Top 10 Times Greg Davies Broke the Entire Group

As comes up frequently, Greg Davies used to be a drama teacher. He’s drawn on his educational past many times, including when writing his long-running sitcom “Man Down”. In this brief but memorable anecdote from “Graham Norton”, Norton brings up that Greg was once nominated for teacher of the year – what an accomplishment! But there was more to this than met the eye, as Greg went on to explain. As always, it’s his delivery of the final punchline that breaks the audience and everybody else in the studio. We wonder if the girl who nominated him was at home watching, and if she still thinks he’s teacher of the year material.

Another teaching tip, in this clip, Greg demonstrated his trademark “teacher stare”: the ruthless look he’d bring out to terrify children into doing what he said. If you’ve seen him in “The Inbetweeners” – which you almost certainly HAVE – this is his permanent expression as Gilbert, and it’s no wonder they were all so frightened of him. It turns out to be just as chilling when used on an adult, though, as he demonstrated to Alan Carr. Honestly, just watching gives us flashbacks to our school days. Luckily, it’s probably quite hard to get into THAT much trouble in a secondary school drama lesson, since dossing about is the whole point.

There was already a memorable moment like this in series 5 of “Taskmaster”, where he took Nish Kumar to the back of the studio just to check in and see how he was doing. The series 7 repeat was much more legendary, though, since it began with Acaster swearing at him over Phil Wang’s confusing little box. Acaster couldn’t stop laughing and nor could the audience as Greg channelled his teacher persona to get to the root of Acaster’s anger issues. But maybe the most outrageous bit about all of this was Greg admitting that, somehow, he’d never seen “The Matrix” – that’s far more shocking than him smashing the box on the floor.

Teachers, listen up: if you’re ever bored to death in an exam hall, Greg Davies has just the thing you can do to amuse yourself. In this classic “Mock the Week” moment, he explains the rules of “Camp Aisle”, a game where you have to walk down the aisles in the exam hall in increasingly effete ways. This is another anecdote he cites as one of the reasons he had to leave teaching, with one of the kids so utterly disappointed in him that they actually tutted when he’d finished his latest saunter. We can’t imagine it’s easy to sit a serious exam under those conditions, though.

In this older set he kicked things off with some crowdwork, talking about the perils of one day waking up and realising that you’ve become middle-aged. He walks on stage, a picture of resentment, and immediately picks out the youngest person he can find on the front row. This just so happens to be a twenty-two-year-old woman named Mary, and he’s absolutely livid. She clearly wasn’t ready to be singled-out by a comedian, as many people aren’t, but her awkwardness just makes it funnier as he segues into a bit about nightclubs, fashion, and 80s music.

There were a lot of problems with “The Inbetweeners” reunion, but Greg Davies was NOT one of them. He was there in the audience, along with many other alumni from the show, and in a lot of ways he was the best part of it. When Jimmy went to him in the audience, he launched into a tirade about his hatred of children and then, more ferociously, his hatred of Simon Bird as an individual. A lot of people said that it would have been much funnier to have Greg present instead of Jimmy Carr who, while a superfan of the series, wasn’t actually involved with any of it.

Jodie Foster, Russell Crowe, Ryan Gosling – what do these three A-listers have in common? They were all on Graham Norton’s sofa to hear Greg Davies tell this classic story. It’s another teaching anecdote, but one that hasn’t appeared that many times – other than inspiring a plot point in “Man Down”, which was what began this tale. The entire joke hinges on the fact it was a hearing-impaired school and he was equipped with a microphone so that hard-of-hearing kids in the room knew what he was saying. As explains, though, he made a grave mistake during his curry-induced hangover when he ranted to himself on the loo. Ryan Gosling was beside himself.

To promote the nineteenth series of “Taskmaster”, Greg Davies and Alex Horne were flown across the pond to do the rounds on American talkshows. Seth Meyers wanted to talk about only one thing, though: fanfiction. Yes, people write X-rated fanfiction about Greg and Alex, which Alex was a little unsettled by, though Greg loved it, and claims that he frequently reads it to Alex. He then did a dramatic re-enactment and tried to get Alex to kiss him, though he wouldn’t budge, and Greg continued reading the assorted fanfiction titles. The message is clear, though: if YOU write “Taskmaster” fanfiction, Greg Davies himself may read it!

Never in “Taskmaster” history have the prize tasks gone as poorly as in series 10, where it seemed that none of them understood the brief. In fairness, the atmosphere was a bit strange since they were filming in lockdown, miles apart from each other, and with no audience, but they still could’ve put a bit of effort in. With the prompt “the best thing to put in your mouth”, they all took it far too literally, and in the end, Daisy May Cooper won by simply bringing in a bottle of wine. And then, in the first filmed task, “Taskmaster” history was made when all five of them were disqualified for being too rubbish.

You’ll never forget where you were the first time you heard “bad dong”. Greg and teammate Richard Ayoade came up with “bad dong” during their attempt to psychically predict what the next round of questions on “Big Fat Quiz” would be, chucking out “bad dong” as their last guess. They then called back to it repeatedly, bringing it out over and over again. Despite being a total non-squitor, it just kept returning, much to Jimmy’s frustration. A legendary “Big Fat Quiz” moment was born, and we wouldn’t be surprised if people shout “bad dong” at Greg in the street. If you ever see him out and about, give it a try! Let us know your favourite Greg Davies moments in the comments!