Taskmaster's Mathew Baynton: "I thought I was the chaos contestant!"

"Not much. I had a brief wobble because in the past I've never really said yes to doing things as myself, but I've always been a fan of Taskmaster and I always thought this might be the one that I would say yes to. I remember in particular the series that Sally Phillips was in, and she just looked like she was having so much fun every second of it — but that was series five!

"When Alex texted me to check whether I'd be interested, before they went through agents and stuff, I had a brief flush of anxiety, because you feel like you're quite open to judgement, to people on their sofa going 'oh, I like that one, I don't like that one, he's annoying'. I asked him to let me think about it for a day or two, and I texted [season 13 contestant] Bridget Christie, saying 'I've just been asked to do Taskmaster, what do you think, here's my worries' kind of thing, and she replied almost instantly like, 'you're crazy to even consider saying no, especially if it's only fear holding you back — do it, jump in with both feet, you'll have a great time and you'll never regret it'."

"I'm pretty competitive, but not a bad loser, is how I would hope to describe myself. I'm the youngest of three boys, so I grew up in a constantly competitive environment — but as the youngest, I did lose a lot! I'm well used to it. I do sort of jump into anything with a spirit of, 'I'm going to try my best and try to win', but I don't sweat it too much if I turn out to lose."

"I thought that I had the right mindset, and that having seen it, I would know that there are often hidden shortcuts, and so I would know to look around — but also, they're too clever! They're one step ahead of you, and even the order that they get you to do the tasks in, they sort of know what you'll be like at the beginning and then they trap you with it! Also, pretty quickly, this task-blindness sets in, and you don't really know whether this is one to go at like a bull at a gate, if it's one of those ones where it's really simple and you've just got to go for time and be as quick as you possibly can. But there's one in particular where I went at it like that, and it was disastrously the wrong idea!"

"As soon as I'd said yes, I felt like I needed an outfit that would make me feel silly, that made me feel like it gave me permission to feel like a goon. So I had a few potential ideas and I threw them at the producers, and decided on approaching it like I was at the Olympics or something. I guess it was like, if I'm going to make a fool of myself, it's even funnier if it looks like I'm all set to take something seriously in a sporting way. But the foolish thing was, they gave me the option that they could source some stuff, or I could get it for myself, and I took the lazy route of saying, 'I think I'd like to look like a long distance runner in a vest and short-shorts, I think that would be funny', and then I arrived for my first day of filming and the vest was really big and the shorts were really short. It was even more silly and undignified than I bargained for!"

"I don't know — I went into it thinking I was going to be quite clever, and maybe spot the shortcuts and stuff, and then very quickly in the house I felt like, 'oh God, I'm not the flavour of contestant I thought I was at all, it turns out I'm the chaos contestant' — then we got to the studio and watched our efforts back, and I was like, 'oh, no, Jason is the chaos contestant'! I feel like I'm a bit of a yo-yo, and it really surprised me.

"There were some tasks where I thought, 'that's one I've got in the bank'. For most of the period in the house, in my mind it was like, 'disaster, disaster, disaster', and there were literally one or two where I thought, 'actually, that one went well'. And then some of the disasters turned out to be fine, and a couple of the ones I thought were bankers were actually disastrous, so I turned out to be a terrible judge!"