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Taskmaster’s Alex Horne has sadly revealed that a spin-off of the well-loved Channel 4 might not happen.
The assistant to Greg Davies, who originally created the Channel 4 series as a live stage show at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, was on Richard Herring’s podcast promoting his new children’s book, The Last Pebble.
Richard, who has appeared on the comedy challenge series himself, was quizzing Alex about the possibility of ‘World Cup of Taskmaster’ and ‘Champion of Champions of Champions’.
When asked about the former, Alex initially responded by saying: ‘I would love that, I used to love International Gladiators. Also Going for Gold.’
Tragically, he then divulged: ‘But I think commissioners aren’t that interested. They don’t want to see [a] Swedish person particularly.’
Admitting he didn’t agree, Alex said: ‘But I think that’s interesting. I’d love to see that.’
The pair then discussed who would host the format, should it go worldwide. Alex suggested it would ‘have to be Greg’ but claimed ‘the assistants are more interchangeable’.
He humbly put forward ‘Paul Williams’ as a ‘better assistant’ than him: ‘He’s sort of similar to me in that he’s quite nerdy, but he’s really good looking. People think I’m good at music but I’m not, I’ve got a band, but Paul is really good at music. He’s good at acting. He’s funnier than me.’
Although Alex admitted that the higher-ups aren’t biting when it comes to this particular idea, there is some hope to be held onto for diehard fans of the show who want more spin-offs.
When responding to Richard, who said: ‘I heard you’re not going to do a Champion of Champions of Champions which I’m very upset about’, the 47-year-old expressed light-hearted exasperation that you say so much while doing interviews that gets taken as straight fact.
While he didn’t confirm or deny if it would happen, he clarified: ‘So we’re not at that stage yet.’
Alex went on: ‘We’ve still got one more Champion of Champions to go before we even consider that.’
This said, he did reveal that he had a ‘slight hunch that you should leave people wanting more’ and ‘you shouldn’t always give people what they want’.
Interestingly, he suggested that more people would ‘prefer to watch a Loser of Losers’ but his confliction lies in the fact that he also has a ‘problem rewarding failure’.
There have been four instalments of the two-part special series Taskmaster: Champion of Champions, which sees winners of previous seasons go head to head for the ultimate title.
Earlier this year, Alex told the Radio Times: ‘People ask us about adding a Champion of Champion of Champions.
‘I think, instead of that, we have got something up our sleeves in the near-ish future, of doing a slightly interesting series. It’s just some tweaks, but I can’t say any more than that. So [we have got] something. We’ve got something up our sleeve.’
The current season of Taskmaster has its grand season finale on Thursday June 11. Joanna Page, Amy Gledhill, Joel Dommett, Armando Iannucci and Kumail Nanjiani have all been battling it out to try and secure Greg’s golden noggin.
The final of Taskmaster airs on June 11 at 9pm on Channel 4.
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