They net at Bretton Hall drama school in their late teens, and began performing a sketch show at London’s Cockpit Theatre in 1995, soon afterwards landing a residency at the Canal Café pub theatre, which compelled them to create new material at a fast pace.
In 1997 they won the Perrier, and their subsequent radio series On the Town with The League of Gentlemen, set in the fictional town of Spent, won a Sony Award.
In 1999 the League moved to television – and Royston Vasey – with subsequent series in 2000 (including a typically sinister Christnmas special) and 2002; plus a feature-length film, The League of Gentlemen's Apocalypse, in 2005.
On stage, they toured large regional theatres in 2000, had a six-week run at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane in spring 2003, and toured a pantomime-themed show The League of Gentlemen Are Behind You in 2005.
Outside of the League, Shearsmith played the insane villain Tony in the Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer comedy Catterick; Robot-Wars obsessed TA soldier Dexter in Spaced; and neurotic Dr Flynn in BBC Two hospital sitcom TLC.
On the West End, he appeared in Art in 2003, alongside his League Of Gentlemen costars, in As You Like It at the Wyndhams in 2005, and in The Producers as Leo Bloom in 2006.
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Who's in Taskmaster Series 20
New line-up revealed
The contestants for series 20 of Taskmaster have been announced.
The newest comedian on the line-up, Magliano is of Polish and Italian descent. She got into comedy while at Cambridge University, joining the famed Footlights, writing a dissertation on comedy and forming Stockings Comedy, a female and non-binary comedy collective.
She was a finalist in the Chortle Student Comedy Award in 2018 and for the Funny Women award two years later.
Magliano made her Edinburgh debut with Absolutely No Worries If Not in 2022 and the following years was nominated for the main Edinburgh Comedy Award for the follow-up I Can't Believe You've Done This – and was also nominated for the Sky Arts Breakthrough award.
Adam came to prominence in comedy winning the You Think You're Funny for new comics at the 2017 Edinburgh Fringe, while her debut show the following year, Vague, was nominated for best newcomer.
Her first TV appearance was as a contestant on The Chase while still a university student in 2016, where she faced Paul Sinha. As a comedian she’s appeared on numerous panel shows – including QI, Have I Got News for You, Would I Lie To You?, The Big Fat Quiz of the Year – as well as the 2022 series of Outsiders on Dave.
An ardent football fan, she has just presented a Radio 4 show about the Women’s Euros, having fronted a similar series for the Women’s World Cup in 2023
She has an interesting family history. Her maternal grandfather, Sir Lawrence Byford, led an inquiry into the failings of the hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper. While she was at school, her uncle, Mark Byford, was deputy director-general of the BBC, and temporarily took the top job after Greg Dyke resigned. In 1999, her parents were charged with felony abuse for leaving their two children unattended in a Florida hotel room for 45 minutes.
Phil Ellis
A respected stand-up on the comedy circuit and at the Edinburg Fringe for his joyfully chaotic style, Ellis won the Edinburgh Comedy Award Panel Prize in 2014 for Funz and Gamez, a children's game show with adult jokes that was subsequently made into an unsuccessful TV pilot.
He also won the Malcolm Hardee Award for Comic Originality for his 2023 Fringe show and earlier this year was named best compere at the Chortle Awards.
Ellis also wrote and starred in three series of his own BBC Radio 4 show, Phil Ellis is Trying, from 2018 to 2020.
Shearsmith follows Steve Pemberton into the Taskmaster house, with his Inside No 9 colleague appearing in season 17.
They came to prominence via The League Of Gentlemen with Mark Gatiss and Jeremy Dyson, and he and Pemberton also created, wrote and starred in the sitcom Psychoville.
He’s appeared in Spaced, Peter Kay's Car Share, ITV drama Chasing Shadows on TV; Saltburn, The World’s End and the upcoming Rogue Trooper on film; and The Producers, Betty Blue Eyes and The Unfriend on stage – among many other credits.
Sanjeev Bhaskar
A former marketing executive at IBM, Bhaskar started in a double act with Nitin Sawhney called The Secret Asians, and getting his big break when he was signed up for the BBC sketch series Goodness Gracious Me alongside Kulvinder Ghir, Nina Wadia and Meera Syal, who would go on to become his wife.
The couple went on to make the spoof talk show The Kumars at No. 42, where Syal played his grandmother.
Bhaskar has appeared in British comedy films, including The Guru, Anita and Me and Yesterday, where he again starred with Syal, and on stage he has played King Arthur in Spamalot.
He wrote and starred in he ITV sitcom Mumbai Calling, although it only ran for on season in 2008; and he has a lead role as DI Sunny Khan in cold case mystery series Unforgotten.
Elsewhere this summer, Taskmaster has partnered with English Heritage to offer tasks at locations such as Stonehenge, Whitby Abbey and Dover Castle. For further information on the initiative, running from July 19 to August 31, visit the English Heritage website. Plus 100 UK secondary schools will get to tackle the challenges of a Taskmaster Club for free as part of a tie-up with the Intellectual Property Office.
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