Lloyd throws down the parsnip gauntlet
Lloyd selects the parsnip, stating that it’s because it “looks most like a willy”.
Lloyd takes inspiration from a video he’s seen, in which an American football player throws a ball over a house and catches it on the other side. He believes that he can, similarly, throw the parsnip over the shed and catch it on the other side.
With his first attempt, Lloyd throws the parsnip straight up into the air and catches it again, so Tom Cashman rhetorically asks him if he’d run all the way around the shed.
Lloyd keeps trying but with each attempt he either throws the parsnip straight up, hits the shed with it, or fails to catch it. After giving himself a motivational pep talk, he tries and fails once again, falling as he attempts to catch the root vegetable. On a subsequent attempt, he comes very close to catching it. Then, with just 26 seconds remaining, he finally succeeds, before jumping around in celebration.
When Tom asks Lloyd if he thinks he’ll beat the other contestants, Lloyds says “I’d like to see Josh Thomas throw a parsnip over a shed and catch it on the other side. He hasn’t got a sniff!”. He then suggests that they rename the task for everyone else, to see if any of them could do the same.
In the studio, Tom Gleeson says it feels like they’ve stumbled upon another Welsh national sport. Lloyd admits that it had taken him a long time to succeed, and that he had injured his wrist in the process, meaning that he had to have it strapped up afterwards.
Tom Gleeson then reveals that the production team had taken Lloyd’s suggestion of challenging all of the other contestants to throw a parsnip over a shed and catch it, and footage of all of their efforts is shown on-screen.
The upshot of this is that while Lloyd had taken 24 attempts to complete the challenge, everyone else had done much better, and they are all therefore awarded a bonus point.
Lloyd earns 3 points for his root vegetable feat.
(Written by JoGo and proofread by Karl Craven)
(Illustrations collected and adjusted by: David Fuller)
