Taskmaster does Fringe
It's easy to forget Taskmaster started here. Alex Horne cooked the whole thing up as a Fringe show back in 2010, years before Greg Davies was throwing eggs at anyone on the telly. So there's something fitting about the sheer number of former contestants trooping back up to Edinburgh this year. We counted 23. Twenty-three! You could build an entire festival diary out of nothing but people who have thrown a teabag into a mug from across a caravan.
Here's who's up, what they're doing, and when.
The big new hours
Ania Magliano is the one everyone will be talking about. Fresh off series 20 (she lost that tiebreak to Maisie Adam, and no, we're not over it either), she brings Peach Fuzz to Monkey Barrel, 7-22 Aug. Her castmate Phil Ellis is a few doors down with Bath Mat (Monkey Barrel, 3-30 Aug), which then heads out on his first proper national tour. If you saw him on the show you already know the level of chaos on offer.
Sophie Duker, series 13 champ, has Hot Beef Injection at Pleasance Courtyard (5-30 Aug), promising an hour that's equal parts sexy and political, taking in the whole man-or-bear thing. Rosie Jones is at the Pleasance too with I Can't Tell What She's Saying (5-30 Aug), covering being single, boobs and gravy. Not necessarily in that order.
Phil Wang has grown a moustache and a worldview to match, Uh Oh is at Monkey Barrel, 5-17 Aug. John Kearns (teeth, wig, the works) brings Tilting at Windmills, also Monkey Barrel, 18-30 Aug. And Fatiha El-Ghorri from series 19 makes her Fringe debut with Cockney Stacking Doll (Monkey Barrel, 17-30 Aug), which on paper might be the most exciting booking of the lot.
The old guard are well represented as well. Julian Clary promises to drop the persona entirely in Fully Dilated (Assembly Rooms, 14-23 Aug) good luck telling the difference, he says. Jack Dee marks 40 years in the game with Jack's Joke Show (Assembly Rooms, 17-23 Aug), an hour of his favourite old stories with, and this is a direct promise, no new material whatsoever. Tim Vine rounds things off with a late-August pun avalanche called Sillypun Valley (Pleasance, 24-30 Aug).
Special mention to Mike Wozniak, whose show The Bench (Assembly Hall, 6-16 Aug) is apparently about a bench. That's all we know. That's probably all we need to know. Trivia for the pub: Wozniak actually won the original live Taskmaster at the Fringe in 2010, so this is technically a champion's homecoming.
Works in progress (aka bargain Taskmaster)
The WIP listings this year are absurd. Ed Gamble (Pleasance, 19-24 Aug). Rose Matafeo, doing a deliberately chilled-out 11am hour at Monkey Barrel, 17-30 Aug. Her blurb wants it to feel like the Animal Crossing museum cafe, which frankly sold us on its own. Nish Kumar is at Monkey Barrel nightly (5-30 Aug) with the perfectly titled Angry Humour from a Really Nice Guy. Russell Howard does eight intimate shows at the Pleasance, 5-12 Aug. Bridget Christie has just two nights, 5-6 Aug at Monkey Barrel, so move fast on that one.
Frank Skinner (series one, the beginning of it all) is doing double duty: a WIP at Assembly George Square (5-16 Aug), then an interactive Crowd Work show with rotating guest comics (17-26 Aug).
And then there's Mark Watson, who has three shows, because of course he does. A kids' show (his first ever), a WIP he's cheerfully warned is genuinely unfinished, and three last-ever performances of Before It Overtakes Us in late August.
Blink and you'll miss them
A few one-offs worth planning your whole trip around. James Acaster plays a single day: 4 August, four shows at Monkey Barrel, all being filmed. If tickets are still available by the time you read this we'd be amazed. Sara Pascoe takes over McEwan Hall for one night on 5 August, with a bonus work-in-progress about slagging off jazz at Shedinburgh on the 17th. Joe Lycett hosts a talent showcase, Joe Lycett and Friends, at the Pleasance from 7-11 Aug. Kiell Smith-Bynoe brings his improv hit Kool Story Bro, with a different celebrity guest each night, for three late shows on 20-22 Aug. And Richard Herring, the only man to win both his series and Champion of Champions, as he would definitely want us to mention, records his RHLSTP podcast daily at The Stand, 5-16 Aug.
So there it is. No prize task, no tiebreak, just a very good excuse to see what these people are like when nobody's making them paint a horse while riding a horse. Book early for the one-offs.
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