taskmaster

i don't want to shit down anyone's neck

In a week my sister will be on the new series of Taskmaster. If you haven’t watched Taskmaster, or don’t know what it is, it’s widely-considered as one of the most successful comedy shows on TV, is on its 19th season and has a huge and committed cult following.

Now, this is not a hype piece. I’m not going to be like “this is a big moment!” (even though, obviously it is) because SURE, but also this is kind of just the natural progression of my sister’s hard-earned career. I am also friends with enough people with public careers to know that the process of being on TV or in the public eye is much weirder and more complex in reality than any aspirational, romanticised idea or dream of it. Being perceived en-masse isn’t normal for the human brain so there’s a whole host of oddness that comes with it.

What I want to talk about is how I FEEL LIKE I AM ON TASKMASTER NEXT WEEK.

Me and my sister are incredibly close. She is kind of like my soulmate or my one true love or maybe like a horcrux of mine (fuck JK rowling). She’s like someone took a bit of my insides and put them in another person. We’re very different and yet we’re exactly the same, too. We’re a bit like a song that has been written with the same notes, rearranged to different melodies, that if you played at the same time would weave perfectly together. Our closeness comes from a mix of our loving upbringing, our experiences and our personalities. But it also comes from how we’ve shown up in our sibling-hood. We’ve looked after our relationship and through difficult times, insecurities and disagreements talked it out, argued, repaired, tried to understand. Anyway, we love each other very much.

an excerpt from one of our casual whatsapp convos

I have watched Stevie work at comedy for 15 years. At her craft. And I should have known this would happen quite honestly, because she has always been the funniest person I’ve ever met. We used to write and film sketch shows together at home for days. We’d watch The Smell Of Reeves and Mortimer with cheese and crackers as little kids, and sit in front of Monty Python as teenagers, doing impressions for hours. We’d laugh out loud in the back of the car to The Goonies on holiday in South of France. We’d record little sketch videos in our 20s for YouTube (she went on to continue and become viral many times over amassing tens of millions of views).

She’s kind of the only person that can make me laugh until I am crying, wheezing, making no sound, often. One time she quizzically picked up a bit of leaf off the floor and I cried laughing because of the way she did it. I can’t explain that to you any other way. It’s the way she does things that fucks me up so much. It’s partly because our humour is almost exactly the same – so I am biased – but comedy as her passion has always made a lot of sense. Writing is the other obvious one. She was always going to do that, and she has combined both throughout her career. It hasn’t been easy for her. She wasn’t born with the entitled confidence of some of the male comedians I’ve watched decide they’d “quite like to do comedy” and then brazenly enjoy everything they write and feel nothing in the face of the real-time feedback of an audience even if it’s negative. Stevie is humble and self-aware – and often way to hard on herself – and along with her wild emotional intelligence, hilarious creativity and tenacity it’s part of what makes her so endearing and authentic. She is adorable and impressive to me in equal measure. To be honest, if she was all of the magical things she is, as well as brazenly confident on top of it? She’d actually be unlikeable because she’s already too impressive and adorable. She has had to fight in the 15 years she’s been a comedian. Not just the bullshit in the industry itself, or the misogynistic men that are part of it, but fight herself too; prove that she can do this. Learn to believe in herself. In her early days of comedy that was hard. I wanted to hold up a magic mirror then and show her who she was.

None of the above was me, you understand? I wasn’t working through all that, Stevie was, and now 15 years later, she is appearing on Taskmaster (and has a host of other TV appearances in the pipeline), but I am not. Yet I feel like I AM GOING ON TV NEXT WEEK. I am so attached to her feelings and experiences that I am nervous about it airing, and yet excited at the same time. I had 3 dreams about it??? I feel like when it airs I’ll scream the whole time and won’t be able to watch it. I keep doing this thing when I watch the trailers on social media where I replay any moment she appears multiple times and then scream a bit and then re watch it 7 more times and then tell Jordy I can’t watch it (?).

I also keep thinking that if anyone says a bad fucking thing about her I’ll beat the shit out of them. D’ya know what I mean? But, like, I’m not even violent. I used to be quite scrappy if someone hurt me or someone I love – like I’ve slapped or shoved people before – but I’m more mature now and also quite restorative justice orientated and yet all I can think is that I’ll want to shit down the necks of men that are mean to her online. Oh wow sorry that’s a lot. What if not everyone thinks she’s hilarious and adorable like I do? But also, what if everyone DOES and it all like “haha! that’s just our Stevie!” and I’m like “shut up you don’t know Stevie, her jokes are only things I understand, get that neck out” while pulling down my pants. Do you know what I mean? Why am I…? Am I going mad?

I think watching someone ascend in their career and become more well-known after literally 15 years of struggle and work is a very unique experience. I am excited, nervous, protective, happy for people to discover her but also freaked out that they will. I don’t want her on it actually, and yet all I want to do is watch her enjoy it and have fun on it. Whatever happens to her feels like it’s happening to me, because I have always been hers and she has always been mine. And look, I won’t shit down anyone’s necks and, instead, will continue to be her calm confidant in moments of hardship or her silly cheerleader in moment of joy (and everything she needs in between), but I think when someone’s so incredibly special, you don’t want to share them with the world because they’re yours, and at the same time all you want is for people to see how special they are, because maybe that will finally make them see themselves how you do and understand how truly special they are. Maybe that’s where all this is coming from.

Taskmaster airs Thursday 1 May at 9.00pm on Channel 4.

G x