laughter greg davies: and so, ladies and gentlemen, for your entertainment, alex will represent - the style, singing a funk song. - # in1953 # there was a terrible situation # ow! #er... # and everyone got very sad — # because they divided the nation...# cheering yay! applause take us right back to the start. how did you come up with this idea? how did it happen? well, it was not meant to be a tv show. i'm not a tv producer, i'm a comedian. and i think that's part of the success of it. it was turned down by everyone in telly. my wife had a baby 15 years ago and i wasn't allowed to go to the edinburgh festival — quite rightly — so i sat at home, enviously watching my friends having a good time. and i woke up with an idea where i would set these comedians a challenge once a month for a year. and the following year, i went to edinburgh, did a show with them all onstage, and told the very—late—night audience of 150 people how it went. and there was clearly this thing where comedians are competitive and funny without a script. so, i did that again the following year, and then a tv company

five comedians i are on the series for ten weeks and they compete _ to impress a giant. who is greg davisdoing tasks, idiosyncratic tasks set by me and they doj them in isolation so they don't know how each other's done. i there's no script. they don't know what's coming. they've got to do their best. so you see very clever people being undone and very, um, i silly people doing well. you talk about celebration of lunacy and ludicrously well. before we carry on talking, let's just play a little clip from taskmaster of you in action alongside the actual taskmaster, greg davies. so, ladies and gentlemen, for your entertainment, alex will represent the division of north and south korea in a disco break dance style, singing a funk song. # in1953, there was a terrible situation. # and everyone got i very sad because they divided the nation. yay! take us right back to the start. how did you come up with this idea? how did it happen? well, it was not meant to be a tv show. - i'm not a tv producer. i'm a comedian. and i think that's part of the success of it. . it was turned down i by everyone in

. - [reporter] 18 year-old greg davies scored 15 million points, played 31 hours on one quarter. - arcades could tease me before and after, but not during. - video games were everywhere. we went from just in arcades to- - [announcer] don't just watch television tonight, play it. - everybody had a console. they were constantly part of our lives. - [tv reporter] home video games. right now there are over 100 video games out and by christmas, there should be close to 200 if all the manufacturers come through as promised. - atari, they released a home console called the atari 2600 which was the hottest thing going. we had one in my house and i felt like we arrived. the pictures looked more real. the speed, the action, the sound effects are much more realistic. in fact, i have one of my old cartridges that i held onto from when i was a kid. this is a super breakout and this is one of those games that i played to death. used with paddle controllers. they had twists, input at the top that slid a platform around that you bounce the ball on. i can't believe i'm explaining breakout on a documentary.