Mona and Tammy sabotage themselves, while Phil actively sabotages his team

After Tammy reads the first part of the task brief, Mona recognises that between the three team-mates, they have six hips and six hands, and that one person could put both of their hands on their hips, one person could put one hand on their hip, and one person could then have both hands free. She assigns these roles to her team-mates, telling Tammy to put both hands on her hips, and Phil to put one hand on his hip, while she keeps both of her own hands free.

After it is revealed, in-studio, that Phil has been set the extra task of sabotaging his team, Phil asks Louis for clarification: will he need to be specifically accused of sabotage, or is it enough for Tammy and Mona to merely suspect it? Louis confirms that an official accusation will need to have been made during the task.

It’s soon clear that Phil does not actually need to try terribly hard to sabotage his team, as Mona and Tammy make several questionable choices that hinder their progress in the task.

After reading the second part of the task brief, Mona heads to the shed, while Tammy makes a beeline for the shopping trolley, intending to start pushing it with her mouth. Phil assists her by pushing it with his hand, before Mona turns around and reminds them both that the trolley cannot be moved until the final minute of the task. Tammy then runs to the shed, and Phil winks at the camera.

Mona searches the shed for a wheelbarrow that she had used the day before (likely during her attempt at the ‘Make something spin for the longest’ task), but it is no longer in the shed.

Phil picks up a handful of sand, and tells Mona and Tammy that they have plenty of time to just move the sand to the trolley with their hands. Mona and Tammy stop their search to speak with Phil, and Tammy reminds Phil that even if they used his method, the sand would just fall through the slats in the trolley.

This prompts Mona and Tammy to look for something to line the shopping trolley with, and Mona pulls out several yoga mats from the shed, tasking Phil with laying them in the trolley. Phil takes Mona’s instruction literally, and places the still-rolled mats together in the shopping trolley.

Mona emerges from the shed with a shovel and a traffic cone – an unwise container choice, as it has openings at both ends. Tammy jokes that she can use her mouth to catch the falling sand.

Tammy checks on Phil, and clarifies that he needs to actually unroll the mats to line the trolley. Phil replies that it’s difficult for him to make the mats stay down when he only has one hand.

Mona soon arrives with a traffic cone filled with sand, and hands it over to Phil. Phil takes advantage of his one-handed position, and makes sure to grab the bottom of the cone in such a way that the sand starts pouring out of the hole in the small end, but not in a way that it is immediately noticeable.

Mona quickly arranges one of the unrolled yoga mats in the shopping trolley, and then notices that Phil does not have a good grip on the traffic cone. She repositions the cone in Phil’s arm, and Tammy tells Phil to rest the cone on her back to stop the flowing sand. Either purposefully, or accidentally, the cone slides down Tammy’s back, and more sand starts to spill down the back of Tammy’s trousers, leading Phil to joke that Tammy looks like she’s “shitting sand”.

By the time Mona has finally lined the shopping trolley with the yoga mats, only about a third of the sand still remains within the cone, which Mona pours into the trolley.

Phil starts throwing handfuls of the spilled sand into the trolley, and encourages Mona and Tammy to go and shovel up more sand while he works on that. As soon as their backs are turned, he starts throwing his handfuls over the trolley instead. He also checks to see if he can tamper with the yoga mats at all, but concludes that Mona had done a good job lining the trolley, and so he can’t do anything that would not be immediately obvious. He does, however, push out a mat that appears to be mostly useless, which merely covers the front of the trolley.

Seeking to cause a distraction and waste more time, and perhaps also looking for an opportunity to sabotage Mona’s yoga mat lining, Phil then suggests that they could fit more sand into the trolley if they were to open up the child seat section near the handlebars. Mona and Tammy tell Phil that not only is there still plenty of space left in the trolley, but that there wasn’t even enough sand in the pile to begin with, to worry about it not fitting.

Still, Phil presses on with his idea, pulling out the yoga mat lining the back of the trolley (spilling some sand in the process) to line the child seat area. Mona yells that Phil is spilling sand, but Phil insists that he’d made sure that it fell onto the yoga mat in the main section of the trolley.

Mona arrives with another cone full of sand, though she spills some of it as she carries it.

Phil then sources a shovel from the shed, and announces that he is able to carry a shovelful of sand under his arm during each trip, for which Tammy praises his ingenuity. This is, of course, just another chance at sabotage, as Phil then decides to jog to catch up with Mona, causing some of the sand to fall off of the shovel. He also dumps his sand into the trolley at such an angle that most of it just falls straight through the wire mesh and to the ground.

Mona decides to re-cover the back of the trolley with the yoga mat Phil had used to cover the child seat, while Phil shovels sand into the traffic cone. He then picks up the traffic cone, conveniently forgetting that it has a hole in the bottom of it, which Mona hurries to plug up.

While Mona holds the traffic cone, and Phil shovels sand into it, Tammy complains that she feels useless – indeed, with no hands free, her role is effectively just to use her head to hold up the ropes, to help Phil navigate past it, and to provide encouraging commentary for her team-mates.

Mona and Phil take the cone – once again carried at an angle by Mona – to the trolley, but Tammy calls Phil back, as he has forgotten to also take the shovel with him. Phil collects a hasty shovel full of sand, making sure to spread the remaining pile around as he does so.

In the final minute, the team moves the trolley closer to the pile of sand, and Phil continues to shovel sand into the cone. He tells Mona to hold the cone upright, as he claims it will be easier on his back. This allows Phil to scatter sand around wildly with each shovel throw.

In the final 10 seconds, Mona throws handfuls of sand at the trolley. Phil does the same with his shovel, but is much less worried about the accuracy of his aim.

The team of three ultimately transfers 37kg of the 45kg of sand. Tammy and Mona earn no points, while Phil earns 5 points for his successful sabotage. Kevin jokes that if Phil had tried to do that to Marie-Lyne, he would no longer be alive.

(Written by Jenny R and edited by Karl Craven)

(Illustrations collected by Jenny R and adjusted by David Fuller)