Top 10 Times Taskmaster Contestants Blatantly Cheated

In the very first episode, Tim Key set the tone for the entire show by mercilessly cheating in this task where they had to drain a bath of water without unplugging it. He got right in there, chucking out water into the garden and winning the task with the fastest time by far. However, cameras caught that the plug had come out, with Alex showing an action replay. He continued to play it off, saying at first that he hadn’t known the plug had come out – except that more footage revealed not only that he’d picked the plug up in the garden, but sneakily put it back in. His excuse? He didn’t think he’d get caught cheating.

When does an honest mistake turn into cheating? Well, when you don’t own up to it at the time and continue to deny it later, of course. In this emotionally fraught task where the teams had to put the most weight in a hammock, they were given a crucial caveat by Alex. Lou already tried to cheat by delaying saying “your time starts now”, but by the end, the truth was clear. She’d dropped a book on the floor and continually insisted that she’d caught it. But the cameras didn’t lie, and it was clear from her face that she knew she’d dropped it and then picked it up and put it back in anyway. They were disqualified.

Was this cheating, or just wishful thinking? You be the judge. In this task, the contestants were outfitted in one man band regalia and asked to play each instrument in a certain order. If they got the sequence right, a new instrument was added, and so on. Kiell blew everyone away by getting fifteen, beating everybody else – until it was revealed that he had 45 minutes of failed attempts behind him. Greg ultimately took pity on him, since he’d done terribly in the series so far, and while awarding him only 2 points for tying with Ivo on five, gave him the bonus point for sounding the best.

Undoubtedly, Hugh Dennis was one of Greg’s least favourite contestants, though having featured on “Mock the Week” for decades, we’re sure Hugh can handle anything Greg throws at him. In this task, he was subjected to derision for his apparently clever workaround, where they had to draw a caricature of someone behind a curtain without looking at them. Hugh craftily found a mirror in the house and used it to cheat – or, think outside the box, as he’d put it. He and Alex argued relentlessly over whether using the mirror was cheating or not, but in the end, it didn’t really matter. His caricature was appallingly bad even with the ability to actually see the woman.

In this bizarre task, they had to catch a remote-controlled rat that was going to arrive on the red green in twenty minutes, but had to be three metres away at the time. Alas, Charlotte Ritchie didn’t read the task thoroughly – or, perhaps thought that the sheer ambition of this would win her the points anyway. She climbed underneath the red green disguised as a piece of red green and caught it. But then Jamali pointed out that they had to be three metres off the green, getting her disqualified. He, however, was the biggest cheater, because he also wasn’t more than three metres away when he dropped the net, and DIDN’T get the same punishment.

All they had to do in this one was stick as many pieces of dry spaghetti into a grapefruit as possible. Sounds easy enough, but things got tricky when, partway through, the lights were turned off, leaving them to finish in the dark. At the end, Mawan Rizwan had apparently managed to get ALL the spaghetti into the grapefruit, going by how much was left, only for his microphone to give him away. His audio was still being recorded when, after the task was over, he went back to his dressing room and threw the unused spaghetti in the bin, followed up with an incriminating photograph. Greg’s critique of his methods is one of the show’s most iconic moments.

More from the notorious red green, in this one they had to get a potato into a hole without stepping on it. Joe Wilkinson’s effort was spectacular, as he threw the potato into the hole no problem, while other contestants were fussing around with contraptions. But there was a problem: the footage revealed that he accidentally stepped onto the green and was ultimately disqualified. However, it’s since been pointed out that he wasn’t the only one who broke the rules like this, but he WAS singled out for it - can you honestly say that Richard Osman didn’t step on it? It was one of the show’s most brutal moments to see Greg discount that phenomenal throw.

In this bizarre task, they were blindfolded with a camera strapped to the back of their heads, hampering their navigation. Unless you’re Morgana Robinson, of course, who confessed after the fact that she could actually see through the blindfold, hence why she was able to complete the task and throw her paint with such ruthless efficiency. She didn’t point it out during the task, though, which has led people to say that she as good as cheated, even though, as she tried to claim, Alex was to blame for not putting the helmet on properly. Greg believes this, but did she get away with it by flirting with him? He fell hook, line, and sinker.

All they had to do for this one was strike Bernard – a dummy in an office chair – with an exercise ball, but they weren’t allowed to touch the balls after launching them from behind the line. Munya Chawawa looked at first like he’d had a spectacular run, while everybody else struggled to get the balls to do what they wanted. But the action replay gave him away. It was only just caught on camera, but at the key moment, he knocked the ball with his knee to make it crash into the other balls in the right way. It’s been called one of the most blatant instances of cheating in “Taskmaster” history. Still, at least he only cheated once…

In all of “Taskmaster”, there’s never been a worse cheater than Dave Gorman, who said after finishing the show that there were actually more instances of cheating that he didn’t get caught for. From roping in Ben Fogle to shout across a river to pouring tea into his bucket of water, he was the most unsportsmanlike player in history. But no incident was more brazen than trying to throw a pea onto the red green. After immediately losing his pea in the grass, just like the others who tried it this way, he persuaded Alex to bring him another, and then pretended he’d found the first one stuck in the racket. Alex had proof, though, because it was all caught on camera.

Let us know in the comments who you’ve spotted bending the rules on “Taskmaster” without being caught.