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Not his actual head... he is still very much alive.
Up until now, the team at Sent into Space have been set with the task of keeping schtum about a Taskmaster-themed launch. With the Champion of Champions episode of the BAFTA award-winning show, Taskmaster, airing last week on Channel 4, we thought we’d share the details of the host’s vicarious trip to the stars. But first, a little info about the show.
What is Taskmaster?
If you have been living under a rock or are a rare breed who hasn’t quite advanced to homotechno yet like the rest of us, Taskmaster is a comedy show hosted by the popular comedian, actor, and writer, Greg Davies.
Its premise is essentially celebrities doing the silliest of things, with a competitive edge. It’s a show for anyone that loves the absurd or trying to telepathically gauge whether other people are contemplating horses or laminators.
7 of the funniest and most creative Taskmaster tasks:
Make this coconut look like a businessman (series 5, episode 3).
Get a potato in a golf hole (series 2, episode 1).
Fill an eggcup with as many tears as possible (series 1, episode 4). The winning contestant, Tom Key, decided to watch Elliot’s audition from ET as he proceeded to cut copious amounts of onions.
Make the biggest mess and completely clear it up (Champion of Champions episode 2). The biggest mess was the dramatic fallout of Katherine Ryan calling up her sister, on television, to falsely accuse her husband of cheating. Probably took a lot of time to clear that mess up.
Camouflage (series 4, episode 3). The clear winner here was Noel Fielding donning a fluorescent boiler suit, adopting a foetal position, and turning himself into a banana with the aid of a fruit bowl on a green screen. Genius.
Write and perform a song about this woman (series 5, episode 8). Contestants interviewed a stranger named Rosalind for this musical-themed task. Team Bob Mortimer, Sally Phillips, and Aisling’s best lyric undoubtedly being “Rosalind is an average cellist, she plays quite well, just not in front of people…Rosalind’s a f***ing nightmare”.
Soap cliffhanger (series 7, episode 6). Rhod Gilbert played a man in a bathtub who is unable to say anything other than “rub a dub dub”. We’re not sure why this makes for the best cliffhanger because surely the guy is a tad limited, but lord knows where he might take his catchphrase next. Perhaps he might turn his hand to DJing dub music with no desire to deviate from the genre, perhaps a gambling addiction with plenty of coins-on-scratch-cards-action to the detriment of literally everything good in this man’s life. We will never know.
Where does Sent Into Space come into the picture?
In the Champion of Champions 2022, one of the categories for the show was “The thing that makes everyone go ‘wow’ that really is the greatest thing’”. Nice and succinct. Ed Gamble, one of the show’s contestants, decided that teaming up with us would provide the ultimate wow factor.
Naturally, after some brainstorming and some team planning, our task was to send something into space in the coolest way possible. And so, in September of last year, on a rare sunny day in South Yorkshire, we sent a hefty golden replica of Greg Davies’ head into the stratosphere.
According to the show host, ‘My head in space takes the big five!’. Gamble was the winner!
Greg Davies in his shiny, golden, decapitated-yet-thankfully-not-sentient form, made it all the way up to 32, 000 metres i.e the length of approximately 15,748 Greg Davies stack up to the heavens, the average distance travelled by a sloth in two and a half years, or, the diametric size of Uranus. This is not a laughing matter.
Something which didn't come up on the show was that our launch team were less than 60 seconds away from being on hand to catch the head as it descended through the fields. Unfortunately, the freshly ploughed ground was just too treacherous for the guys to get there in time.
While it's not great practice to beg the Taskmaster for lenience in such circumstances, we should say that across more than 1,000 flights launched, we've only managed to catch three, and nobody else in the world has a single catch to their name.
Whether you're a comedian looking to get one up on your rivals, or a marketing agency who want a truly out-of-this-world stunt for your next campaign, get in touch with us today to find out more about our launch services.