'Taskmaster is more competitive than Mock The Week'

Frankie Boyle on tackling the challenges – and showing his dafter side

Frankie Boyle talks about taking part in series 15 of Taskmaster, which starts on Channel 4 next week.

People were slightly surprised when you signed up for it.

Yes, but I’ve got nothing to lose. I didn’t quite grasp the show at first because they asked me to do it years ago.

I was a bit like, ‘This is just people trying to bake a cake only using their elbows. What the fuck is going on?’ But then I started watching it like, ‘Oh, right. It’s a kind of play about humility.’

Did you become a fan of the show?

Yes. I watched it with my daughter. I thought about doing it a couple of series ago, and I asked my daughter what she thought about it, and she went, ‘You’re not jolly, you’re joyless.’

What was your answer to that?

I’d agree! No, I’m quite jolly. I’m quite a singer. I create a lot of stupid songs. I’m more Winnie The Pooh than you’d imagine.

This might be showing a slightly different side of you than other TV shows you’ve done before…

I do a bit of political stuff now so yes, it’s all quite serious. I guess politics is getting more immediate for people, so maybe those shows are a bit more serious. But I have been daft as well.

During one task, you ran off in only your pants. Has it been nice for you to show that side of yourself?

I would have swam in the river in my pants for that one if they hadn’t stopped me.

In showbusiness, you overestimate how much people care or think about you at all. I was just happy to be on that scoreboard somewhere.

So why did you sign up? To prove your daughter wrong?

There’s a lot of stuff in our culture where people take themselves too seriously and it’s all about presenting a serious version of yourself. Maybe I’ve been tricked into that a little as well.

I don’t take myself particularly seriously and it’s good to admit that, sometimes, you are inherently ridiculous.

You do have to leave your dignity at home with this show. Is that something you were comfortable with?

There’s not a lot of it to leave, but I’m happy. I think it’s a useful thing. I think there’s so much stuff, even in Britain’s idea of itself at the moment. We can see this has been punctured, our self-image. And that’s a really useful thing.

Did you have any strategy going into Taskmaster?

I didn’t care in the least about the tasks, but I thought I wanted to try and do them in a different way from the way other people would have done them, because I thought, ‘Well, if everyone’s done this, that will be really boring.’

But more, I thought it’d be good to do a panel show. I’m not really allowed on too many panel shows, and I thought however I do at the tasks, it would be good to go and try and be funny and have a laugh.

But this was even more competitive than the main show I did [Mock The Week] which had six people running to a microphone to tell a joke.

But then there was a backlash for that, of course.

Yes, and rightly so, I think. Because things you do together as a group are always more fun. It’s always more fun if someone puts a funny line on the end of the thing you say, or you put one at the end of what someone else says, or something else happens. When it’s just you, it’s never as good.

Is there literally a list of panel shows that you’re banned from? Or is that just a sense you get?

No, no, I don’t think there is. I think there’s probably more that would have me on than I would think.

But I don’t know. I have New World Order, which is very fulfilling, but it does mean I have to write it pretty much all year because even the start monologues and end monologues, if you put them all together, that would be longer than a Fringe show – that would be 70 minutes.

So I pretty much just do that all year. Even if I’m tweeting a joke in a car or something, I’m really thinking, ‘Maybe that’d be a joke that could go into New World Order’. It takes up my whole working life.

Have you learned anything about yourself doing Taskmaster?

I think it’s things I already knew about my own lack of problem-solving ability, hubris, and so on.

Have there been any particularly humiliating moments?

Every second.

What about the surreal aspect of it?

I feel it’s not surreal enough. I’d happily do it on acid, the whole thing. Have the hosts on acid as well.

What do you make of Greg and Alex and their relationship?

Well, basically it’s a show about humility. So the framework is of the British Empire. That’s the artwork, right? So it’s Edwardian, late Victorian, music hall-type art. And this is the British condition, hubris. And also, the condition of comedians generally is narcissism and hubris.

So this is a game that is designed to create humility within those players. But then if you have a Taskmaster, then they’re not going to have humility, so Alex has Greg to humiliate him. And then Greg is the Taskmaster because Greg is a self-humiliating machine – all his jokes about himself, because he’s simply too large to have ever lived a normal life.

So it’s this agnostic reminder of humility all the way through the show.

How have you got on with Alex: has he been useful, or just a huge hindrance?

By Scottish standards, Alex is a pretty helpful person.

Tell me about the rest of your contestants. Did you know any of them beforehand?

I didn’t know Jenny [Eclair], who I thought may be grumpy because I largely knew her from her early stand-up. I met a journalist who had interviewed her and I went, ‘I imagine she’d be a bit grumpy’ and she went, ‘Oh, no. She’s bananas.’

I hadn’t met Kiell [Smith-Bynoe], but I’d seen him in Ghosts. And I’d not met Mae [Martin] but I’d seen all their stuff. That’s the thing, isn’t it? Sometimes you meet somebody like, ‘I’ve seen so much of your stuff, I almost feel I know you,’ and you have to be careful not to be too familiar.

How do you feel that you all bonded?

Really well, considering it’s just a job. You don’t see each other during the tasks, apart from the occasional group one, so mainly you just get to know each other at the studio. So considering that, we got on really well.

We were going to take mushrooms together during the last episode. I wanted to go to Amsterdam with them and go on a psychedelic journey.

• Taskmaster series 15 starts on Channel 4 at 9pm on Thursday March 30.

All the Taskmaster series 15 interviews