Alex Horne

Review: Taskmaster, series two, episode 1

Taskmaster is great at displaying people's laterial thinking.

Taskmaster Series 2 preview

Fear not, because Dave have absolutely pulled it out the bag yet again and picked a terrific mix of people who are each so different, but unite in stupidity.

Made to look as if it was shot on old film stock, this short has Alex Horne and his band offering their version of a cloying Bing Crosby-style festive special as fake friends holed up in an elegant country home while the snow falls outside. The clunking, stilted exchanges between Horne and the musicians are a delight, while they showcase a couple of Yuletide tracks, most satisfying of which is a deliciously blasphemous reimagining of the Nativity with disgusting images contrasting with the beautiful hymn-like presentation.

Edinburgh Fringe interview: Alex Horne

Alex Horne stupidly ambitious, logistically problematic and potentially disastrous DIY comedy show is back. Now even bigger and even less likely to succeed, this is Monsieur Butterfly.

Interview: Alex Horne - Monsieur Butterfly

'Everyday something goes wrong. It's so unpredictable.'

Taskmaster is the kind of Dave thing that shouldn't quite work but is actually wildly stupid fun. Mainly thanks to Alex Horne, late of so much splendid radio, and Greg Davies, and regulars such as Frank Skinner and Romesh Ranganathan. And eating a watermelon in a minute, and having to paint a horse while riding a horse and other activities that would have been unsuited to, say, Queen Victoria's funeral. A winner.

Radio Times review

As a civilisation, we're starting to realise that asking questions about news or trivia from behind a desk isn't the best way to wring semi-improvised laughs out of moderately popular comedians. Far wiser to make them do something less restrictive, where the thing itself is funny before anyone starts. So we come to this fun new jolly, where titular Taskmaster Greg Davies - flanked by the show's creator Alex Horne - awards comics marks for eating as much watermelon as they can in a minute, emptying a bathtub without pulling the plug out, or painting a horse while riding a horse.

The comfortingly familiar guests are Frank Skinner, Josh Widdicombe, Roisin Conaty, Romesh Ranganathan and Tim Key. Skinner is a good weathervane, since he's been around far too long to bother laughing politely at unfunny jokes. Here, he laughs a lot.

Some fairly interesting facts about comedian Alex Horne

The star of Dave's new show Taskmaster is a neologist with a penchant for Powerpoint...