More Hand Injuries Than Jesus

Warming Up catch up

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As Champion of Champions I had been invited to test out the new Taskmaster Experience at Canada Water, (I was disappointed once I got there that they had invited some people who weren't Champion of Champions which devalued the experience for me. Apparently they're letting anyone in - even you).

It turned out though that the journey there was the greatest task of all. I was completely exhausted from a night of podcasting and late to bed, early to rise (makes a man grouchy, clumsy and stupid), but luckily I'd been sent a car (because I was Champion of Champions - you won't get that). For some reason the driver had decided to get to East London via the M11 and turned a 90 or so minute journey into a three hour one. It wasn't just the bad choice of route (which there may have been a reason for, but it would have to be that the A1 had disappeared into a sink hole cos even at its worst you're not going to be stuck for 90 minutes) but it was raining hard and at one point I was woken from my snooze to find that the car was stopped as the weird country road we were on was blocked by a river. It wouldn't usually have a river there, but this was a full on, fast moving body of water and was impassable. There was now the problem of turning around in a single lane road with cars behind us and other cars parked because they couldn't get through. Again I would like to big up the A1 here. No country roads and no rivers.

The driver got turned round, got back to the main road and then thought he might be able to get through on the next right turn. He again hit the temporary river. That's the nature of rivers. They are quite long.

Eventually we got where we were meant to be going, but if the journey home was going to take as long as this then we'd have half an hour to look at stuff and then have to get in the cab again. It's nice to be sent a car, but I couldn't help thinking that we'd have done better on a train.

Anyway, it was a nice party, with smatterings of comedians, contestants and the terrific crew that work on the show, (plus some pricks from Ticketmaster etc) so my tiredness and annoyance was soon forgotten. We had an 8pm slot to play Taskmaster, so had a couple of Taskmaster (non-alcoholic) beers and chatted with the other guests and had a look of the museum which includes my picture of a duck, drawn whilst looking in a mirror (I wasn't sure which my one was to be honest).

The experience itself was lots of fun. You get to do five tasks (and there's two different sets you can do if you want to come again) and whilst they have to be fairly clean and simple so they can be reset in time for the next group, they stay true to the Taskmaster spirit and there's plenty of Easter Eggs for fans (who might also be on the lookout for tricks), but I think newbies would like it too. It's got an impressive video system so that Alex and Greg are there too (along with a real life helper). There were a couple of technical mishaps, which meant I didn't get three points that were supposed to be mine, but I wouldn't have come in the top five anyway. I did however win the battle of the five losers so left with a duck. I can't give away any secrets, of course, but the time flew by and it was fun to play with both friends and strangers (though I did have a couple of celebs in my group too).

It was nice to be out, though sad not to defeat all who came before me. I was also beaten by the lockers and thought someone had taken my coat. It was was quite a complicated system to get them working and I had been so engrossed in that that I hadn't looked to see my number, but my friend had told me she thought I was in locker 14. When I got back that locker was empty and my code didn't open the ones nearby and a nice lady had to open them up with a special key for me. But none of them had my coat in. I was about to give up on it when I thought I'd try one more that was not very near locker 14 and it pinged open. Taskmaster Champion of Champions indeed.

I insisted the driver go back the sensible way and we didn't encounter any rivers (and of course traffic was much lighter and it wasn't raining as hard) and we got home in 90 minutes, a bit later than we'd told the babysitter, but she was happy with the extra loot. So I did win that task.

I think you'll love this experience. Ticket prices vary and it can get quite expensive. Would I feel as happy if I'd paid £100? I did pay with 4 and a half hours of my life (in terms of travel) and it was worth that.

On balance if I was you I'd come and see 5 nights (and 10 podcasts) of RHLSTP instead, but for some reason Taskmaster is more popular than RHLSTP so maybe it's worth the extra.

It's the most Harry Potter World that any Edinburgh Fringe show has ever got and that's a remarkable achievement for Alex and the team. They really are the most excellent people and deserve to be as rich as humanly possible. Even if Alex only has £8 haircuts (cf RHLSTP).

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I will be lucky to get through this move in one piece. I still need to catch up on my sleep and am spending most of my day moving boxes and bits of furniture around and have managed a surprisingly number of injuries. Yesterday I slipped on the stairs and aggravated a pulled muscle in my arm. I was lucky not to fall all the way down. I just lay on the stairs moaning (to no one as Catie wasn't home).

My hands have been ripped to shreds in various accidents, mostly in trying and failing to get the loft ladder in the loft. But this morning I was moving some old framed posters around and got nipped in the finger by the broken glass on my old TMWRNJ poster (of me and Stew dressed as Richard and Judy. Bitten by my past. The people who write my life are laying on the symbolism a bit too thickly. The fucking hacks (in both senses).

I did however, get stuff moved around to see where the best place for the new snooker arena is. I have a different board now (the one I used once for a live frame, which I bought for £35 on ebay off a man who lived in a mansion). It's slate based and I am worried it might be too flat, but hopefully five years in my garage will have fucked it. Sadly I don't think I can make it work with the sofa in there too. I didn't really want the sofa, but we couldn't get it in the living room because it was too big and there was a radiator in the way.

The old board is going to be chopped up so that you have the chance to own a piece of the hallowed turf. Details of that forthcoming. Don't know if we will auction or kickstart or do a raffle. Maybe all of the above.

I went back to the old house to bring back more things, whilst taking over some rubbish because our bins here are full (the only good thing about having two houses, two mortgages and two sets of bills is that you get double the bin collections - not sure that makes up for the expense). Whilst trying to fill the bin I pushed down the other binbags and cut the back of my hand quite badly, I presume on the broken bowl that I mentioned the other day. It may have not made it to the new house, but it got the last laugh.

Weirdly the gash didn't bleed straight away, but the wound looked quite deep. I didn't think there was a first aid kit in the old house, so I wrapped it in a towel. It did start to bleed and hurt and every time I thought I'd stemmed the flow I would pick something up and it'd bleed again. But I carried on regardless (and later found some plasters in the bathroom). If this carries on I might lose a finger, but I've got 10 of those so can afford to lose a couple. I've lost 50% of my testicles. But I don't like to talk about it.

Of course this is a living Hell, made worse by the absence of internet (should be in tomorrow). A few things aren't working and we have to await the return of the builders, but aside from this the house already feels 100% like home. Can we keep it nice? Of course not, but once we've broken it we'll move on to another one.

Thanks to Emma Watson for posing for the hand pics.

RHLSTP with the king of podcasts Adam Buxton up today! Listen in. Listen Ian

And I’ve got the internet again (it’s amazing) so here’s a video of me saying all this stuff for paying subscribers (join us)