At one point in the first episode of Junior Taskmaster, a child takes a felt-tip pen to Mike Wozniak’s face. It’s quite the feat, seeing as they’re standing 6ft away, using a long-handled litter picker to grip the marker. But what’s even more impressive is that facial graffiti is in no way a requirement of the task at hand. “But why not abuse the assistant Taskmaster?” they chuckle.
“Some of them had the urge to kick me in the shins,” says Wozniak. “Some would verbally abuse me. But I wasn’t subjected to violence, largely speaking. There was probably only one moment when I thought I was in any real danger – but I live to tell the tale.”
This is the reality of being the host on the first child-based version of comedy behemoth Taskmaster. Greg Davies is gone, replaced as the show’s figurehead by Starstruck creator and standup Rose Matafeo. Instead of Alex Horne, Wozniak, a podcaster, comic and co-star of Davies’s sitcom Man Down, provides the contestant-enraging levels of pedantry as the task-setting assistant. The only other major difference is that it now takes place in heats, with different participants each week, two of whom go into the semi-finals. Well, that and the fact that none of the contestants have gone through puberty.
There are children who have turned up in dazzling reflective shellsuits, cute martial artists who claim to have started their own coven and one child determined to evangelise about one of the world’s least-loved birds, wearing a T-shirt that reads: “I just really like pigeons, OK?” It makes for TV full of wild digressions and the rattling off of leftfield facts in that endearingly obsessive way only kids can manage. It’s adorable.
It also doesn’t pull any punches. “The tasks for the kids’ show would be completely usable on the adults’ show,” says Wozniak. “They haven’t dumbed down anything at all.” As a viewer, you might question that slightly – with shots of a shed packed with implements suggesting a greater availability of useful items than usual. Supposedly, though, this is just down to the calibre of contestant.
“The props are actually quite similar. The kids’ advantage is that they have better brains. They have not lived a life that has atrophied them or stunted their imaginations.”
Might we witness a contestant knock previous winner John Robins off his perch as the contestant with the highest average number of points per task? “Oh yeah, John needs to watch his back,” says Wozniak. “That crown is not resting easy. It’s askew at best, and pretty soon some kids are going to bounce up and knock it off. He’s not going to like it, but that’s the way it is.”
Junior Taskmaster comes amid something of a new era for the Taskmaster brand. It has long been a ratings smash, and a hit international franchise – having racked up 2.3bn viewing minutes for Channel 4 in 2023, and the original being shown in more than 120 countries (plus local versions having been created in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Croatia, Spain, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark and Portugal). But the move into the kids’ version comes alongside the recent launch of a live experience, VR game and Taskmaster Education, which helps run after-school clubs where show tasks are tweaked to aid learning. Not to mention products such as the board game and, erm, Christmas crackers. At the rate new twists on the format keep popping up, it’s going to be the gameshow equivalent of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
“Oh, it’s completely beyond Marvel! I don’t see Marvel doing anything like Taskmaster Education,” says Wozniak. “It knocks Marvel into a cocked hat!”
It also has a lot more sass than anything conjured up by Stan Lee. Compared with the adult version, the level of backchat on Junior Taskmaster is through the roof. When the kids are shown slow-mo clips of them unwittingly breaking rules or belatedly realising they missed some secret instructions, they do not hold back. “Sometimes you just agitate me!” one snaps at Wozniak. Another claims they are imagining his face while hurling objects at a target.
“Adults and children have a very different approach to sass,” says the host. “If you’re being sassy on TV, you might at some point think: ‘Hang on, my Auntie Barbara might be watching.’ The child is not thinking that way. Once a child has the taste of sass in its mouth, it launches into a sass feast. It cannot stop until it is exhausted.”
Was he taken aback by it at all?
“No, children don’t naturally respect me,” laughs Wozniak, who has kids of his own – not that there’s any chance of them appearing on the show. “They don’t want to spend the day with me giving them instructions. That would be intolerable.”
If Wozniak talks with authority about Taskmaster, that’s because he has earned it. He won the first version back in 2010, when it was an Edinburgh fringe show created by Alex Horne, and was called back to play the assistant the following year – albeit without much clue what he was meant to be doing (“I think I just spent the show gazing into the middle distance with my mouth open”). His appearance on season 11 of the TV version saw him become a fan favourite after shocking the hosts by shaving his hair into a mohican. The moment when he tried so hard to complete a solo task with the sole instructions of “fart” that he gave himself piles has also gone down as one of the show’s all-time most memorable moments.
“I don’t know why, but for some reason, I didn’t think this would come up,” sighs Wozniak. “Why wouldn’t it? I mean, on the rare occasion that someone recognises me in the street, the first thing they’ll ask me about is my bum. That, I suppose, is likely to be my legacy.”
It also belatedly kickstarted his career. Wozniak initially performed standup alongside a career as a junior hospital doctor, before becoming a full-time comic in 2008. He appeared as an accountant in Man Down but, despite an assortment of TV appearances, underrated podcasts, Edinburgh shows and writing a 30-minute silent Sky comedy starring Kim Cattrall and a troupe of acrobats, he failed to hit the big time. But following Taskmaster, fans flocked to the excellent Three Bean Salad podcast he co-hosts with Henry Paker and Benjamin Partridge – driving it into the upper echelons of Apple’s podcast charts. It’s rarely out of the Top 20 comedy podcast rankings, and in March this year it won best comedy podcast at the Chortle awards. Plus, of course, he’s back on the Taskmaster set.
“It makes it feel like it was all worthwhile, you know?” he laughs. “Many anguished months and years of pain and delicate self-care and a minor operation later.”
Sorry – did you really have to have a minor operation to fix a Taskmaster-related mishap?
“I did. Thank you for asking.”
There should not, however, be any lasting damage to contestants on the new Taskmaster. Not only have they removed any overly sharp tools from the set, but the threat of lasting psychological injury has been removed by Rose Matafeo (who was also a contestant on series nine) being a far less aggressive host than Greg Davies. She’s witty and barbed, but shies away from the scathing approach of its usual overlord.
“It would never get past an ethics committee, sadly,” says Wozniak. “My suspicion is that Rose, like a lot of us, is capable of great brutality. But she kept it in check.”
The show also comes with its own built-in support network: the other contestants. One of the joys of Junior Taskmaster is how sweet the children are to each other, particularly when it comes to their inter-task banter. They throw their heads back to guffaw at each other’s jokes, or giggle helplessly at fellow participants’ one-liners. So kind were they that one pair have formed a lasting friendship, keeping in touch via parents’ phones across a 250-mile distance.
“There were one or two tears shed when people were knocked out. But what was really lovely to see is that they tended to be dried away very quickly by the other kids,” says Wozniak. “They were far better at that side of things than the comedians.”
Given he’s appeared on the show as an adult, does Wozniak ever wonder how he might have done if he’d appeared as a child?
“Well, it would have been in the late 80s and the nation would not have been ready for a mustachioed nine-year-old,” he says. “I would have been treated very, very poorly – and probably gone into a life of crime. Thankfully, we’re in a different era now.”
Junior Taskmaster is on Channel 4 on 8 November at 8pm.
