The Taskmaster interviews: Sanjeev Bhaskar

Why did you want to take part in Taskmaster?

I was a fan, I’ve watched a bit of it. I know a few people who've been on it, I've not really had any extensive discussions with them about being on it but I knew it was a fun show to do. There's no other show like it that I can think of. 

I don't normally do these kind of shows; it's not my thing. I enjoy watching them, but this one seemed to be a fun one to do. I like being slightly out of my comfort zone, although little did I realise how far out of my comfort zone I'd be with this!

How did you find the experience of doing the tasks?

It taxes your brain in a way that your brain isn't normally taxed in everyday life, and that's quite interesting. Some of the tasks were really good fun to do. Some of them did, for me, quickly become incredibly frustrating and incredibly annoying. When the correct way of doing it, or a better way of doing it, was revealed, that was doubly annoying. These are not things that I normally deal with on a TV set! 

How competitive were you?

Genuinely, I didn't really care about winning. When you're doing the tasks at the house initially, it's with a very small group of people. It's usually just Alex who you can see, and you become unaware of the cameras and stuff. 

You do those over a month or something, working around the days that you’re free, so your humiliations are spread over a month in front of one person. Then you come into a studio, and suddenly they concertina all those tasks into an hour in front of an audience full of lots of people, and you realise people are going to watch it at home and they’re going to make comments about it, so it all starts to become real.

 But during the actual tasks, for the sake of mental health and to not get angry and annoyed, I stopped caring about winning or even getting the task right!

Contestants often say that the editing is so good, nobody is made to look deliberately bad.

That's an even more depressing thought! If I've been edited to look good, and it's still this level of humiliation, you can only imagine what the truth might be! 

But no, you’re right, if you're being absolutely present in the moment when you do the task, you're not thinking about ego, because that’s a retrospective thing. If you’re thinking about wanting people to like you, that's a future event and you're not being present. The great beauty of being present is that hopefully your ego – or at least, most of it – is not being employed in what you're doing. That was certainly the case for me. 

I don't think of myself as a particularly egotistical person, but I could be completely wrong, and maybe I am. Maybe that’s what this show will reveal: maybe my carefully cultivated image over many, many years is about to come collapsing down. People will see the real diva that I am!

Did you learn anything about yourself that you weren't expecting?

Yes, I did, and a really useful one as well. It was in one of the group tasks. We had to ask lots of questions, and someone in my group asked a really silly question and I remember finding myself just being getting slightly annoyed and thinking, that's not helpful, that’s not going to get us the answer.

And in that moment, while I was thinking that, I thought, ‘why am I getting annoyed at that? This is ridiculous. I'm being ridiculous. My thoughts are being ridiculous.’ And, actually, I was really grateful that happened because it made me realise that I’d been walking completely along the wrong path and, mid-task, I completely switched my attitude. I thought about this person, ‘Thank God you're here, thank God you're being silly’, because it really tempered my perspective and it was a really good lesson in remembering it’s just a comedy show.

That's something I can now apply to everything else in life: if you're getting annoyed or upset or fearful, whatever it is, it's good to stop and ask yourself: is there another way of looking at this? That was an interesting moment for me, personally. I found that person annoying at first, then very grounding.

Let’s talk through your fellow contestants, starting with Ania Magliano.

She’s super smart, very funny, very good at lateral thinking and acting on it. I was super impressed. She was so good at coming up with left-field solutions, and she's so young. How much more intelligent and funny and smart could you get if you’re already that smart at that age? That's frightening. 

What about Maisie Adam?

Again, really Funny in Real Life and very funny on screen. It's almost like she wears all her emotions on her sleeve, and that's really endearing and lovely. You trust who she says she is. She's been amazing,

And Phil Ellis?

Phil is very fun, exuberant, and has a really daft side. He is a big fan of the show and throws himself into absolutely everything, with the comedy first, which is fantastic to watch.

And Reece?

Reece was the only person I'd met before. I first met him when he and I were both starting out, before I did Goodness Gracious Me, and before he did League of Gentlemen.

There was a Saturday Night Live type thing that they were trying to do here, something like 26 years ago, and lots of people auditioned to be regulars on the show. It was one of the first auditions I ever did, and I got it, and so did Reece, so we both ended up doing the pilot. There were lots of people there like Fiona Allen, Armstrong and Miller, and Harry Hill. 

I was a big fan of Reece’s sketches on that show anyway and then, obviously, The League of Gentlemen TV series, followed by all the other shows he did. Reece is super smart. You can see from the work he's done that he has a left-field, Gothic brain. He’s amazing.

Were you at all surprised by how he came across on Taskmaster?

No. I thought that he and I might be quite similar. I’m older than him but we’ve both written TV shows, and we've both acted in different things as different characters, which was unlike the other three, so I thought we would be more similar. We do come across, sometimes, as the two grumpy old bastards who've been told to babysit children!

But was I surprised? No, because a lot of the tasks he did were incredibly clever and visual, and a lot of the prize tasks that he made were super impressive, which is what I expected. I remain as impressed with Reece as I thought I would be.

Greg made a few references to you both being the ‘old ones’, didn’t he?

Yes. I mean, I don't think the younger ones knew what a telephone was – as opposed to a ‘mobile’ or ‘phone’ – so Reece and I do both come from a different era and I think that did come across.

Do you think your acting skills helped with any of the tasks?

No, I don't think so. Again, that's the thing with being present, is that you revert to who you really are, so I think I was myself. I suppose the good thing about Taskmaster as a series is that, ultimately, you want people who've got different energies. You don't want people who've got the same personalities or comedy. 

And even though Greg’s running joke was about two people wandering around a care home, mine and Reece’s energies are quite different so in that sense, I don't think my acting abilities made any difference because I brought my own energy to it.

How did you get on with Alex during the tasks?

He’s an absolutely lovely human being. There wasn't a single day I didn't look forward to coming in, because I knew I was going to be surrounded by really lovely people.

There was a running joke in the studio about you being in Paddington 2, often when you’d done something badly and Greg thought someone in a film of that calibre should do better. Can you explain how that started?

I don’t really know! Ania said something about me being in Paddington 2 and Greg just found it amusing and it became a reference point. I'll take the reference: I'm really proud of being in that film. I think it’s great, despite me being in it. It was a really happy experience so it’s definitely better than other references people could have made. 

What was your relationship with Greg like in the studio?

Greg and Alex are both really impressive singularly, and really impressive as a double act as well. They know each other well enough to feed off each other's energies, and it's interesting how they don't block a thought that someone's having.

Throughout all the studio recordings I loved sitting there watching and listening to Greg and Alex and the other contestants. There were times where I forgot that I was on the show, like I was an audience member that suddenly ended up on stage. 

That ability to pick out little bits of detail and spin them into something interesting and funny is a great skill. Greg would be a really great interviewer on a straight interview show because he'd pick up on things and stretch those out.

Those who have ever sat in the audience of a recording of Taskmaster will know that it’s a really fun experience, with lots of chat that gets cut out.

Yes. I remember when we did The Kumars, those of us who were playing the family stayed in character for the entire record. All those bits in between takes where you have camera moves or change your mic pack, or if there's some technical reason to stop recording, we’d carry on chatting to the guests. Those are the bits that were the added value for the people in the audience. 

Taskmaster is similar in that it’s certainly one of the shows where it's worth being in the audience, because nobody switches off. I've done other panel shows where people do stop and pause. There aren’t many shows that I've been on like this where the audience are there primarily to see the hosts Greg and Alex, and then whoever the guests are is just an added bonus. It’s all about Greg and Alex because they give so much of themselves, which is indicative of their respect for the audiences and their time.

The thing with an audience is that things happen in the moment, and you can go with it, and the audience will respond. As a comedian you can respond in the moment to something – usually a reaction from the audience, or you can appeal to them if you feel you’ve been unfairly scored, and so on – and that's quite unique in this type of comedy set-up. 

You can do it in stand-up, of course, interacting with an audience is exactly what they do – but for this type of show, it’s unusual. It’s a beautiful atmosphere.

• Taskmaster Series 20 starts on Channel 4 at 11pm tomorrow

» Greg Davies​ and Alex Horne​
» Maisie Adam​
» Phil Ellis​
» Ania Magliano​
» Reece Shearsmith​

Published: 10 Sep 2025