podcast called How Did This Get Made, wonderful show.
None of those credits earned him as much applause as when I mentioned that he had just appeared in season 19 of Taskmaster, which had not aired yet. Our audience at LAist in Pasadena absolutely lost their stuff.
Now, Taskmaster was created by Alex Horne. He co-hosts the show with Greg Davies. I could tell you more about them. We have a lot to get into, though, with Alex and Greg, so let's just do it. The Taskmaster, lads, on Bullseye starts now.

**Greg Davies** (2:23)
Welcome to a brand new series of Taskmasters.
Five fresh comedians have been prepared in our laughter kitchen and are about to be thrown into the buffet of fun to see if any of them have what it takes to be a main course at the giggle feast. I hope so. I'm Henry VIII of Chuckles and my big belly is in need of laughs.

**SPEAKER_5** (2:46)
Yum yum.

**Jesse Thorn** (2:49)
Greg, Alex, welcome to Bullseye. Thanks for coming out and making the time. So happy to have you on the show.

**Greg Davies** (2:54)
We're very happy to be on the show.

**Alex Horne** (2:56)
It's lovely to be on Bullseye. Hello.

**Greg Davies** (2:58)
Hello.

**Alex Horne** (2:59)
Hi, Greg.

**Greg Davies** (3:00)
Hello, Alex.

**Jesse Thorn** (3:03)
I can't have you guys icing each other out already.

**Alex Horne** (3:06)
Well, we've got natural chemistry.

**Greg Davies** (3:08)
Yeah.

**Alex Horne** (3:08)
Yeah. See, it just flows back and forth.

**Jesse Thorn** (3:11)
There's a tendency with guests from the United Kingdom to think that they've been booked on a darts themed game show from the 1970s.

**Greg Davies** (3:19)
It was a big show when I was growing up. Bullseye. Huge show.

**Alex Horne** (3:23)
I'm a lot younger though, so I don't know it.

**Jesse Thorn** (3:25)
It's like a drunk man, like a thick drunk man. Like he looks like a joke about a used car dealer in 1978 Yeah.

**Alex Horne** (3:37)
You're not content to just call him drunk. You're going thick and drunk.

**Greg Davies** (3:41)
What you're telling your audience is, there used to be a show in the UK that had a thick drunk man on it and nothing else.

**SPEAKER_5** (3:50)
You're not going to mention darts.

**Jesse Thorn** (3:51)
I said darts earlier. Earlier I said darts. I think darts is covered. It was a darts game show and we had at Bullseye on Twitter.
We would get notifications from people who thought they were talking to the man.

**Alex Horne** (4:08)
Jim Bowen.

**Greg Davies** (4:09)
Jim Bowen who's long passed away.

**Alex Horne** (4:11)
A very smart sober man he was too.

**Greg Davies** (4:13)
He was. He was intelligent and he was slim. So maybe you should rethink your prejudice.

**Jesse Thorn** (4:20)
No, not dim-witted like daddy thick, like thick body, like stout.

**Greg Davies** (4:26)
I'll tell you what Bullseye was great barometer for it and that's how nutrition has improved over the years. If you go back and have a look at some of the episodes of Bullseye, you'll see that like the contestants on Bullseye and they get asked at some point, they get asked how old they are by the host and you're thinking 60, 70 maybe and they're always 23, 24