Josh breaks a zebra’s neck
While he’s trying to come up with an idea for his attempt, Josh continues a long-running theme of his appearance on Taskmaster by requesting some beers.
Eventually, he decides to throw the fibreglass zebra on the lawn, with the fluke being about whether or not this ends up being entertaining. Josh flips the zebra up into the air, and it lands head-first on the lawn with a cracking sound. A clip of this moment appears in the intro sequence of each episode of the season, with the shows’ theme music pausing around it to emphasise the sickening crack.
Apparently unsatisfied with his first idea, Josh then finds a watering can full of flowers by the bathtub, and states that if he throws it in the air and it lands upright with the flowers still in it then he “wins”. He then throws the watering can high up into the air, and it lands upside-down, with the flowers falling out.
When Tom Cashman asks Josh what happens next, Josh says “We have to just keep walking around in a malaise, trying to figure out how to do a fluke.” When Tom questions his use of the phrase “in a malaise”, Josh is unsure of its meaning, and gets Tom to look up whether he’d used it correctly, which he claims would be a fluke. The definition turns out to be “a general feeling of discomfort, illness or unease”, so Josh admits that he’d gotten it wrong.
Next, Josh mounts a bicycle and asks Tom to test him on the definitions of words that Josh might not know. Tom starts out by asking him the definition of ‘hoi polloi’, which Josh thinks he knows but can’t articulate, guessing it’s a phrase used to mean “hoity toity nonsense”. The actual definition is “the common people generally”. Next, Tom asks Josh to define hubris, and Josh guesses that it’s when you believe in yourself too much, giving the example of himself claiming to know what ‘hoi polloi’ meant. Tom accepts this answer, though the actual definition in his dictionary is ‘overbearing pride’. Josh then incorrectly guesses that a ‘martinet’ is a type of curtain (it’s actually someone who demands exact conformity to rules and forms) and that ‘convivial’ means “getting along”, which is pretty accurate.
At the end of his attempt, Josh acknowledges that he has failed, but notes that he did at least get to drink a beer.
In the studio, Josh refers back to his initial attempt involving throwing the zebra, arguing that the fact that it’s included in the opening titles of the season must mean that it’s entertaining. Tom Gleeson responds by pointing out that the fact that a clip of Josh is in in the opening titles is not really a fluke, since he’s a contestant on the show, stating that if instead there’d been a clip of someone like Hannah Gadsby in the opening sequence, that would definitely be a fluke.
Tom Gleeson disqualifies Josh from the task.
(Written by Will G and proofread by Karl Craven)
(Illustrations collected and adjusted by: David Fuller)
