Mathew Baynton explains his unusual Taskmaster outfit: "The shorts were really short"

We’ve got a nice, deep sofa and we like to get our feet up, but lately, I’m usually watching my nine-year-old daughter do a dance. She choreographs her own little routines to pop songs and then tells us to come and see.

What have you been watching on the TV recently?

When your kids are young, you end up sharing their screen habits a lot – Bluey, Peppa Pig and Pixar movies – so it becomes a treat to watch something really dark like The Babadook. We also just watched Tribe with Bruce Parry. It takes you somewhere you would never get to go and expands your idea of the world. There’s also the entertainment factor of the suffering he potentially has to go through to prove himself…

Your partner Kelly Robinson is a film historian. Is there a lot of film chat in your house?

When you’ve ended up in the business, particularly as a writer, watching things can be a bit of a busman’s holiday. Kelly’s also a writer and we’ve been writing some stuff together. When we watch films with our son, who’s 14, he gets so annoyed because we do talk shop and he goes, "Can you just shut up?"

How do you watch your films?

We’ve still got boxes of VHS tapes, and we’ve got one of those VHS-to-hard drive things. I also collect records – I really like having a thing in my hand and the artwork. I wish we could go back to the days where you just pay for the thing you want and you don’t get a whole catalogue of stuff that you don’t care about alongside it.

You're in the new season of Taskmaster — what was your approach?

I’m not a stand-up, and I’ve never felt really comfortable being myself, so I wanted to give myself a bit of a mask, a costume, something that gives me permission to feel silly – almost reminding myself that I’m here to be laughed at. So I thought it might be fun to treat it like it’s sport and the idea of being dressed for a marathon or athletics with a number on. I asked the costume guys to get me some short shorts and a vest. The vest was too big and the shorts were really short.

One of the tasks is to do something that you think looks "cool" when the footage is reversed… were you cool at school?

No, being funny probably was my currency. I was really skinny and felt, physically, like a completely inferior specimen to all the other boys, but I could make people laugh. I learnt the guitar and I played in a band, so I had my idea of what I thought was cool, but I don’t think I ever really managed to convince anyone else.

You starred in Horrible Histories. How does it feel knowing children have learnt history through watching it?

It’s crazy. It feels like an unearned accolade. I was just lucky enough to be doing the thing I wanted to do with my life – being funny and playing silly characters. My kids didn’t watch much of Horrible Histories because their dad’s in it, but they both had phases where they were into the songs. One of my brothers is a teacher, and it must be galling for him that he’s put the graft in day in, day out, to educate hundreds of kids over the years, and then his brother, the clown, gets to say, "I taught the whole country, mate!"

With shows like Taskmaster and Last One Laughing, do you think we've rediscovered silly comedy?

I don’t think silly ever went away. There was a report that original comedy commissioning was at a low, but I hope that commissioners, channels, streamers and broadcasters continue to invest in comedy, because it’s evergreen. People will remember the comedy and comedy shows they’ve loved for all their life; drama doesn’t necessarily always last the same way in people’s minds.

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Taskmaster season 19 premieres on Thursday 1st May 2025.

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