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Chapter Text

Introduction

My name is Alex Horne. It feels odd to start anything this way, let alone a book with my name very clearly printed on the cover as assumedly it is by the time you have this in your hands (at the moment, it’s just a document on my computer, with my name thankfully absent, lest I be accused of narcissism beyond the baseline amount I think any comedian needs). 

But it also needs to be said because the introduction to this book, the impetus to everything that is to follow, stems from the fact that to the vast majority of people that I meet, whether in my hometown of Chesham, or in London, or across the UK for any of my various comedy gigs, or even in as far flung of places as the United States, Italy or Thailand, Alex Horne is not my complete name. To a shocking number of people, I have a prefix to my name that lives in perpetuity, bellowed as it frequently is into my right ear at a volume that I think concerns my audiologist.

That prefix, of course, is ‘Little’.

It was assigned to me by my somewhat accidental partner in comedy, Greg Davies. I say accidental because when we started making the television programme Taskmaster, in which Greg is the titular Taskmaster and I his harried assistant, I don’t think either of us expected it to become what it has today, nor our friendship to evolve the way it has over the years. And when Greg started introducing me as Little Alex Horne beginning in series 3, certainly neither he nor I could ever have anticipated that fans all over the world would come to know 6 foot 2 inch me as, well, little.

He, at his gargantuan 6 foot 8, finds it very funny.

My mother-in-law, distinctly less so.

I fall somewhere in the middle, I suppose. It is very funny, as are most things that Greg says and does, but it can be rather inconvenient for anonymity’s sake to have strangers shouting my full name at me in public, especially when I must then explain to random passers-by why they’re referring to me as ‘little’, and also why they, or anyone really, know who I am. 

(I’ve yet to find a good way to answer the question from a surprised stranger of, “Oh, are you famous?” Because obviously I’m not famous enough that this person knows of me, at which point it feels both factually incorrect and oddly boastful to say yes.)

And of course there was a stretch of time where my children referred to me as Little Alex Horne instead of Daddy, and that was a particularly trying few months for any variety of reasons.

But for the most part, I don’t mind it. It’s become as much a part of me as Taskmaster itself is. Greg and I have spent ten years now working together on what will probably be the opening line of both our obituaries (which sounds morbid, but at a certain point it seems silly to deny something like that), and I’ll happily take any of the absurd things he says about me in the show if it means we get to do this for ten more years (which we probably won’t, if only because I think we may eventually run out of comedians willing to subject themselves to our particular brand of silliness).

If Greg’s name for me, or more accurately, the man who gave me said name, is the first impetus of this book, the ten year anniversary of the show on which I was given the name is the second. In late 2023, as we were making preparations for the third New Years Treat edition of the show, Andy Cartwright, our series producer and one of the many people who do actual work on the show rather than just faffing about as yours truly is wont to, suggested that I give some thought to what, if anything, I wanted to do for the tenth anniversary, even though it seemed quite a ways off at that point.

“Maybe something like the 50th episode,” he suggested. “Be funny if you do an update to the things you know about Greg now that it’s been ten years.”

Andy was referencing a bit from series 7 that had come to define, in some regards, the relationship that Greg and I have cultivated on screen, wherein I was challenged by Greg to name things I knew about him and failed miserably (and, I might add, for those who missed the joke, my failure was deliberate). Those things included such deep topics as whether he celebrates Christmas, how many siblings he has, and what car he drives.

It wasn’t a bad idea by any stretch to do a callback and update to that bit, since the on screen relationship between myself and Greg has become the backbone of the show and one of the things we get asked about most in interviews (and is the subject of an unusually high amount of online fanfiction, which I find both gratifying and extremely embarrassing, and which my wife finds utterly hilarious).

The fact that both Greg and my wife get so much amusement out of my humiliation probably says more about my relationships than I ever could, in this book or otherwise.

Still, 10 years seemed as good a time as any to put down into words an actual exploration of my friendship with Greg, and how it has evolved over the past ten years and will hopefully continue to do so moving forward. A popular internet search engine tells me that tin or aluminium are the traditional 10 year anniversary gifts, but Greg will have to settle for paper (the traditional first anniversary gift).

But I can’t just write a book about Greg, voluminous though such a book would be between the many stories he’s told (both publicly and privately) and the many things he gets up to on the days when he’s not holed up in his flat. I’m not keen on writing some kind of biography, and writing something to wax rhapsodic about our friendship feels more like something my Taskmaster alter ego would do, and despite what fans across the globe might shout at me, I am not actually Little Alex Horne.

What I am is someone who has previously written two books documenting a year- or years-long quest: one, a year-long competition with my dad about bird watching called, conveniently, Birdwatchingwatching; the second, my three-year-long attempt at getting a word in the dictionary called, rather expectedly given its subject matter as well as my well-documented love of wordplay, Wordwatching (I’ve written other books, but they don’t fit as neatly into the dichotomy so I shall, to my agent’s despair, pass on promoting those, other than to say they’re probably available on Amazon or something). 

Which meant when it came to figuring out the kind of hook that might allow for a publishing advance that would fund this whole project, I immediately thought of doing some kind of year-long…something in the run up to the ten year anniversary of Taskmaster. Something involving Greg. 

By involving Greg, I of course meant involving in a tangential sort of way. Presenting Greg with any kind of project that involves him is unlikely to be met with much enthusiasm. He prefers, always, to play a character or at the very least some sort of extremised version of himself. 

Perhaps that would be my quest, I recall thinking to myself, sitting next to Greg at Pinewood Studios as we filmed the New Years Treat in 2023. One year to get past the bravado and humour and self-effacement and prove our friendship by finding The Real Greg Davies.

Whatever that meant.

Of course, I’d spent the prior ten years developing tasks that were required, by their nature, to get more and more specific, so I knew if this was a task like one Greg might be judging, I wasn’t doing myself any favours by leaving it as open-ended as that. I needed to define, for myself, just what exactly I meant by “finding the real Greg Davies” so that I, and by extension my reading audience, could know if I had been successful in the end. 

Did it mean discovering his biggest secret? Hard to do for a man who’s professed on multiple public occasions to having sexual relations with his childhood teddy.

Exposing some shocking truth about his character? I can already say with full confidence that the most shocking thing about Greg is that he is almost exactly as he appears to be. Very little of him is artifice, only exaggerated, usually for comedic effect. Besides, that felt more like the job of some nosy gossip columnist, not someone who proclaimed to be his friend.

So what, then? What could I manage to do in a year that was interesting and worthy of this endeavour (while also being able to be discussed on a future episode of Taskmaster and, potentially, turned into a book)?

I landed on something simple, something that also managed the callback to the episode Andy had originally referenced: I would give myself one year to learn something I didn’t already know about Greg. Something big, something that defined him as a person, not just something like what his favourite flavour of Hula Hoops is (cheese and onion, in case anyone is curious).

Simple, yes, and also, on the surface at least, not a hugely difficult task, which meant I needed to add some sort of parameters to make it more difficult and also more interesting. To close the loopholes, to use Taskmaster parlance, and stop myself from, metaphorically at least, just moving the red green.

(My editor made a note that I should explain what the red green is. I maintain that if you don’t know what that is referencing, very little of the rest of the book will probably make much sense. And if you have somehow made it this far without knowing what it means and choose to continue reading, you’re far more dedicated than I allowed myself to imagine the average reader to be when I started writing this.)

To that end, the first loophole I closed was that I had to learn whatever this new thing was from the man himself. No inviting myself around to his mum’s house in Wem in hopes of mining stories of his childhood; no ringing Rhod Gilbert, who spent those early Edinburgh years in his company and also has a love of telling the kind of stories meant to deliberately embarrass Greg; no emailing one of Greg’s former girlfriends to get the scoop from them, and not just because very few of them have ever been named publicly. 

No, the only person I was allowed to learn this thing from was Greg, straight from his mouth. 

It should be noted that Greg is notoriously private about anything other than the carefully curated selection of very funny stories that he shares with relative abandon. This presents an inherent contradiction to both my endeavour and the potential book detailing said endeavour. The latter I decided at the time was a future problem, and could always be dealt with in the edit. The former…well, that was somewhat trickier. Comedians as a whole I don’t think are usually ones to closely parse the ethics of using other people as the subject of our stories. But this wasn’t just learning something as a one-off punchline. This was learning something about a man I consider a friend, something not even the bowels of the internet might know, and then sharing it with an audience of several million people (via Taskmaster, on Channel 4 or YouTube. I’m not nearly as deluded about the likely audience size of this book).

I wish I could say it gave me pause but honestly I mostly brushed it off, comfortable in the knowledge that I had an entire year to both learn whatever the thing was and also spin a convincing argument for why Greg should let me share it. Plus, Greg and I have kissed on national telly, which in a weird way I felt gave me permission to do a little bit of light snooping.

Ethical quandaries aside, learning whatever it was straight from Greg meant I would also need to spend a reasonably high amount of time with him over the following year. Our time spent in the same physical location over the course of a year is actually relatively minimal: anywhere from 12 to 15 days per year spent filming the studio bits for two series and a New Year’s Treat for Taskmaster with another day or two of planning and prep work; a handful of dinners or nights at the pub, usually for a mutual friend’s birthday or other celebration; randomly bumping into each other as we record appearances on different panel shows (never together, for some reason, though I think that’s more a matter of scheduling than a nefarious plot by Andy Cartwright to keep our mutual appearances a Taskmaster exclusive); and, of course, the one or two times a year when my wife batters him into making the trek out to Chesham to join us for dinner. 

Most of the rest of our time together is virtual, whether interviews over Zoom or acceptance speeches for recent awards shows, such as the BAFTA we won during the pandemic (a personal highlight for me, insofar as the award was presented by Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy; a disappointment that we weren’t able to gather as a crew to share in the excitement).

To this end, spending a significant amount of time with Greg over the next year presented a bit of a problem. The largest, as already hinted at, was geographical. Greg and I don’t live near each other: he lives in London; I live 26 miles away from London. That makes seeing each other regularly extremely unlikely without some kind of coordinated planning.

Which was made all the more difficult by two other loopholes that I decided to close, because I apparently do enjoy making things as difficult for myself as possible: firstly, and largely in an attempt to deal with the geographical problem, I would be requiring myself to spend time with Greg at least once a week over the course of the year; secondly, Greg was not allowed to know about any of this until it was over.

The first I still left somewhat open, as ‘spend time with’ is largely open to interpretation and could allow for our virtual time together. This was also inherently practical as I had a tour with my band as well as several holidays on the books and doubted I’d be able to convince Greg to join me at the last minute on either.

Especially due to the second condition. I could just imagine myself meeting up with Greg in a pub, asking him to tell me something about himself that I didn’t know, that no one knew, and him undoubtedly coming up with a hilarious story on the spot. And since the point of this was to learn more about Greg, to become better friends and to celebrate 10 years working together, that felt an awful lot like cheating.

So that was the challenge, and those were the conditions: I had one year to learn something new about Greg that no one else knew, something that went towards making him the man that he is. I must learn this thing from Greg himself, not from anyone else. I will spend time once a week with him to help assist this process. And Greg could not find out about it. If he so much as suspected something was going on, it would taint things enough that I think I was liable to call the whole thing off.

With the challenge set, there were only two people I needed to inform: my agent, so that the proper steps could be taken towards that publishing advance; and my wife, as arrangements would need to be made if I was going to be spending that much time in London.

“Hm,” Rachel said, when I informed her of the plan.

“Good hm or bad hm?” I asked.

After almost twenty years of marriage, we both know that we say far more in what we leave unsaid than said.

“Just hm,” she said, pausing before asking, “What exactly are you hoping to learn from this?”

I hadn’t really given it much thought at that point. “That Greg secretly likes football and has been dying to ask me to go to a game with him?” I suggested.

(Greg, of course, notoriously dislikes football. Pigs, I think, have a better chance of flying than Greg does of being a secret football fan.)

Rachel just laughed. “Well,” she said. “Good luck with that.”

Not necessarily an auspicious start to the year of Gregwatching, as I’d already termed it in my head, but I’d take it.

Chapter Text

Chapter One: January 2024

Just as I assume a basic familiarity with Taskmaster concepts such as the red green, so too must I suppose a basic familiarity with Greg Davies, the subject of everything that’s about to follow. I can give a quick introduction, but really, a basic biography does nothing to prepare you for the man, and all of his various contradictions.

To horribly paraphrase Walt Whitman, Greg contains multitudes.

As Greg would likely say, “Of course I do, mate, have you seen the size of me?”

Greg is, generously, 6 foot 8, though in the same breath he’ll tell you he’s lost an inch or so in his advanced age. He also hovers somewhere around 20 stone, give or take a couple in either direction. 

These are the things most frequently noticed by anyone who meets him for the first time. What they’ll miss with this impression is that Greg is so very careful to not be seen to be as large as he really is, both in stature and in character. He is generous with his time, gentle with his touches, and very careful to not make anyone uncomfortable.

He is also – and here is where the contradictions come in – extremely lazy, unbelievably forgetful, and overwhelmingly anxious in a way that tends to manifest in his worst possible habits. He is unquestionably vain, with an ego so swollen it puts the stories of his prostate to shame, but has cripplingly low self esteem and doubts himself after every performance. He has the insane ability to recall the tiniest – and frequently funniest – moment from a story from a decade ago, but has no memory of the fact that he’s told you this story several times before.

He’s extremely easy to love, rather easy to get cross with, and disappointingly impossible to stay cross with, though admittedly I’ve never been one to try. 

All of that barely scratches the surface. Perhaps most tellingly, were you to ask him to complete the same exercise for me, he’d likely take a massive puff off his vape before shrugging and telling you simply, “He’s just weird.”

He wouldn’t be wrong.

We have very little in common, from our backgrounds to how we became comedians to even what type of comedy we most enjoy. We also, as already mentioned, live very different lives, he as a bachelor in London, myself with my family in Chesham.

It’s been asked several times whether Greg and I would be friends had we not done Taskmaster. That’s really an impossible question to answer, since so much of our friendship evolved during and because of Taskmaster. I like to think that we’d be at least friendly with each other, but I do doubt we’d have anything close to the relationship we have through Taskmaster.

The kind of relationship that, when I phoned him the morning of 2 January, ready to begin my plan, had him answer the phone with a simple groaned, “Fuck off, mate.”

“Good morning,” I said. I’d be lying if I said I was thrown by the greeting, having heard this before. “Don’t tell me you’re still hungover from New Years.”

“My liver isn’t what it used to be,” Greg grumbled.

I took that as a yes.

“Well, do you know what’s an excellent hangover cure?”

“You fucking off?”

“Don’t think so,” I told him, as cheerfully as I dared, knowing as I did that he was about thirty seconds away from throwing something, and at this rate, it’d probably be his mobile. “I was more thinking a fry up.”

“Oh, that does sound lovely,” Greg sighed.

I glanced at the clock. “How about in two hours?”

Greg was silent for long enough that I feared I had somehow massively overstepped by inviting Greg to breakfast, though that thought was mostly my own nerves at the situation. After all, Greg had never once turned down a meal in all the years I’ve known him. “Yeah, all right,” he said finally. “I suppose I can get my massive, bloated corpse out of bed by then. Why are you in the city?”

I probably should have anticipated this question and, as such, given a better excuse, but somehow, the question caught me off guard. “Oh, erm, just have a few meetings,” I said in what I hoped was a vague enough way that he wouldn’t have any follow up questions.

I needn’t have worried. Greg’s curiosity isn’t high on a good day, let alone on the second day of a hangover. “You and your bloody meetings,” he said instead, in a good-natured way. “Let yourself in when you get here, I can’t guarantee I’ll be dressed.”

“Yes, Greg.”

That last instruction is probably another indication of our friendship. If anyone asked, I would likely just lean into the ready explanation that as the Taskmaster’s Assistant, it just makes sense that I have a spare key to Greg’s flat. I handle his admin, after all.

The truth is that he gave it to me because he suspects I’d be who the authorities call if he died in his sleep and they needed someone to identify the body.

Have I already mentioned anything about Greg’s anxieties?

I took the key when he gave it to me because it seemed to put his mind at ease. I rather suspect he has a great many closer friends in both proximity and relationship who’d be better able to assist with letting him in if he locked himself out, for instance, or, yes, identifying his body, if it came to it. But truth be told I was pleased to be asked. I like being useful, and trusted.

And if he ever oversleeps for his call time for Taskmaster, I can always go wake him up.

(I’m not joking when I say that the threat of this is a genuine motivator for him to arrive on time.)

In any case, I took the spare key, made my way into London, and let myself into his flat with fifteen whole minutes to spare. As predicted, Greg was still in his bedroom, with the door mercifully closed, even though we’ve probably seen most of each other’s bodies at this point by sheer virtue of the idiocy we get up to in our comedic lives. I decided to be a good friend and start a pot of coffee while I waited.

I sat at the kitchen table and scrolled through my phone, getting so absorbed in an email chain that I didn’t even hear Greg emerge from his bedroom until he slapped me on the back. “All right, mate?” he asked, and I was glad to hear he sounded more cheerful than he had on the phone.

“Hello,” I said, setting my phone down. “I made coffee.”

Greg’s eyes lit up. “My hero,” he sighed, immediately heading to a cupboard to grab himself a mug. “You want any?”

“Yeah, thanks.”

Fifteen minutes and one mug of black coffee (Greg) and coffee with hot chocolate (me) later, and we were finally ready to head out for some breakfast, which was good because while the fry up idea had started as an excuse, by this point in the day, my stomach was making some rather concerning noises.

And Greg, of course, is always hungry.

You would be forgiven to think that the majority of my time spent with Greg revolves around food, largely because you’d mostly be correct. 

Well, most of our earliest times together revolved around alcohol, mostly a peril – or plus, depending on how one views it – of being on the comedy circuit. We’d shared gigs and dressing rooms and far more beer than anyone probably should before we’d ever really had a sit-down conversation. But when it came time to pitch him on Taskmaster, I knew it had to be done properly, with a meal, face-to-face. 

That way, assuming my charm couldn’t convince him, a full stomach might. 

Since that first lunch together, we’ve shared countless meals. In fact, over the past decade, one of the most frequent meals that I’ve eaten is probably ‘whatever Greg is having’. I enjoy food, I suppose, as much as anyone does, but I don’t care much for the act of deciding what to eat, which is where just getting whatever Greg is getting comes quite in handy.

My cardiologist upon seeing the massive, greasy fry up delivered to our table that January morning, would almost certainly disagree.

But as we both tucked in with gusto, I had hopes that, just as the full stomach might have helped convince Greg to do Taskmaster, here it might work to my advantage in getting him to open up.

I should have known better.

“So what’s going on?” Greg asked, halfway through his meal (mine, of course, was already finished, as one of my most defining traits is the speed with which I eat, because for some reason people – read: Greg – find it fascinating).

I feigned ignorance. “Pardon?”

Greg didn’t buy it. “It’s not that I mind getting a fry up with you, but I’m an unconventional choice before noon. Especially since I know Key’s already been out to Pret by now.”

Key being Tim Key, fellow comedian and, arguably, my best friend (which of us would argue in either direction depends largely on the day), who also lives in London and who, on most days at least, does tend to find himself out of his flat sometime before noon, in stark contradiction to Greg.

Of course, Greg might like to pretend he’s a night owl, but the truth is somewhat more complicated by the fact that his sleep schedule is, to use his term with great reluctance, fucked. “Bollocked to hell and back,” Greg has described it on more than one occasion. To put it in more polite terms, he sleeps poorly – when he sleeps at all. As such, he’s taken to pretending that he works better at night, if only to give some semblance of an excuse for why he’s awake at 3 in the morning outside of existential dread and middle-aged ennui. 

But despite his insomnia and lack of sleep most nights, he’s surprisingly cheerful in the morning – or at least, most mornings. I would never presume to go so far as to call him a morning person, as he’d almost certainly threaten me with grievous bodily harm if I did, but he’s a sight more amenable in the morning than I myself tend to be.

Unlike Greg, I am frequently mistaken for a morning person, which isn’t generally true. Well, it’s true that I’m out of bed several hours earlier than Greg most days, but that has more to do with both Taskmaster’s filming schedule and having a wife, three children, and a dog that also require at least part of my attention most mornings. I think I get mistaken for a morning person by the fact that I am, generally speaking, rarely in an out and out bad mood, but most mornings I am rather cranky until I’ve had some caffeine and whatever healthy nonsense Rachel has foisted on me to keep me alive despite the occasional fry up.

In any case, getting breakfast with Tim on the rare day that I do need to be in London for something in the morning is a more conventional choice, but one that would of course defeat the purpose of this whole affair.

“Ah,” I said, buying myself some time by spearing a tomato from Greg’s plate with my fork. “Tim was, er, busy.”

I hadn’t quite prepared a reasonable explanation for what Tim could possibly be busy with the morning of January the 2nd, but I needn’t have worried, as Greg took a different tack. “Oh, I see,” he said, nodding as he chased an errant bean around his plate. “So I was your second choice.”

I know Greg well enough to know when he’s feigning offence. I also know Greg well enough to know exactly how to get him to get over it. “Of course not,” I scoffed. “Fifth or sixth, maybe. Had to run through practically the whole list of everyone I know in London.”

As I predicted, Greg laughed. “Prick,” he said.

Greg will tell anyone who asks that his irritation with me on Taskmaster is genuine, but I at least like to believe that it’s the same kind of irritation as this, the easy, back-and-forth banter that has made our on-screen friendship almost as fun as our off-screen one.

He pointed at me with a yolk-sodden piece of toast. “So no ulterior motive, then,” he said, pitching it less as a question and more of a command.

It would be easy enough to agree and move the conversation along, but I, too, spotted a bit of a different tack, one that might work to my advantage in the long run, and so instead I shrugged and took a sip of coffee. “I wouldn’t say no ulterior motive,” I hedged.

As expected, Greg took the bait. “See, I knew there was something,” he said triumphantly. “Go on, out with it.”

Another command, one that I was happy enough to follow. “You know it’s the tenth anniversary coming up?”

Greg raised both eyebrows. “Of…?” he prompted.

“Oh, erm, of Taskmaster—”

Greg grinned in that triumphant way of his when he knows that he’s set up a joke exactly the way he wanted to, frequently at my own expense, though equally likely to be at his own. “Yes, I know it’s the tenth anniversary of Taskmaster coming up,” he told me, “though I do so love when you act like you think I’m thick.”

The thing about doing this for so long is that I saw the joke coming from a mile away, and yet I was obligated by our unspoken dynamic to take a swing at it regardless. “I thought you said I wasn’t a very good actor.”

“Fuck off,” Greg said in a particularly self-satisfied way.

“Yes, Greg.”

Greg only took a moment longer to luxuriate in my manufactured discomfort before prompting, “So it’s the tenth anniversary, and…?”

“And we’re inevitably going to have to do some press and such about it,” I told him, which had the benefit of being true in addition to being a good excuse for just about everything else that was to come. “Plus we’ve got the thing that I’m still finalising—”

“The thing that you won’t tell me any details about but have made me clear the entirety of my March diary for?” Greg interrupted, a little grumpily.

As much as I enjoy spending time with Greg, on occasion it is a herculean effort to not roll my eyes every time he decides to lean into a petulance that shouldn’t remotely work for a then-55 year old man. “The thing I’ve made you clear the final week of March for, yes, that thing.”

That thing being our first international premiere of a series of Taskmaster – we debuted series 17 in New York City, but there will be more on that later. At this point, just a few short days into January, the idea was still in its nascent stages, as likely to not happen as it was to happen, requiring quite a few pieces to fall into place like so many dominoes.

“And you still won’t tell me what it is?” Greg pressed.

I shook my head. “Not until it’s finalised. I don’t want you to get excited if it falls through.”

I am not, by nature, a superstitious person – nor, for that matter, is Greg. But if there is one thing that I have learned over the past decade of doing this show, it’s that when you are dealing with multiple moving parts across two different countries, it’s always better to underpromise than overpromise.

If there’s a second thing I’ve learned, it’s that Greg does not handle disappointment well.

As if sensing my train of thought, Greg scowled. “Because I’m a child with no emotional control?” he asked sourly, not even waiting for me to make the obvious joke before he sighed and said, “You know what, don’t answer that.”

“Yes, Greg.”

“Right, so upcoming press,” Greg continued, slightly more business-like, though I knew better than to trust it would last. “No different than normal, really. Don’t see why it merits a breakfast meeting on the second of bloody January.”

He didn’t pitch it as a question but I know him well enough to know– actually, no, that’s not entirely fair. It doesn’t take knowing Greg to tell when he’s trying to make a point. Subtle, he is not. 

“The meeting part was just to give you fair warning that we’ll almost certainly be spending more time talking this year than we usually do,” I explained.

Now, myself, on the other hand, I am a paragon of subtlety, as noted by this particularly clever way of slipping in an oblique reference to my project, of which Greg knows nothing. Yes, I astound even myself.

And yes, that was predominantly sarcastic.

“Thanks for the warning,” Greg said, amused. “And what was the breakfast part for?”

“To make the warning more palatable.”

Greg nodded slowly. “They do say that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach,” he said, proving his own point by taking a massive bite out of a rasher of bacon.

I threw caution to the wind, pressing the point enough to probably raise suspicion. “So did it work?”

Luckily, with most of a fry up under his belt – metaphorically and literally, or at least headed that way in his digestive system – Greg was indeed as amenable as I had hoped. “You’re acting like us chatting to each other is a hardship,” he pointed out, arching one imposing eyebrow at me. “I know this will surprise you, you little twerp, but after ten years and seventeen series together, I have grown slightly fond of you.”

For some reason, even though it could barely even count as a compliment, it made me feel strangely warm and I looked away. “Thank you, Greg,” I said, falling back on my usual pattern of bland obsequity in hopes that the familiar territory would feel safer. “Daily phone calls from here on out then, is it?”

I had meant it as a joke, expecting Greg to take the bait and use it as an excuse to excoriate me as annoying or needy or any of the other mostly-joking insults he normally bandies my way. But instead, Greg leaned forward, smirking. “Mate, if you want to turn this into a game of friendship chicken, I'd remind you that I am an extremely needy person with far too much time on my hands.”

If I had tried this on Greg, it would’ve backfired spectacularly. For as needy as he is, Greg very rarely rises to a dare, whereas I am pathologically incapable of letting one pass me by. As such, I mirrored Greg’s pose, also leaning forward, my elbows resting on the table. “That does sound like a challenge,” I returned.

Greg just looked at me for a long moment before he shrugged and said, “Let’s make it weekly, and I’m in.”

“Daily too much for you?” I asked.

“Too much for you,” Greg corrected, reaching for his cup of coffee, “what with your insane schedule, and I wouldn’t want to win on a technicality.”

“Of course not,” I agreed.

This, I assume, came less from an attempt at magnanimity, never one of Greg’s strong suits, and more from his ironclad knowledge that due to my love of loopholes, I would forever caveat a win solely wrought by a technicality. And whatever victory Greg thought he might be getting out of this, he didn’t want a mental asterisk next to it.

It is quite possible that we know each other far too well.

“Right,” Greg said, finishing his coffee and glancing around for our waiter so he could get the bill, “then I look forward to chatting to you, over the phone or in person, I’m not particularly fussed, for the next 52 weeks.”

“51,” I corrected. “As I presume this counts as week one.”

Greg didn’t even bother giving me a dirty look. “Fuck,” he pronounced, taking his wallet out of his pocket and batting my hand away as I tried to intercept the pin and chip machine, “off.”

“Yes, Greg.”

It didn’t go unnoticed by me as we parted that brisk January morning, Greg back to his flat, me to my ‘meetings’, that somehow, I had not only inadvertently planted the seeds of my year-long plan but had made it seem like Greg’s idea, all the better for getting him to go along with it without raising any suspicion.

I’ve been accused of being a mastermind before, which is never actually a compliment, but in most of those cases, as in this one, it was more a happy accident that I was able to take advantage of rather than something I deliberately orchestrated. I couldn’t have masterminded Greg’s challenge to so align with my nascent plan if I had tried, and I rather suspect that the trying would have backfired, with Greg offering one of his usual litany of excuses about being too busy or just plain not wanting to go along with something.

In any case, I was hardly one to look a gift horse in the mouth and so returned to Chesham the conquering hero, whereupon my dog had a wee on my shoes and rather put that back into perspective.

Greg was right about one thing, at least – I am busy, though rather less so than the usually harried air I normally project. But busy enough that I did not spend really any great part of the following week coming up with any plausible press obligation that would merit that week’s conversation (phone call this time, as neither Greg nor I were able to find a time to get together in person).

Still, even without a concrete plan, I Facetimed him at the reasonable hour of 1 in the afternoon, relatively certain that he’d at least be out of bed this time.

Sure enough, when he answered, he appeared to be on his sofa, which was, genuinely, a step up. “All right, baby boy?” he asked in greeting.

“Hello, Greg,” I returned.

He glanced at his phone, doing a small doubletake. “Are you phoning me from the fucking house?” he demanded.

I glanced around. “Technically from the hutch,” I corrected.

The house – and hutch – in question are the Taskmaster house (and on-site hutch, added during series 16), where I spend a rather considerable amount of my time and Greg has not voluntarily set foot in– well, longer than someone who professes to be The Taskmaster probably should.

“Should’ve guessed,” Greg sighed.

“Sorry?” I offered, though I really wasn’t sure what I would be apologising for.

Greg waved a dismissive hand, his mind already elsewhere. “Oh, speaking of Taskmaster, did I tell you who I ran into at the Tesco the other day?” he asked, with the familiar timbre of starting a story that was certain to take up the vast majority of our remaining time on the phone.

“Interesting segue,” I remarked, just to wind Greg up, which succeeded immensely, as the glare he subsequently gave me could have melted paint.

Luckily for all involved, I am made of sterner stuff than that.

As Greg launched into his story, determined, as usual, to ignore my attempts at distracting him and focusing instead on making me laugh (not a hard prospect by any means, especially when it comes to the stories that he tells), I found myself start to relax, just a little.

Like Greg had said, it wasn’t much of a hardship, chatting to each other.

Besides, we were two weeks down, with only 50 to go.

I wasn’t anywhere closer to learning something new about Greg, but as I laughed along to Greg’s retelling of unexpectedly running into someone at his local Tesco, I wasn’t concerned.

After all, we had plenty of time.

Chapter Text

Chapter Two: February 2024

The remainder of my January calls with Greg passed in much the same way, both of us just shooting the breeze (a curious expression, that – one borrowed from the States, but one I’ve always been fond of, if only because it puts into mind the image of cowboys and John Wayne, a sort of masculinity I have yet to achieve in my life and which, I suppose, I must be resigned at this point to never reaching) until one or the other had to ring off to deal with whatever actual matters commanded our attention.

For me, there were many. Shooting tasks at the house, of course, but also finalising edits on the then forthcoming series 17, rehearsals with my band, the Horne Section, ahead of our then upcoming tour, interminable meetings with Channel 4 executives regarding airing schedules, including when – or, frankly, if – the second series of our sitcom would air, and, of course, the usual hectic life of a family with two working parents.

For Greg—

Well, he keeps himself busy, at least.

That’s probably both unkind and at least a little bit inaccurate – just because Greg does not live and breathe Taskmaster does not mean that he is sitting idly at home (most of the time, anyway). He spends much of his time not filming working on scripts and other material, and in February of 2024, had started putting together new material for a then forthcoming comedy show (by the time this reaches publication, he’ll likely be in the middle of touring said show, and I firmly expect to be on the receiving end of a number of calls and messages complaining about the life of a stand up comedian. The only thing worse for a comedian than not performing is, of course, performing).

Still, I sensed he was at the stage of winter doldrums and general irritation at being stuck in both his flat and his own head where it’d be nice to meet up again in person.

And by I sensed, of course what I mean is, he came right out and said it. 

“Fancy a pint?” he said in greeting when I phoned him the first week in February.

I glanced at my watch, even though I knew it couldn’t be much past 10 in the morning. “Bit early,” I told him, and I could practically hear him roll his eyes through the phone.

“I didn’t mean right this second, you prick,” he said. “I meant at the weekend or next week sometime. Anything to get me out of this cursed flat.”

“Writing going well, I’ll take it?” I asked as I put my phone on speaker so I could pull up my diary and see what I had on.

There was a noise rather like a large hand had met an equally large face, and I could see Greg wearily dragging his hand across his face as he told me plaintively, “I’ve never been so desperately tempted to just walk into the Thames.”

His despair probably shouldn’t have been funny, but I knew Greg too well to indulge his blacker moods. “Shame you’d probably just float,” I told him.

“In this weather? I’d freeze my fucking bollocks off first, mate.”

“Mm. But what a way to go.”

Greg snorted a laugh. “So when are you free?” he asked, his mood at least temporarily lifted.

I glanced down at my phone. “Weekend’s out, I’m afraid,” I reported. “This week and next.”

“Weekday night, then,” Greg said, less a question than a command, one I didn’t intend on pushing back against, even if it would be a pain to get into London on a weeknight, as I had no expectation that he’d make the drive out to Chesham. “How about Wednesday? I’ve nothing on.”

I raised both eyebrows as I confirmed the date. “On Valentine’s Day?”

Greg exhaled sharply, a cross between a sigh and a growl, and a noise that normally indicated he was about thirty seconds away from throttling someone. “Oh, get fucked.”

It was anyone’s guess whether he was speaking to me, or to the concept of Valentine’s Day, or just to his entire dating history.

As a rule, one of the things that Greg and I rarely discuss unless it becomes relevant is his love life. And as the relevance of his love life is pretty well limited to when he’s dated someone seriously enough that he wishes to bring her to an awards show or something similar, there’s frequently not much to discuss. 

To be fair, I also don’t discuss much of my own love life, but that’s largely because, as Greg put it, Rachel and I are ‘nauseatingly in love’ and ‘liable to make me gip, Jesus Christ’. 

Which is, annoyingly, I suppose, true.

As if sensing my thoughts, Greg huffed another sigh and asked, with great reluctance, “I suppose you’ve plans with Rachel, then?”

“Not until the weekend,” I reported, triple-checking our shared calendar to make sure I’d not missed anything. Not that Rachel and I care much about Valentine’s Day – after almost twenty years of marriage, we’ve found better ways and better days to celebrate.

This also meant that I had no excuse for begging off that Wednesday – not that I particularly wanted one.

“Shall we get that pint, then?”

Greg hesitated. “Are you sure?” he asked, something doubtful in his tone.

Which was, frankly, typical of the man. He rarely believes that anyone would choose him if given a choice between spending him with him and– well, and literally anything else, as far as I can tell, as absurd as that is, and not just because Greg is always good company. 

But I had neither the time nor inclination to reassure him, and went for the easy joke instead. “Quite sure,” I said firmly. “What better way to celebrate Valentine’s Day than, erm, hanging with your homies.”

I knew Greg well enough to know that my use of the word ‘homies’ would doubtlessly make him laugh, and I was not disappointed. Greg immediately burst into giggles, muffled just slightly by, I imagine, him raising a hand to his mouth in a vain attempt to stifle them. “Is that what we are, then?” he managed between bursts of laughter. “Homies?”

I nodded, even though he couldn’t see me, and assured him in my poshest tone, “Yeah, bruv.”

Understandably, this sent Greg on another tailspin of laughter.

When he had recovered slightly, he managed a slightly choked, “Jesus Christ,” before he finally composed himself enough to get into the actual details. “Right. Meet you at 7, then? The usual place?”

And just because I couldn’t resist, I told him, “It’s a date.”

“Fuck off, you little twerp,” Greg sighed before ringing off, and I shook my head and made a note in my diary before going to find Rachel and tell her that I now had rather unexpected Valentine’s Day plans that somehow didn’t involve her.

Of course, while for Greg this was no more than an excuse for a piss up, I knew I needed to take advantage of the opportunity for my ongoing project which had thus far made very little actual progress. As such, when I stopped at a service station on my way into London on the 14th, in addition to buying Greg a ridiculous heart-shaped box of chocolates because I knew it would make him laugh, and also he would in fact eat all of them, I stopped in front of a rack of magazines.

Not usually my area of interest, I’ll admit, but one of the magazines was emblazoned with the words ‘A VALENTINE’S DAY QUIZ FOR COUPLES’, and I figured there were almost certainly a few questions in there that might provide me with some fodder for things I didn’t otherwise know about Greg.

So I arrived at our usual pub armed thusly, and as I beat Greg by my usual fifteen minutes, I ordered our first round and some crisps before settling in at our usual table and waiting.

“Really?” Greg said with mostly mock grumpiness as he spotted the violently red box of chocolates I’d left by his pint. 

I took a sip of lager before telling him, “If you’d rather I took them home to Rachel—”

As expected, he swiped them out of my reach. “Didn’t say that, did I,” he said as he settled across from me. “Besides, I’d hope that after twenty years, your wife rates more than a shitty box of chocolates.”

I chose not to remark on the fact that he immediately opened said shitty box of chocolates, popping one in his mouth. “Mm, I think last year I got her new paving stones for the garden path.”

Greg snorted. “Romantic.”

It was almost too easy a joke, but I knew if I didn’t make the joke, Greg would, and it would hit more self-deprecatingly coming from him. “Remind me which of us has been married for almost twenty years.”

Sure enough, while the thought would have made him sulk, coming from me it just made him laugh. “Fair play,” he said through a mouthful of chocolate, which he immediately supplemented with a fistful of crisps. 

“But speaking of Valentine’s Day,” I said, ever one for a terrible segue, “I thought we might as well make this a working dinner.”

I produced the magazine with its lurid pink cover, and Greg blanched. “Fucking hell,” he said, glaring balefully at it. “What could this possibly have to do with work?”

“You can’t tell me that some outlet wouldn’t be interested in ‘Taskmaster’s Greg Davies and Alex Horne Take a Couple’s Quiz’,” I said mildly, already flipping the magazine open.

“Some outlet,” Greg repeated. “That’s a funny way of saying for your own sick gratification.” I ignored him, concentrating on finding the correct page, and Greg sighed. “Christ. Please tell me this at least makes this night tax deductible.”

“Sure,” I agreed, which I hoped Greg (and any enterprising readers) wouldn’t actually take as tax advice. “Ah, here we are. Question 1: Which of you—”

I broke off immediately, which Greg of course pounced on, rather like – you might have guessed – a puma. “What?” he asked, grinning and reaching for the magazine before I could think to bat his hand away. He raised both eyebrows as he read the question mercifully silently. “Well, I do think quite a few outlets would be interested in our answer to that one, yeah.”

I flushed roughly the colour of his box of chocolates. “I, er, I didn’t realise the questions would be quite so…blue,” I said, trying and failing to snatch the magazine back.

“Christ, I hope not,” Greg sniggered, flipping through to the next page. “I mean, Jesus, unless this interview is for the perverts on the internet—”

The ‘internet perverts’ is what Greg likes to call the small – hopefully small, at least – cadre of fans who write the rather racy stories about myself and Greg. “You shouldn’t refer to our fans that way,” I said mildly, trying again and failing again to recapture the magazine. “Not when the internet perverts are the ones keeping us gainfully employed.”

Greg just snorted a laugh. “Speak for yourself,” he said. “Oh, here, this one’s not so bad – ‘Describe how your partner smells’.” 

He looked expectantly at me, and I immediately forgot every word I’ve ever known to describe someone’s scent. “Oh, er, I suppose you smell like whatever scent of vape juice you’re using currently?” I hazarded.

“That was pretty much a given, I suppose,” Greg agreed. “It’s what I get for not having a usual cologne and just putting on whatever bottle I happen to grab.” He drained his beer. “People love getting me cologne for some reason,” he said, grumpy again. “Well, not some reason – because what the fuck else do you get a middle aged man with no hobbies.”

He stood to get another round and I picked the conversation back up as soon as he returned with two new pints. “You have hobbies,” I told him, taking another sip of beer.

“Have I,” Greg said flatly.

“You like, erm, history?” I said, more of a suggestion than an answer. “And cars.” I pulled a face before elaborating, “More driving than cars, I suppose.”

Greg nodded slowly. “That is true.”

I cast about for something else that Greg might consider a hobby. “And you love, erm, whatever you can do on your phone or computer when you’re supposed to be working on a script.”

As I hoped it would, that made Greg bark a laugh, his dark mood dissipating almost instantly. “Oh fuck off, faffing around on my computer is not a hobby.”

“It could be,” I countered, before brightening. “Oh, you like darts!”

Greg rolled his eyes, but there was something almost fond in the movement. “Again, not sure I’d consider that a hobby.”

I leaned forward. “Do you consider footie a hobby?”

“Playing? Yes. Watching?” Greg gave me a pointed look. “Not on your fucking life, mate.”

I hadn’t really expected a different answer from Greg, who notoriously despises football, owing, I assume, to being tall enough that he was stuck in the goal and forced to defend while everyone else in his year took shots at him, at least if his stories of his school days were to be believed. “Ah. That doesn’t bode well for my own hobbies, then.”

Greg’s smile sharpened. “Good to know we’re two boring old cunts, then,” he said, a sight more cheerfully than before, and though I winced at the use of the c-word, I didn’t deny it.

“Well, they do say misery loves company,” I said, raising my glass in a toast.

Greg laughed as he clinked his glass as mine. “Oh, speaking of being old and boring,” he started, cutting himself off to give me a look as he added, “And if you mention anything about the segue—” 

I mimed zipping my lips and he rolled his eyes, but he was grinning again. “D’you know what I’ve started doing recently?” he asked.

“Finally scheduled that colonoscopy, have you?” I asked, just to make him laugh again, which he, rather predictably, did.

“That ship has long sailed,” he informed me. “No, I’ve started reading The Sunday Times.” He said it casually but I immediately straightened, having a bad feeling on where this was headed. Like a shark sensing blood in the water, his grin sharpened. “Interesting article this past Sunday.”

Greg, of course, was almost certainly referring to an article about myself that I had forgotten I’d done until one of my WhatsApp groups started going off that Sunday prior with some of the more choice quotes, and I braced myself for the same from Greg. 

Doing press has never been my strong suit, especially press that essentially becomes me monologuing. The inherent need to be funny takes precedence over most other things and I do have a bit of a tendency to accidentally put my foot in my mouth when taken out of context.

As such, I highly suspected there was a specific quote that Greg was looking forward to taking out of context, and I sighed before glancing up at him. “Oh?”

“Mm,” he said, nodding, his eyes still on me as he took a sip of beer. He set his pint down with a thud. “Thought you said some very interesting things about wanting to eliminate the private school system.”

That was so far from what I expected that I almost inhaled my sip of beer up my nose. “Ah, erm, right,” I spluttered.

Greg’s grin widened. “Typical rich twat, getting a leg up from his privilege and pulling the ladder up after him,” he said, which I knew he was saying just to bait me, and not just because he couldn’t even make it through the sentence without giggling.

“Oh no, you’ve discovered the real reason why I don’t like having Oxbridge graduates on Taskmaster,” I said dryly. “Makes me look smarter than I am to be the only one.”

Greg laughed loudly. “Figured it’d be something like that,” he teased. “And believe me, I think the Daily Mail would rather have that quote than some shit couple’s quiz from a magazine.”

“Good thing I doubt the Daily Mail will be getting either,” I countered, grabbing his empty pint glass and standing to get us another round. When I returned, I continued, “Besides, imagine what the headline would be if they learned I’m on the same wage as someone who went to a comprehensive school.”

“Fuck off, you make so much more money from Taskmaster than I do,” Greg said with another laugh, taking a swig of beer before giving me a pointed look as he added, “For doing considerably more work, I might add.”

I wrinkled my nose. “I suppose…”

Generally speaking, Greg and I tend not to discuss money. Not because it’s any great secret what I make from Taskmaster, either as the Assistant or the creator/an executive producer – and certainly, Greg’s salary isn’t a surprise to me, one of many line items on a budget I am far too familiar with for someone who’s not even allowed to handle my household finances.

But it’s an uncomfortable subject, partially because we’re British, partially because we’re middle class, partially because I’ve barely had a real job in comparison to Greg’s decade of teaching. 

Of course, Greg usually delights in my discomfort, which I suppose really speaks to how uncomfortable the subject is to him as well for him not to bring it up as often as he can.

But not uncomfortable enough to stop him from rolling his eyes as he said, “Suppose my arse. We both know it’s true.” He paused. “But I’m– I guess surprised isn’t the right word. But I didn’t think you’d actually feel guilty about going to private school.”

He didn’t pitch it as a question, but I heard it nonetheless. “I don’t as much anymore,” I said truthfully. “It helps that Ben and Joe—” Ben Reynolds and Joe Auckland of the Horne Section, my two oldest friends. “—and I do basically the same thing, so it’s not as if I’ve put that private school education to good use.” I pulled a face and took a swig of beer before adding, “But I do recognise that it gave me an early advantage, even if I didn’t really, er, capitalise on it. I mean, I doubt I’d’ve gotten into Cambridge otherwise.”

Greg shook his head. “I don’t believe that for a second,” he said dismissively. “You’re an absolutely deranged weirdo, but you’re also one of the smartest people I’ve ever met.”

He said it in a firm sort of way, as if daring me to try to argue, though I knew him well enough to know he’d said it that way just to make me squirm. “I think that says more about the people you’ve met than it does about me,” I told him uncomfortably. “But thank you.”

Now it was Greg’s turn to look uncomfortable, as he always tends to when confronted with anything like sincerity. He took a quick sip of beer before continuing, “Of course, ending the private school system wouldn’t magically make things more equal.”

“No,” I agreed. “I know I can send my boys to state school in large part because Rachel and I can afford to live in an area with good schools. It’s all still privilege, at the end of the day.”

Greg nodded. “And you still feel guilty about it.”

Again, not pitched as a question. “No more than I feel guilty about most things in life I feel I haven’t had to properly work for.”

That made Greg laugh, but it was a dry, humourless sort of laugh. “I know exactly what you mean,” he said with a tone of finality that suggested he was ready to change topics.

I should add that this is not a usual conversation for Greg and I, any more than it would be for myself and– well, pretty much anyone else. But one of the many ways that Taskmaster has changed my life for the better has been putting these conversations at the very least on my radar in a way they had not previously been. I’d certainly never considered the implications of the fact that the first group of comedians I gathered to do Taskmaster in Edinburgh was overwhelmingly male, and entirely white.

Not all Oxbridge graduates, at least, but that is a small consolation.

The idea was not mine to ensure a slightly more even mix on Taskmaster, especially as the show progressed into later series, but it has benefitted from it immensely, just as comedy as a whole benefits from the inclusion of additional viewpoints. And I do get rather more credit than I deserve for that, and, while undeserved, I appreciate getting to be a part of a very small change in a very large, very old system.

As does Greg, even if we were both keen to get back onto slightly more familiar territory.

Unsurprising, then, that Greg leaned forward, a smirk twitching at the corners of his mouth, to ask me, “And how guilty do you feel about telling The Sunday Times that you have two perfect marriages?”

And there was the quote I had been expecting, far too late for me to claim that it had been something of a joke, describing my relationship with Greg as one of my ‘perfect marriages’ (the other, of course, being my actual marriage). 

I managed to meet Greg’s smirk with one of my own, even though I’m sure my entire face still flushed red. “I’d feel guiltier if that wasn’t how my wife would describe it, too.”

Greg barked a real laugh, sitting back in his seat. “Fair play.”

But I wasn’t done yet, giving him my best fawning smile. “Besides,” I added, laying it on thick, “it makes it all the sweeter to get to spend Valentine’s Day with my ‘husband’.”

“Oh, fuck off,” Greg said good-naturedly, draining his pint. “Another round?”

I looked critically down at my own almost empty glass. “I suppose I can manage at least one more.” 

Another round turned into another several, and by the time the pub landlord called for last orders, I was well past the point of being able to drive back out to Chesham. “Crash at mine,” Greg suggested.

I hesitated. “I can stay with Tim—”

“Mate, if you think you can make it up to Kentish Town in your state, you’re welcome to try it,” Greg sniggered.

I considered it, and as I was doing so, almost tripped over the completely flat pavement. “You may have a point,” I admitted.

“Good,” Greg said smugly. “Now I can guilt you into going to get us breakfast in the morning.”

“Deliveroo it is.”

I messaged Rachel as we walked unsteadily back to Greg’s, mostly so that she wouldn’t worry when she woke up in far too few hours to find me not there, and by the time we stumbled through the door, we could both only manage a sleepy pint of water before we went to get ready for bed. 

Greg chucked spare pyjamas and a toothbrush at me and pointed vaguely in the direction of the guest toilet, as if I had never crashed at his before. Then he held his arms open for a wordless hug and I shuffled forward, letting him envelop me in a bone-crushing embrace. 

“Night, mate,” he mumbled into my hair.

“Night, Greg.”

We parted there, Greg into his bedroom, me into the toilet, both of us far too old for the amount of beer we’d managed to put away, and I was asleep before my head hit the pillow.

Needless to say, I woke far too early the next morning with a hangover that had to have rivalled Greg’s from New Year’s. I grabbed my phone to blearily go through my emails in hopes that the mindless scrolling might help my hangover recede, just slightly, though I paused on one from Avalon that I hadn’t been expecting.

Immediately, I sat upright, and just as immediately, I regretted it.

Still, it was enough to get me out of bed once the room had steadied, and I headed into Greg’s room without even worrying about waking him. “Greg,” I said loudly, turning the light on. “Greg, wake up.”

Greg groaned loudly into his pillow and rolled over, though he managed a tired but genuine smile when he saw me. “Hello,” he said, his voice scratchy with sleep. “Good morning to you, too.”

“Yes, yes, good morning,” I said impatiently. “We’re going to New York!”

Greg blinked. “Oh,” he said. “Hooray?”

I waved my phone. “I just got the official confirmation from Avalon,” I told him. “We’re premiering series 17 in New York City, and you are I are going to go over and do a Q&A and press calls, the full monty. End of March.”

Greg nodded slowly. “Great,” he mumbled, already falling back asleep. “We’ll have fun with that.”

Of that, I had absolutely no doubt.

“Jesus Christ,” Greg muttered under his breath, standing next to me as we stared up at the massive American consulate in London later that month. 

I couldn’t tell if he was talking about the imposing building where we had our appointment for our visas to the States, or about the heavily armed guards that were distinctly out of place in London, but in either case– “Yep,” I agreed.

One of the armed guards caught sight of us, and to my surprise, pointed immediately at us. “Fucking hell,” Greg muttered, blanching as they approached. “I am shitting myself.”

But they grinned excitedly as they reached us, slinging their massive guns over their shoulders as if they were nothing more than a rucksack. “You’re the Taskmaster!” one of them exclaimed in a thick American accent, pointing excitedly at Greg. “And you’re—”

“Little Alex Horne!” one of the other guards added, in a horrible approximation of Greg’s sing-song voice.

Greg and I managed to relax, at least slightly. “That’s us,” I told them, giving them a tight smile.

“Can we get a selfie?”

Half a dozen selfies later and we were finally able to head inside, both of us still reeling from the experience. “Absolutely mental,” Greg muttered as we made our way to the lifts.

“I know,” I agreed.

Greg paused and glanced back at the guards, who were still talking excitedly amongst themselves. He squinted at them as if he was trying to decipher some sort of puzzle before he looked down at me. “All that, and yet the American Taskmaster failed,” he said. “Why do you reckon that is?”

In truth, there are a number of reasons why the American version of Taskmaster failed, most of which have already been rehashed elsewhere. I made far too many capitulations to what the network wanted, mostly, which affected the integrity of the show to the point where it was barely a shadow of itself, among other issues.

But the biggest reason, both literally and metaphorically, was standing right in front of me.

“Easy,” I told Greg, standing back to let him enter the lift first. “Because it wasn’t you and me doing it.”

A mistake that I wouldn’t be making again, whether for this trip stateside or anything else in the future. 

And not just because I still hadn’t learned something new about Greg.

But with an entire trip to New York City ahead of us, and still 10 months left in the year, I was fully confident that I’d figure something out.

And we’d have plenty of fun together in the meantime.

Chapter Text

Chapter Three: March 2024

There are certain stressful activities or situations that, when you get through them, show you the measure of a person, or of a relationship. For example, when Rachel and I were first married, in a fit of what I can only describe as the potent combination of optimism and insanity, we decided to spend a weekend hanging wallpaper in the living room of our small flat in London.

This plan was, to put it frankly, idiotic on at least two levels: the first being that we were renting said flat, and did not technically have permission to hang wallpaper, which is probably one of several reasons why we did not get our security deposit back; the second was that neither Rachel nor I knew how to hang wallpaper (and, arguably, still don’t).

Usually, my lovely wife is the one who stops me from doing irredeemably ill-advised things, but for reasons that pass all understanding, this particular time, she did not.

For readers who have perhaps never had the pleasure and misfortune of putting up wallpaper before, it is a task that is infuriatingly meticulous, requires both careful planning and the proper tools, and has a margin of error as thin as the paper in question.

In other words, it’s the perfect breeding ground for tempers to flare, frustrations to boil over, and one or both parties to go entirely mad (or in my case, all three). As we are now almost twenty years on from the closest we’ve ever come to a divorce or murdering each other, I can say it was something of a crucible for our marriage, a not-entirely-worthwhile exercise in proving how strong our bond was even in the face of great adversity – which is to say, stupidity and short tempers.

For Greg and I, the same could be said about travel.

Maybe it’s because I’m used to travelling with three children who until very recently couldn’t be trusted to so much as wheel luggage responsibly, or maybe it’s just my generally optimistic outlook on life, but I tend not to overly stress when it comes to travel. There is frequently very little that I can do about most travel issues, whether it’s flight delays or the poor behaviour of other passengers, and I also don’t quite see the point in, for example, arriving at the airport unnecessarily early in some sort of attempt at thwarting some axiom about everything going wrong.

Greg, needless to say, takes the opposite approach.

I’m not quite sure that getting to the airport three hours before the flight is scheduled to leave actually does anything to appease Greg’s anxiety, but I do know him well enough that when I joined him an hour before our flight, I didn’t tell him that.

Despite him looking, rather exaggeratedly and pointedly, I might add, at his watch and pulling a face rather like my mum when she catches one of us boys doing something she doesn’t approve of.

Nor did I deliberately antagonise him during the lengthy and, despite the business class seats that Avalon sprang for, still somewhat cramped transatlantic flight, but surely not even Greg could blame me for laughing when he smacked his head on the ceiling for the third time.

Nonetheless, despite all his preparations, he was in a less than pleasant mood by the time we landed in New York, only made worse by me heading towards the luggage carousel. “Where are you going?” he asked grumpily as he trailed after me.

I glanced from my hand luggage, too small to have anything more than my laptop and few sundry items, back up to him. “To, er, get my luggage?”

“You checked a bag?” Greg asked, scandalised, as if I’d just admitted to some horrific crime. 

“Ye-es,” I said, drawing the syllable out in a vain attempt to get Greg to crack a smile. “We are here for four days, you realise.”

“And for half of that time, we’ll be wearing our costumes, you realise,” Greg shot back.

Which, to be fair, I did. But we also planned to enjoy ourselves, at least as much as we could between the planned parade of press interviews (and my separate but equally important meetings with some States-based Avalon executives) and the series 17 premiere, which merited at least one or two additional clothing options than just my usual Marks and Spencer suit.

Greg didn’t wait for me to point any of this out, instead just looking at his watch. “Why do I have a feeling that I’m going to be taking the piss out of you for this for the whole trip?” he asked, though at least he sounded somewhat more amused than he did before.

“Don’t worry,” I said cheerfully as we finally reached the luggage carousel, which had not yet started moving, “I’m sure I’ll give you plenty else to take the piss about anyway.”

Not even I could have predicted just how true that would end up being.

“Don’t,” I said warningly as we made our way that night from the bar to an empty table in the closest bar to our hotel that we could find, both holding almost comically large glasses of beer.

As expected, Greg ignored my warning. “Let’s go to Times Square,” he said in a high-pitched approximation of my own voice, “and see the characters!” He took a sip of beer before giving me a smug grin. “Tell me, was it everything you dreamed it’d be?”

“Yes,” I said stubbornly, refusing to rise to the bait. “Got to spend a fun afternoon with you making memories that’ll last a lifetime.”

Greg just laughed. “Oh, fuck off,” he said, taking a swig of beer.

I followed suit before adding, somewhat more sincerely, “Well, at least it’s put you in a better mood after that little scene at the airport.”

Greg’s eyes narrowed. “What little scene?”

I gave him a look. “You can’t tell me you weren’t about five minutes from throwing a temper tantrum.”

Greg actually looked like he was on the verge of another temper tantrum. “Oi, I’m not the one whose bloody luggage took an hour and a half to get unloaded from the sodding plane!” he protested, something dangerously close to a pout in his tone. “And I wasn’t five minutes from throwing a temper tantrum, thank you. Five minutes from throttling you, on the other hand…”

He trailed off ominously and I couldn’t help but laugh. If Greg had followed through on every threat he’d made to kill or maim me over the years, I’d’ve been dead fifty or sixty times over. “Mm, well, at least this has cheered you up.”

“Cheered me up?” Greg repeated with a giggle, the kind that shook his gargantuan frame and made him look more like a little boy than the pushing sixty he was. “Mate, I’ve got a ten minute set’s worth of material out of this.”

I pulled a face, more at the thought of being the subject of one of Greg’s stand up sets than the knowledge I’d given him plenty to mock. “Just think, you’ll have a whole hour by the time we’re through.”

Greg just grinned. “At this rate? Probably.” He lifted his beer in a mock toast. “To New York.”

I raised my beer glass and clinked it against his. “To new material,” I said.

Greg’s grin widened. “To not killing you before we get home,” he said, saccharine-sweet. 

Again, I refused to rise to the bait. “I’ll drink to that,” I said instead, and we both got down to the business of doing just that.

Of course, I gave Greg an entirely new reason to wish for my sudden demise the following morning as we met in the lobby of our hotel to take advantage of a frankly absurd breakfast buffet before we did some sightseeing (following Greg’s itinerary rather than mine) ahead of our first round of meetings and interviews.

As usual, I arrived in the lobby first, and managed a tour of the buffet before snagging both a table and two cups of coffee before Greg shuffled downstairs, looking as if he’d not slept well. Which, of course, was normal for him even when we were home. “Next time, if there is a next time, we need to make it a longer trip,” he said in lieu of greeting as he dropped into the seat across from me. “This time zone horseshit is murder.”

“Agreed,” I said, pushing one of the coffees across the table to him.

He took a rather large swig before looking pointedly at the empty table in front of me. “Obviously more on you than on me if you’re not eating,” he said before arching an eyebrow at the sprawling buffet. “Don’t tell me nothing caught your fancy.”

I hummed noncommittally. “Not really, no,” I said with a mock-sigh. “I wanted a dippy boiled egg and buttered soldiers but it didn’t seem to be an option.”

Greg rolled his eyes. “Shocking you wouldn’t find that at an American breakfast buffet,” he said dryly. 

“They have hard boiled eggs, but that’s not really the same thing.”

“No,” Greg agreed.

I took a sip of coffee before I told him, “Besides which, I don’t like eggs.”

Greg paused, his coffee halfway to his mouth. “Sorry?”

“Can’t stand ‘em,” I told him.

This was, of course, a reference to an old joke of mine, a bit that Tim Key and I used to do, but I rather suspected that Greg wouldn’t recognise it, and I wanted to see how long I could tease it out. It was, in its own way, just a small bit of revenge for him making fun of Times Square the night before. 

Greg set his coffee down, a frown furrowing his brow. “What are you fucking on about?”

“I don’t like eggs,” I told him.

“But you just said you wanted dippy eggs,” Greg said, sounding so baffled that I almost felt bad for him. “Not to mention I’ve watched you eat an egg.”

I wrinkled my nose in my best mock disgust, rather pleased with my efforts, especially for as much as Greg has mocked my acting skills, or lack thereof. “Don’t think so.”

“Mate, I’ve literally sat next to you—” Greg broke off, realisation dawning across his face. “Wait.”

“What?” I asked innocently.

It was never not funny to watch Greg’s realisation solidify into outrage in real time. Usually I was subjected to it when he caught a particularly bad pun that I’d tried to slip past him, but this was even better. “Is this– are you using fucking prepared material on me?” he demanded. “This is one of your rubbish jokes, isn’t it?”

“Don’t know that I’d call it rubbish,” I said mildly, hiding my smile behind my coffee.

To his credit, Greg looked more resigned than irritated, which I took as a good sign for things to come. “You wretched little shrew,” he sighed before glowering at me in what he seemed to think was an intimidating sort of way. “You even think about mentioning Greek cats and I swear—”

I laughed, though honestly, I was quite touched that Greg knew another joke of mine (this one a bit of wordplay about olives and Greek cats). “Thank you, Greg,” I said, and I meant it.

Greg just shook his head and asked, “So what are you eating?”

“I’m waiting on an omelette.”

“Oh, fuck off.”

“Yes, Greg.”

I rather suspect I don’t need to share what happened next, seeing as how Greg used every possible interview over the remainder of our time in New York as an opportunity to share the story of how he’d also decided to get an omelette, how it had taken, to use his words, ‘fucking forever’, and, insult to injury, had been dry when he’d finally gotten it.

As soon as Greg took his first bite of omelette, I knew that this was going to become the running bit for the rest of the trip. Greg does love a callback and, during studio recordings, is fond of picking the worst possible one and trying to work it in as many times as possible as a challenge to the editing team when they try to trim it out. These are normally at my expense, so I wasn’t entirely surprised that the omelette joined my choice of Times Square in things Greg would be mocking me for this entire trip.

Someone once asked me if it ever bothered me, how often Greg’s jokes are at my expense, which struck me as an odd question. I made some comment at the time about how I was just flattered that Greg was thinking of me, a usual in-character response, but there’s honestly a bit of truth to it. Greg’s jokes are rarely purely malicious, after all, and knowing that he was comfortable enough with our friendship to include me in them was something of a compliment in those early days of figuring out our working relationship.

Just like I knew it gave us easy comedic ground to tread repeatedly in the multiple interviews we completed together, a simple shorthand to fall back on to help us both inhabit the characters of the Taskmaster and Little Alex Horne. 

Greg is a generous comedian like that – it’s part of what makes him so effective on the show. He goes out of his way to bring everyone along with him, as well as giving them their own time to shine. As much as I knew it had to wear on him to answer the same questions about the show and our dynamic and the tasks as part of our multiple interviews, he still provided that same comedic base for us both to riff on.

It is one of many things that makes me happier than I can possibly articulate that we wound up comedy partners.

He also, to his credit, knows when not to make a joke.

I will refrain from rehashing the series 17 premiere and following Q&A, largely because most of it is a blur. We are grateful beyond belief for how many fans our little show has, and it was the thrill of a lifetime to get to spend as much time as we did with so many dedicated fans, answering a barrage of questions that ranged from serious, technical questions about filming to absurd questions about myself and Greg.

But what weighed heaviest for me was the line of people outside the comedy club who were unable to get inside. The venue oversold tickets to the premiere by a ridiculous margin, and I don’t envy the staff there who had to handle a mob of frustrated fans.

It also cast a pall over what should otherwise have been a highlight of my television career, so much so that when all was said and done and Greg and I were ready to finally head back to the hotel, we barely had to exchange a glance before Greg leaned forward to ask our driver to take us to the bar we’d been to a prior night instead.

Greg wordlessly pointed me towards the same table in the back we’d sat at before and headed to the bar to get us drinks as I settled in at the table, automatically pulling out my mobile to answer a few emails from Avalon and the production team about how the premiere had gone.

When Greg appeared at the table, he set the beers down before casually plucking my phone out of my hands. “We’re not working right now,” he said firmly. “There’ll be plenty of time for that tomorrow.”

“I need to let them know—” I started, even though I knew it was mostly useless.

“Trust me, mate, you don’t.” I didn’t protest further, and we both drank our beers in silence for a few moments before Greg hazarded, “It was a good premiere.”

I nodded. “Yes,” I agreed. “Except—”

“That wasn’t your fault,” Greg interrupted firmly, as if he thought he could head off my inevitable argument.

He couldn’t. “Even so,” I said stubbornly. “I hated seeing all those people who got turned away.” Greg said nothing, just studying my expression for a moment until I felt myself flush and I looked away. “What?”

“Nothing,” Greg said. When I just gave him a look, he shook his head and told me, “It just never fails to amaze me. You really do feel bad about it.”

“Of course I do,” I said, a little defensively. “Don’t you?”

“Yeah, but I’m not a big time BAFTA-winning telly producer on top of everything else,” Greg said with a small smile. “I know you spend most of your time in our little Taskmaster bubble, but I think you’d be surprised by just how rare it’d be for most people in our industry to care about the fans like that.”

Despite my ‘Taskmaster bubble’, as Greg had called it, I am hardly naïve to how many people in comedy, let alone television, chose to purport themselves. I just know that without the fans, our show wouldn’t be even half of what it is, and refuse to let some modicum of fame trick me into thinking it’s below me to at least try to be a somewhat decent person. “I don’t think I should be congratulated for that," I told him.

Greg just raised both eyebrows. “Never said I was congratulating you, mate,” he said. “Just remarking on how rare it is.” He took a swig of beer before reminding me, almost certainly just because he knew it would make me blush, “There’s a reason you’ve been called the nicest man in comedy.”

“Well,” I said, clearing my throat and desperate to change the subject, “if it’ll put you back on firmer territory, I can put my producer hat on and take the selfish tack of fretting about how the press about ticket issues might well overshadow the press about the new series.”

“Surely you don’t believe that,” Greg scoffed.

I didn’t really – as much as I hated being confronted by a few hundred disappointed fans, those numbers paled in comparison to the rather strange legion of fans we’ve amassed over the years, and besides, the American press was unlikely to cover any of this in detail anyway, and the British press would be equally unlikely to pick up a small hiccup with ticket sales as something newsworthy.

But unlikely didn’t mean out of the realm of possibility. “It might do.”

Greg pulled a face and took a swig of beer. “Maybe I should get myself involved in some kind of scandal instead, really get the press going,” he suggested, grinning in a way that told me he was entirely joking. “That’d overshadow the bad press for sure.”

I rolled my eyes. “And the good press,” I pointed out.

“That a no, then?”

Words that will never be anything other than a challenge to a comic, triggering my innate need to ‘yes, and’ everything Greg said, something that’s gotten me in trouble more times than I care to admit. “Depends on what scandal you have in mind, I suppose,” I allowed, a happy medium between my comic sensibilities and my producer mindset.

Greg just laughed. “Fuck if I know, mate,” he said, settling back in his chair. “It’d probably have to be something with my love life, that’s the only thing anyone ever seems to be interested in.” He pulled a face at the thought. “D’you know I still get asked about getting papped with Helena Bonham Carter when we were talking about the Cleaner?” He shook his head. “Absolutely mental. I cannot fathom why anyone in their right mind would be interested in the love life of a clinically obese near-pensioner, but there we are.”

Considering I was still surprised when anyone had any interest in my own personal life, I didn’t have much of a leg to stand on. Still– “Probably because it’s the one thing you don’t talk about,” I pointed out.

“That’s not true—” Greg started, but I didn’t let him finish.

“You’re the one who will barely discuss a woman you dated for several years all while you practically made your career on the back of your story about having, erm, relations with your childhood teddy.”

Greg immediately giggled at the thought before raising his beer in a toast. “To BT, wherever he may be,” he said, his attempt at solemnity severely undermined by his continued giggles. “But surely people realise I don’t talk about it because it’s not remotely interesting.”

I shook my head. “Doesn’t matter,” I told him. “People will always try to make a scandal out of the unknown.”

“Mental,” Greg repeated, taking a long pull from his beer before looking back at me. “Do you know why I don’t talk about it?”

The question took me by surprise. “I assumed it was because you had nothing to talk about.”

Greg pulled another face. “Well, that too.”

“Why don’t you talk about it?” I prompted when he didn’t seem inclined to shake off his abrupt melancholy.

He shook his head once as if clearing it and took another sip of beer before settling into his storytelling pose, relaxed and casual. “When I was younger,” he started, his amusement dissipating, and I knew instantly this was not going to be one of his usual funny stories, “much younger, this was when I was still a teacher – I was out at the pub with my girlfriend at the time. And I remember she went to the toilet or something and I was sat on my own for a few minutes, and I caught a bit of what the table next to us was saying. And it was a group of big blokes, manual labour types, you know—”

I nodded. “I know the type, yeah.”

Greg jerked a nod as well before continuing. “And they were– they were talking about her. And about me. Because she was– I don’t even remember how tall she was, but anyone compared to me is little, you know that better than anyone.” I managed a smile at the thought, but Greg didn’t, his expression darkening. “And they were making these comments, really awful stuff, about how she and I would have to be, erm, positioned and such. For us to, you know…”

He trailed off but I took his meaning well enough, immediately wincing at the thought. “Oh, Christ.”

“Yeah,” Greg said heavily, scratching his beard. “And, I dunno, I just sort of realised that's what everyone thinks, isn’t it? Like that thought runs through everyone’s head, even if they don’t mean it to.” He stared off into space for a long moment before shaking his head. “And when I became a comedian and started to actually make something of it, I realised that anyone I dated, it was going to be that but so much worse.” He shrugged. “And I didn’t want to subject someone to that on purpose. Not if I could avoid it.”

I knew what he meant. I felt it in my own fingers tightening around my beer glass on his behalf at the thought. “Yeah,” I said, my voice low. “I mean, I can only imagine, but if I ever heard someone say something like that about Rachel…”

Greg’s expression was as black as I had ever seen it. “Mate, I’d be right behind you if ever anyone did,” he growled, and the implicit threat on behalf of my wife probably shouldn’t have warmed me the way it did. He sighed, his expression clearing, at least a little. “But that’s why I don’t talk about it.” He shrugged and drained his beer before telling me, a little wryly, “I don’t think I’ve ever told someone that before.”

Immediately, my heart leapt in my chest. Could this be? The thing I’d been after this whole time, finally, here in New York City—

“Well,” he continued, rather abruptly popping my bubble of excitement, “except for the women I do date.” He laughed and shook his head. “Helps weed out anyone who thinks this’ll be a way for them to get famous, at least.”

I nodded, still trying to curtail my disappointment at being so close, and yet still so far, and Greg nudged my foot under the table. “But if it’d help you with the press coverage, I’ll make an exception,” he said. “I’ll tell Seth Meyers tomorrow that I’m shagging half of London if you like.”

As disappointed as I was, I managed a laugh. “I don’t think that would be either helpful or necessary,” I told him, “but thank you for the thought.”

Greg just shrugged before standing to get another beer. “I’ll stick to the omelette story, then.”

But before he could head to the bar, I reached out and grabbed his wrist, holding him in place. “Thank you,” I told him, looking up at him, and he frowned down at me.

“For what?”

I shrugged. There were so many things I could say, so many things I should thank him for, but I settled for saying, as simply as I could, “For being you. For doing this with me.”

I’ll never know, I suppose, if he knew what I meant, or all of the things I wanted to say but didn’t, but he nonetheless smiled at me. “You’re welcome,” he said. “Now drink up. If we can’t do anything about the ticketing fuck up, at the very least we can get so drunk that it won’t matter anymore.”

And so we did.

It was incredibly irresponsible, given how many interviews we had lined up for the next day, but neither Greg nor I really cared as we drank our weight in American beer until we could both barely manage to stumble back to the hotel a few hours later, far past the time we were supposed to be in bed.

We managed to make it up to our floor, mostly by leaning against each other and giggling madly whenever someone so much as looked at us.

Finally we made it to my hotel room door, and I managed to stand mostly upright, looking up at Greg, swaying slightly as he stood far too closely to me, both our senses of personal space having disappeared somewhere around the sixth or seventh beer.

For some reason, I remembered earlier during the Q&A, when Greg had leaned in to whisper something in my ear and I had joked, much to the amusement of the audience, “I thought you were going to kiss me then!” This time, the memory was for my own amusement rather than the audience’s, and I started giggling again, rather helplessly this time.  

Greg raised both eyebrows, amused. “What?”

I shook my head. “Nothing,” I told him, hiccuping. “I thought– I thought you were going to kiss me.”

I have no idea if Greg knew I was referring to my joke from earlier. It was the kind of nonsensical callback that only made sense to a drunk person, but Greg and I are always making stupid jokes to each other, so I imagine it didn’t bother him even if he had no clue what I was talking about.

Instead, he just grinned down at me, and, without saying anything, bent down and gave my forehead a smacking, mock kiss, the kind that made me wrinkle my nose in mock disgust just as I had during my own joke about eggs earlier. “Go to bed, Little Alex Horne,” he ordered.

“Yes, Greg.”

I did, not even bothering to brush my teeth or put my pyjamas on, just stripping down to my vest and pants and flopping down into my hotel bed. I barely managed to remember to plug my phone in before my eyelids felt so heavy that I couldn’t possibly keep them open a second longer.

My final thought before sleep claimed me was that, mix up with the tickets aside, Greg’s irritation with me for the omelette or my choices in trip itinerary aside, this had been one of the best trips I’d ever been on, and despite joking about it earlier, Greg and I really had made memories that would last a lifetime.

Assuming that I still remembered them when I woke up, at least.

Chapter Text

Chapter Four: April 2024

In April, I started a spreadsheet.

For as delightful a distraction as New York had been, and as close as I’d gotten to an actual secret of Greg’s, I was beginning to feel like I’d lost the plot behind the whole purpose of this endeavour.

I was also beginning to feel the deadline creeping up on me.

I realise that to most people, having eight whole months to complete a relatively simple task would seem like a luxury, but the truth was that my weekly phone calls supplementing my increasingly infrequent pub trips with Greg, though very enjoyable, were not yielding as much fruit as I had hoped. And with the Horne Section starting on tour in earnest in the middle of the month, and a holiday scheduled between returning from New York and starting the tour, my in-person opportunities to get Greg to divulge something, anything I could use, were dwindling rapidly.

My next real opportunity for assured in-person time would be in May, for the studio recordings of series 18 of Taskmaster, which meant I needed to be as organised and prepared as possible.

Hence the spreadsheet.

Spreadsheet was probably a generous way of terming the rather sprawling set of rows and columns I devised, mostly because I tend to think of spreadsheets as quantifying data, and this was entirely qualitative, and merely an aid in categorising my thoughts. Each column was labeled with a broad category, such as ‘childhood’ or ‘personal life’, and then each row was a separate aspect or answer that I could then mark as publicly known, known to me, likely known to others and—

Dear Lord, I’m boring even myself in the retelling, and I normally love a spreadsheet.

To say the least, it was harrowing to see my spiralling thoughts so clearly visualised. 

I was becoming obsessed, as I had the bad tendency to do in the middle of a project, but while my wife tolerated my temporary birdwatching obsession and other comedic misadventures with patient bemusement, I rather feared she was growing as bored with me bringing up Greg repeatedly during my alone time (usually in bed) with her as I just made myself.

In an effort to be at least slightly less self-absorbed, one night towards the end of our holiday I asked her what she was reading. “Opening Up by Tristan Taormino,” she reported, holding the book up for me to glance at it.

Truthfully, it looked dreadfully boring, not at all like the cosy mysteries she normally preferred, and I nodded slowly. “For work?” I assumed, figuring she was probably considering some freelance feature on the book or its subject matter.

She let out a noncommittal hum. “Something like that,” she murmured, already looking back down at her book.

I must have been really be bad if she would rather do work in bed than spend time with me.

Not, of course, that I could talk, seeing as how I was doing the exact same thing.

Perhaps the issue was that this didn’t feel like work to me. It probably should have, considering that I was ostensibly being paid (or going to be paid) for my efforts, not to mention considering the time I’d already spent pursuing the topic. But while I am never a fan of the cliche, there is something to be said for the maxim that if you do something you enjoy, it doesn’t tend to feel like work.

Certainly my own life has been a fairly robust example of that, considering how much of my time has been devoted to what can, at its core, be boiled down to, rather simply, fun. Of course, that isn’t to say that there aren’t aspects of my job that do feel quite a bit like work: there are early mornings and late nights, and plenty of boring meetings that almost certainly could have been an email, and the fact that I get to spend a good amount of my time faffing about with other comedians doesn’t change that.

But it certainly makes the boring bits far easier to sit through.

So, too, did this project with Greg. Yes, staring at a spreadsheet until my eyes watered wouldn’t be highest on my list of what I considered fun, but the time that I got to spend with Greg more than made up for it.

Just like the time I got to spend onstage with the band made up for the administrative headaches that preceded any tour.

Somehow, though, my obsession with Gregwatching infected even that, as I found myself lost in thought as I finished changing ahead of our first April stop on the Horne Section’s Hit Show 2024 tour, everyone else in the band besides Joe the trumpeter having long finished and already disappeared towards the stage.

“Everything all right?” Joe asked as I bent down to tie my shoes.

“Yes,” I said, immediately and on instinct, but as I straightened, I thought better of it. “No. Maybe?”

Joe looked amused, not that I blamed him. “Anything we can help with?” he asked.

I hesitated. I hadn’t planned on involving anyone other than Rachel with my Gregwatching project, largely because there was a very good chance that it might not succeed, and while every comedian has died on stage in a public setting at least once, that’s a very different kind of failure than failing at an undertaking like this one.

I also suspected that anyone besides Rachel might think that I’d lost my entire mind when filled in on my endeavour, which, at this point, may very well be true.

But Joe was also one of my oldest friends, and therefore one of the people who knew me best, including the type of secrets that I was trying to get from Greg. “Do you think there’s something about me that you know and no one else does?” I asked.

Joe didn’t immediately answer, or laugh, or look at me like I’d gone mad, which was one of the things that I liked most about him, that he took his time to consider things rather than just blurting out the first thought that ran through his head. “Maybe,” he said finally. “Though I’d imagine most things that I know, Ben also knows.”

“Sure,” I agreed, though my heart sank, just slightly, at the thought. Greg had so many other friends, so many better friends, and older friends (and elder friends!), surely any one of them would know—

“Sarah Gilbert,” Joe said, and I blinked up at him.

“Sorry?”

Joe grinned. “Sarah Gilbert,” he repeated, with something like triumph. “From school. Don’t tell me you don’t remember.”

I had a sudden flash of memory, of blonde hair and a Bananarama t-shirt and my very sweaty palms as I stuttered my way through a mostly one-sided conversation. “Vaguely,” I said carefully. “What about her?”

“Ben had a crush on her,” Joe said. “And you told me that you also fancied her, and you swore me to secrecy and made me promise I wouldn’t tell anyone.”

That unlocked another memory, of a hushed conversation on the edge of a very large hole we had been digging for reasons that cannot really be explained outside of the simple fact that we were young boys, and I shook my head slowly. “And did you?”

Joe looked affronted at the question. “Of course not,” he said. “You made me promise!”

I didn’t mean to, but I laughed, mostly at the absurdity of the situation, now easily over 30 years gone. “How on earth do you remember that?” I asked. 

Joe shrugged. “Just do, I guess.” He raised both eyebrows expectantly at me, as if waiting for me to ask him more about Sarah Gilbert, or any other of our childhood secrets. “Are you going to tell me what this is about?” he asked when I didn’t.

I shook my head. “No,” I told him, before amending almost immediately, “Not yet, at least.”

Joe didn’t look surprised by that, but then I suppose by this point he’s well used to me living half my life in my head, working on things months if not years before I could talk about them. “But you’re all right?” he pressed.

“I am,” I told him. “I promise.”

But Joe didn’t quite look fully convinced. “You know, there’s a lot of stuff I don’t know about you, too,” he told me. “All the time you were at uni, or when you were first getting started in stand up.”

He was right, of course. We kept in touch, mostly by virtue of Joe (and Ben) still living near my parents, which meant I saw them on school breaks or whenever I went back to West Sussex to visit, but those visits never really lent themselves to divulging any sort of secrets.

Instead I had, for lack of a better term, replaced them as my secret keepers with new friends, most of whom I still counted as friends (and most of whom kept secrets far more damning than the girl I fancied when I was twelve). Including one friend in particular, one who would not be nearly as nonjudgemental if I broached this topic with him, but one who I nonetheless felt might have additional insight.

“I know,” I told Joe. “Plenty I don’t know about what you and Ben were getting up to back then either.”

Joe grinned. “And you never will,” he said smugly. “Now if you’re done, we’d best get out there before someone sends a search party.”

I waved Joe off before grabbing my phone, intent on sending a quick message to the other friend that had come to mind as possibly being able to help, but instead, I had a message waiting for me from Greg: Break a leg tonight xx

Despite myself, I grinned like a loon down at my phone, the adrenaline of the impending performance almost certainly going to my head. Thanks x

Ring me later and let me know how it goes?

It would almost certainly be quite late by the time I was done, but luckily, I knew that Greg was almost certain to still be awake, no matter what time it ended up. Yes, Greg.

Good boy, Greg sent in reply, and I tossed my phone back onto the dressing room table before finally going to join my bandmates to kick our tour off in earnest.

It wasn’t until the following week that I recalled this conversation with Joe, and my stray thought of another friend who I could ask the same question I’d asked Joe, and it was with a great deal more trepidation that I messaged Tim Key and asked if he wanted to grab a drink.

I told myself that it was fine using one of my increasingly rare nights off to grab a drink with Tim rather than with Greg, and justified it even further by using the drive into London to chat to Greg on the phone.

Of course, this meant that by the time I met up with Tim at one of our favourite pubs, I had Greg on the brain, which is why I greeted him with the same question I’d asked Joe instead of anything even resembling a normal greeting. “Is there something about me that you know that no one else does?” I asked, sitting down across from him.

Whether it’s because I just know him so well or because his face is endlessly expressive, but it never fails to amuse me to watch Tim think through about four different jokes in the span of as many seconds before he landed on a neutral expression and a mild, “Sorry?”

But I figured, in for a penny, in for a pound at this point. “Is there something about me—”

“I heard you, you twat,” Tim said, which for him was borderline affectionate. “I just can’t figure out why you’re asking that faeces question—”

“It’s not a faeces question,” I tried to interrupt, though, predictably, Tim ignored me.

“—and without so much as a ‘hello, Tim, nice to see you, how have you been’.” 

He shook his head disapprovingly when he’d finished and it took everything in me not to roll my eyes. “Hello, Tim, nice to see you, how have you been,” I said tonelessly. “And if you don’t want to answer the question, then don’t answer it.”

Tim sat back in his seat in a particularly self-satisfied way. “Didn’t say I didn’t want to answer it.”

“Then are you going to?” I asked.

“Sure,” Tim said easily, which told me this conversation was going to be anything but. Sure enough, he gave me a triumphant smile as he took a sip of his beer before adding, “When you tell me why you’re asking me.”

I sighed. Tim really is one of my dearest friends, but that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t drive me absolutely mad, often, I suspect, rather deliberately. The worst part was that I knew I was absolutely going to give in and tell him probably everything he wanted to know, and everything I hadn’t planned on divulging. “I think I may have set an impossible task for myself.”

To my surprise, he immediately pulled a face. “Oh, that’s crap, Al,” he said dismissively. “Don’t give me that horseshit.”

“It’s not—”

But Tim didn’t let me finish. “It is,” he said. “You’ve never once given yourself an impossible task. You’ve made an entire career out of, er, what do you call it? Thinking sideways?”

“Lateral thinking?” I provided, sniggering into my beer.

“Yeah, that.”

I took a sip of beer before asking in what I thought was a calm and measured sort of way, “Then don’t you think that I’d know better than anyone if a task is actually impossible?”

Tim didn’t so much as blink. “No.”

This time I wasn’t quite able to curtail my instinct to roll my eyes. “Impenetrable logic aside—” I started, but Tim cut me off.

“Yes, I know something about you that no one else does.”

To be entirely honest, I had forgotten that was even what had kicked this conversation off in the first place, and it took me a moment to craft a cutting and well-thought through retort. “Like what?”

Tim’s smirk was back – never a good sign. “That wasn’t the question,” he pointed out. “Though for what it’s worth, I’d bet rather a considerable sum of money that I know something about you that you don’t even know that I know.”

It took me a moment to parse his meaning, and when I did, I frowned at him. “How could you possibly—”

“You’re a lightweight, Horne,” he said breezily. “And you tend to ramble when you’re lashed.”

“I do not,” I said, even though I had a sinking feeling he was probably correct. And considering how many times he and I had gotten, to use his word, lashed over the past two and a half decades—

“No?” Tim asked mildly. “Then you remember telling me about what happened to your brother’s pillow.”

Not only did I not remember telling Tim about that, I didn’t even remember what he was talking about. “My– what?”

Tim’s answering smile was sharp. “I seem to remember something about you drinking an awful lot of lager when you were about sixteen or so and getting sick all over a pillow your nan had made for your brother,” he said, which jogged my memory in the worst possible way, especially as he added, “And something about you having to bin it before he found out—”

“When did I tell you that?” I demanded, keeping my voice low as if my brother, who lives elsewhere, might somehow pop out like we were on an episode of Beadle’s About. 

Thankfully, he didn’t. Somewhat more predictably, Tim also didn’t answer my question, instead saying smugly, “Told you so.” To add insult to injury, he looked at me pointedly over the rim of his pint glass as he took a swig before asking, “Now are you going to tell me what this is actually about?”

Still, just because he asked didn’t mean I had to tell him the whole truth, though honestly, if there was anyone who has seen me die in a hundred far more embarrassing ways, it was Tim. From trying and failing to chat up girls at the pub to doing a comedy set to an audience of one frankly petrified man who had apparently wandered into the wrong room, he’d witnessed it all and mostly avoided taking the piss about any of it.

But something about this was different, in a way I couldn’t even begin to explain to myself, so a version of the truth would have to suffice. “I’m trying to figure out the best way to get someone to tell me a secret, I suppose.”

Whatever he’d been expecting, judging by the look on his face, that hadn’t been it. “Well, if it’s me, ask what you like, I’m an open book.”

That might be the most absurd lie he’d told yet. “You are not.”

He looked very much like he was trying not to laugh. “Could be.”

I wasn’t inclined to argue the point further. “Luckily for both of us, it’s not you.”

He nodded slowly. “I sense a certain, er, reluctance to give me more details.”

For the first time all evening, I felt I had even just a slight advantage over the proceedings. “Well, as you say, you’re an open book and I’d rather this not get shared.”

Tim immediately pouted. “That’s not fair, I’ve never told a soul about your brother’s pukey pillow,” he protested.

“Yet.”

He didn’t even crack a cursory smile at the familiar joke. “Well, I’m certainly going to now,” he muttered mutinously before abruptly returning to the previous topic. “It’s not Rachel, you two tell each other everything. Can’t be Joe or Ben because I don’t think you’ve ever had that deep of a conversation—”

“Hilarious.”

But Tim didn’t look amused. “Are you really not going to tell me?” he asked, with just a hint of petulance.

“No.”

He huffed a sigh and folded his arms in front of his chest. “Fine,” he said. “Well, look, if you’re not going to give me specifics, I can only help you so much, but if you’re the model we’re working off of here, you may as well try my method with you.”

I raised both eyebrows, amused and intrigued at once. “And what method is that?”

Tim looked pointedly at both of our pint glasses. “Get whoever it is fucking lashed, of course.”

“You want me to get someone drunk?”

“Yeah,” Tim confirmed.

“For the purpose of that person telling me some deep, dark secret?” I pressed.

Tim nodded. “I always love watching you put that Cambridge degree to good use.”

But I ignored him. While I had convinced myself not to parse the ethics of my overarching project too closely, the ethics of this seemed a little more straightforward, and I wrinkled my nose. “Doesn’t that seem a little…”

I trailed off, but he seemed to take my meaning well enough. “I mean, don’t be a fucking creep about it,” he scoffed. “But if you happen to already be out drinking with someone and they seem in the mood to start spilling their guts—” He broke off, pulling a face. “Metaphorically, at least, since once they're literally spilling their guts I doubt you’ll be getting much more out of them.”

“I suppose,” I said slowly.

“Or don’t and mope about it for the rest of all time,” Tim said, standing up to get another round. “You want another?”

I looked from my almost empty beer up to him. “If this is you trying to get me lashed—”

“Hilarious, Horne,” Tim said, picking up my glass. “You really might make something of this whole comedy thing one day.”

But Tim did have a point. Alcohol had a tendency to make people more forthcoming, as my recent trip to New York with Greg had proven – the closest I got to a real secret from him was when we had both been drinking.

And ethical quandaries aside, other than eating together, the other thing Greg and I most frequently did together was drinking, and this upcoming series of Taskmaster was unlikely to be an exception.

In general, I make it a point not to take Tim’s advice too often, if only because he is notorious for getting us both into quite a bit of trouble. He’s far more outgoing than I am, not to mention far funnier than I, which I suppose I’ve never really forgiven him for, and those attributes tend to allow him to wriggle his way out of the trouble he gets us in unscathed. But he’s also a good friend, despite his best efforts, and he does normally go through the effort of making sure I also make it out of whatever trouble he’s gotten me into in the first place.

As such, while his suggestion had quite the potential to land me in all sorts of trouble, what couldn’t be denied was that he was, unfortunately, probably correct, and it was probably worth doing regardless of the potential trouble.

What can I say – he’d talked me into it.

So much so that when I got home later that evening, my first stop was my laptop. I pulled up my spreadsheet and scrolled over, taking a deep breath before adding a column and typing in the header: Things to ask Greg when drunk.

It was a plan. Not a particularly good or sophisticated one, but at the very least, it gave me something concrete to prepare for ahead of series 18 and the inevitable drinks we’d be having for Greg’s birthday and the wrap party.

And having a plan meant that my obsession could be at least temporarily sated, so I closed my laptop and went to go find my wife to spend some time with her that didn’t involve spreadsheets, or Greg.

Well, that didn’t involve Greg, at least.

I really do love a spreadsheet, and they do come in handy for keeping track of so many facets of life.

Chapter Text

Chapter Five: May 2024

“And next to me, a man who believes that anyone over the age of 70 should have their driving licenses revoked – as he puts it, if you can’t get a bit of shortbread into your gob, you shouldn’t be reverse parking. It’s Little Alex Ho-orne!”

Usually, by the third day and sixth episode of filming, Greg was starting to show signs of wear. Never anything noticeable to possibly anyone other than me, seated next to him as I usually am, never anything less than his usual high level of humour, but a bit more stretched around the edges, at least until we both finally tipped over into punch-drunk to finish the series.

But for series 18’s studio recording, we had a day break in between the second and third day of filming to accommodate someone’s schedule, and I’d been assured by Greg that he’d spent most of his day off napping. 

Which at least helped explain why he was in such a giddy mood, rather more than usual.

And helped explain why he didn’t immediately groan or grumble at my banter section, accepting the premise (that I needed to verify he wasn’t a robot) without question, and even taking the sheet of tick marks from me without complaint.

Of course, it did culminate in him saying, rather cheerfully all things considered, “I’d love to have a fight with you. I’d love to have an actual fight with you,” before tossing the card and tick marks behind my seat.

Greg’s annoyance being the goal, it was a successful banter section, but the truth of it is, the show aside, I love when Greg is like this.

I’ve said before and I’ll say it again, Greg is such a generous comedian, and so skilled at knowing when to go all in and when to hold back, but my favourite time to work with him is in these moments, when he’s at his most playful.

Because that’s what it is, really. Us playing together, building off of each other and having the most fun together.

It still amazes me to this day just how quickly we fell into it. We barely needed more than the first admittedly disastrous unaired pilot to nail at least the beginnings of our dynamic, the foundation upon which we’ve built everything else. The only other person I’ve ever had this easy of a time with as a comedy partner is Tim, but Greg and I somehow managed it in even less time than he and I did, getting to that point where we trust each other completely, where all it takes is a glance or the hint of a smile to know what joke is coming, and to be ready to not just meet it but to take it one step further.

I suppose what helps most is that in the end, the person we both most want to make laugh is each other. Yes, there’s an undeniable high in getting the audience to laugh, but what’s made the show last, and certainly what sustained us through the COVID series when there was no audience, was getting each other to laugh. 

As long as we have that, we can get through anything, I think.

Including both my banter sections and Greg’s more random jokes, both just as likely to get the Andys in our earpieces begging us to move on.

Such as later in the broadcast, when he announced his ‘side hustle’ with a particularly sharp grin: “Only Fans. All thongs, no hair.”

As soon as he said it, he giggled and threw his hands up as if the joke had appeared on the autocue with him obligated to read it, as opposed to coming solely from his extremely warped mind.

He had the same grin on his face when the VT for Jack Dee’s children’s television puppet sidekick ended, and I steeled myself, already guessing where he was planning on taking this.

In general, I don’t have much of an issue with swearing. My own comedy runs on the cleaner side, but I’ve never been offended by cursing. Still, as with anything that Greg can make a joke of, it’s a point of fascination for him, I think largely because he runs so much the opposite in this regard.

Plus he knows it’s a surefire way to make me squirm with a bit of genuine discomfort, which is precisely how he likes me.

“You didn’t even like alluding to the C-word, did you?” he asked gleefully, tapping on my arm with his finger.

“I was thinking it, but I wouldn’t say it,” I assured him.

His grin sharpened, and I knew we were going to be flogging this particular dead horse for at least the next five to ten minutes. “I don’t think you ever have said it, actually, which I find fascinating,” he announced, much to both his delight and the audience’s.

This, of course, puts me in quite a bind. The part of me that will forever be a 12 year old boy wants nothing more than to assure both Greg and anyone reading this that, yes, of course I have uttered the C-word before, thank you very much. There is not a world in which I would ever be considered ‘cool’, but even I have never been that uncool.

The part of me that is the executive producer of an internationally broadcast telly show thinks that it’s probably better not to make such assurance lest my (exceptionally rare) use of said word offends any portion of our audience.

Greg is perfectly aware that I have used that word, but he also knows far too well that it makes for an excellent joke, despite my admittedly not very good attempt to divert the conversation elsewhere. “Well, I will also advise—”

“Say it.”

I am also perfectly aware that when Greg has his teeth in a joke, he’s not one to let it go until he gets the reaction for which he is looking. There is a reason why some of our recordings last well over 3 hours for 50 minutes of telly. “No,” I said, but he of course barrelled over me.

“We’re all adults here. Say it.”

I gestured at my head. “It’s going round and round up here,” I told him, which was true – I don’t think I’ve ever thought that word as much as I was in that moment, though I was mostly trying to decide if there was a way I could slip it into a sentence later, just to make Greg laugh. Country was always an option, if I really emphasised the first syllable—

“Whisper it to me,” Greg said, which was offering me a shockingly generous out. I could technically whisper anything to him and he’d probably let it go at that point, or else I could even whisper the word but quietly enough that neither of our microphones would pick it up.

Still, I hesitated and laughed, eyeing Greg carefully, waiting for the other shoe of the joke to drop, for whatever set up of what he was really getting at to be revealed.

But for once, Greg chose to play his cards close to his chest.

“Whisper it to me and then I’ll let us move on,” Greg told me, which was almost certainly a lie, even if I couldn’t see the shape of where this was headed just yet.

But I do trust Greg, with my life if need be, so I blocked my mouth with my iPad and leaned in to do just what he’d ordered me to do.

Of course, he wouldn’t let me have it that easily. “Put that down,” he said, pushing my iPad down and leaning in close. “Whisper it.”

Out of options – and judging by the way Andy Cartwright was sighing heavily in our earpieces, out of time as well – I leaned into Greg to do just that. 

And he instead kissed me.

It was a tiny little peck, nothing scandalous, and he caught my philtrum more than my lips, but the audience shrieked and cheered as if we’d just scored a winning goal. I didn’t even have to glance over at Greg to know he was laughing, basking in the triumph of once again getting one over on me and the enjoyment in the latest joke in the saga that was the ongoing relationship between the Taskmaster and his Assistant.

There are some jokes in the show that only work because everyone knows that it is, in fact, a joke. Most of the jokes that Greg makes about me, for example, usually in his introductions. No one would laugh if they genuinely believed that, for instance, I think women shouldn’t be able to vote, or that bin men are all stupid.

Just as the on screen relationship between Greg and I works because no one really thinks that Greg and I are romantically – or otherwise – involved.

I rather think that the small portion of our fan base who enjoy the idea of Greg and I as a romantic couple would probably be disappointed to learn that it wasn’t anything that he and I planned. As with everything, it became a natural culmination of our jokes building off of each other.

I don’t even remember which of us first alluded to an off-screen relationship, or the home we supposedly shared, or whatever other thing really kicked it off, but it doesn’t really matter. The only thing that matters is that both Greg and I knew without ever even discussing it that this would be quite a fun and funny dynamic to play off of, and as now twenty series has proven, it is. 

It is also a joke that only works because, at the end of the day, Greg and I are the butt of it.

We’ve never wanted to make the joke two men being in a romantic or sexual relationship, for obvious reasons. The joke is always that it’s Greg and I, two people who could not be more different in affect, mannerisms or humour, in a relationship.

This requires us to play our relationship almost entirely – if you’ll pardon the term – straight. In many ways I can’t blame the internet perverts (again, said with utmost fondness) for reading into it.

I daresay that Greg would be downright disappointed if they didn’t, even as he proclaims that he hasn’t the first idea where they get it from.

It’s become such a natural part of our onscreen dynamic that I barely even think of it anymore. Which made it all the more unusual that, on that day in particular, it lingered far past when we stopped filming. Usually I was able to brush off any jokes that Greg made without a second thought, but this one just didn’t seem to hit as it normally did, for reasons I couldn’t even begin to understand, a sort of niggling in the back of my mind as if something from that interaction, practically tame by our standards, had been– off, for want of a better word.

Greg, of course, seemed entirely unaffected by it as we left the studio to head to our dressing rooms, even if he did seem to catch that something wasn’t fully right with me. “Anything the matter?” he asked as we fell into step next to each other, still grinning from the natural high of an episode well done.

I shook my head. “No,” I said. “At least, I don’t think so.”

“Christ,” Greg sighed goodnaturedly. “Talking to you sometimes is like trying to solve a cryptic crossword.”

“Not that you’d know,” I countered evenly, “seeing as how you’ve never even attempted one.”

Greg grinned. “You know me too well.”

Maybe that’s what it was, I thought to myself as we walked together. Maybe after eighteen series we simply knew each other too well, our well trod jokes wearing out their comfort.

But Greg stopped just outside of his dressing room, turning to face me, something of a frown on his face. “Look,” he said, and I was surprised that there was no hint of a joke in his tone now, “if there’s something on your mind– that is, if there’s anything that you want to—”

But we were interrupted by Andy Devonshire. “You two coming?” he called from halfway down the corridor, and Greg and I both turned to frown at him.

“Coming where?” Greg called back. 

“To celebrate your birthday,” Andy said. “We’re all going out to the pub.”

Greg just shrugged, glancing down at me, and as much as I hate being a wet blanket, I couldn’t help but ask, “Didn’t we celebrate Greg’s birthday on Tuesday?”

We had, largely because that had actually been Greg’s birthday. There’d been cake and, yes, a trip to the pub, with plenty of drinks all around. The corners of Greg’s mouth twitched. “Spoilsport,” he muttered so that only I could hear him.

“I don’t think you can celebrate too much,” Andy said, finally reaching us. “Besides, since we’ve the weekend off, we figured it’s all the more reason to celebrate.”

“Mm,” I agreed, glancing sideways at Greg. “Well, I suppose given Greg’s highly advanced age—”

“Oi,” Greg said, barely even feigning insult.

“—it isn’t too much to celebrate again. Who knows how many we have left to celebrate.”

I neatly dodged Greg’s half-hearted cuff. “So I’ll tell Vicky you’ll both be there?” Andy said, too used to this to even comment on it.

Again, I didn’t even have to look at Greg to know what our answer would inevitably be, Greg because he never could resist an invitation for drinks, me because I knew that I needed to take advantage of this opportunity.

There’d been too many well wishers and hangers-on for me to make progress with my project at Tuesday’s drinks, having to content myself with sitting at Greg’s side as he told stories into the early hours of the morning, but I hoped I’d fare better that evening.

Still, as Andy headed off and before I could follow suit, Greg caught my arm. “Are you sure everything’s all right?” 

There was no reason why it shouldn’t be, and I didn’t know how to articulate whatever strangeness was lingering, so I simply told him, “Positive,” before finally making my escape to change out of my suit.

Whatever was the matter, there was no point telling Greg about it until I got a handle on it. But it was never a good place for a comedian to be, knowing that something just felt off, for continued lack of a better way of putting it. Being purposefully wrong footed, as Greg was so fond of making me, was one thing – feeling inadvertently wrong footed was quite another.

Still, I was determined to put it from my mind and get down to the business of getting Greg alone so I could guide our increasingly inebriated conversation in a productive direction. Luckily, Greg seemed to have the same idea that I did, slinging an arm around my shoulders and steering me away from the crowd at the bar to a booth in the corner.

He followed me into the booth rather than sitting across from me which I would have found strange except for, well, mostly the fact that it was Greg. It’s well known to anyone who has spent more than ten minutes in his company that he is extremely physically affectionate, all the more so with me because my inherent awkwardness with physical touch tends to lend itself well to the joke. But he has never made me actually uncomfortable, whether with the way he grabs my arm in the studio or the way he gives me a massive hug at any opportunity or any of the hundred other little ways he touches me whenever we spend any time together.

And certainly not from crowding me into a booth, our legs and arms squished together.

I managed to dislodge my arm just far enough that I could take a swig of my beer, and Greg chuckled, turning just enough that he could also raise his arm, though he settled for draping it behind me across the back of the booth. “Figured you could use a break,” he told me, his words rumbling against my side from where my back met his chest.

It was only then that I realised that by sitting like this, he’d effectively blocked me from view. I was surprisingly touched by the gesture, Greg literally putting himself in the line of fire to give me five minutes without anyone tracking me down to ask me a question or for my input on something.

I love our show more than almost anything else in my life, but sometimes it is nice to get a few minutes away from it all.

Still, I couldn’t help but glance up at him, well aware that, as we were over halfway through the series with a three day break ahead of us, almost no one actually wanted to discuss work, which meant I’d gotten off easy that night. “I’d think you’d be the one in need of a break.”

Greg just laughed. “From all the well-wishers?” he asked. “Please, my ego could never get enough of that.” He paused, examining me for a moment before he added, “Besides, I know you said nothing’s wrong, but…”

He trailed off and I frowned. “But what?”

“But I don’t believe you.”

The one downside of working so closely with someone for so long is that Greg can generally see through my feeble attempts at stretching the truth. Still, that didn’t mean I had to fold so easily. “Well, you should. I’m fine.”

“Horseshit.” Greg gently prodded the back of my head, grinning when I tried and failed to dodge out of the way of his finger. “Come on, out with it, mate. What’s going on?”

I gave up on avoiding his finger, figuring it was a losing battle, and luckily he decided to stop poking me, instead scratching lightly at the fine hairs on the back of my neck, rather like how I might pet my dog, Loky, behind her ears. The comparison probably should’ve been insulting, but whether it was the beers or something else, I didn’t mind it. “Nothing’s wrong,” I repeated. “I’m just in an odd mood.”

“Well, that’s no good,” he said bracingly. “We’ve got four episodes still to go, and I need my partner in tip-top shape. So how can I help?”

“This is already helping,” I told him honestly.

I half-expected him to make some joke of it, but instead he just gave me a small smile, still running his fingers across the back of my head. “Too bad we can’t stay like this forever,” he murmured, and for some reason, the thought left a pit in my stomach that I couldn’t explain any more than whatever other oddness I was still feeling. Luckily, Greg didn’t seem to notice, instead asking, “How about I distract you instead?”

He was smirking down at me in such a way that I knew he was probably making some kind of innuendo or joke, but I seized on it like a lifeline. “Actually, yes,” I said, ready to finally get on topic and take advantage of the entire spreadsheet I’d prepared for this exact level of inebriation. “I’ve been meaning to ask you—”

But before I could get into even one of my meticulously curated questions, we were interrupted, joined by seemingly half the group all at once as if they’d only just noticed that Greg and I had slipped away from the crowd. Amongst the general chatter, Toby from the production team leaned towards Greg, grinning. “You know, I really thought you were going to get him to say it,” he said, nodding towards me.

I knew immediately what he meant. “Say what?” Greg asked, just the hint of a grin at the corner of his mouth, something probably only I noticed.

I wasn’t quite as willing to play dumb. “I wouldn’t think it’d be worth the Ofcom complaint,” I said mildly.

“It would not be,” Andy Cartwright interjected from Toby’s other side. “But thankfully, Greg figured out a particularly effective way of bleeping you.”

Greg barked a laugh. “That’s what I’m good for, I suppose,” he agreed.

“Better you than me,” I told him. “Imagine if I had to censor you every time you swore.”

“Christ,” Greg said, as everyone laughed at the thought. “Pretty sure whatever that’d take would be more of an Ofcom problem than you saying ‘cunt’ on camera.”

I laughed at the thought, as did most everyone else, but one of the runners, emboldened, perhaps, by the several drinks we’d all imbibed by that point, added slyly, “Careful, or you’ll just fuel those fanfics that people on the internet write.”

Greg caught my eye, his smile sharpening into a smirk. “Pretty sure we’ve given them plenty of fuel already,” he said, giving me a wink. He took a sip of his drink before saying, slightly more seriously, “Besides, it’s all in good fun. No one in their right mind actually thinks this is anything other than what it is.”

“And what, pray tell, is it?” one of the sound technicians asked.

Greg reached blindly for my hand, and I let him take it, ready for whatever punchline he was planning on making. “Best and longest running joke I’ve ever been a part of,” he proclaimed solemnly.

He kissed my knuckles and, as expected, everyone assembled burst into laughter. 

Everyone but me.

Well, that’s not entirely true, and I suppose it’s not fair of me to exaggerate. At first I let Greg hold the pose of kissing my knuckles, not a good enough actor to do anything other than sit there blushing rather involuntarily. Then, as soon as I could slide my hand out of his, I chuckled into my glass as I took a gulp of beer.

But for some reason, that same niggling feeling of something being off from the recording was back, and even worse than before. Like a lingering sense of malaise, a shadow of wrongness that threatened to derail my entire night if I let it. 

For that reason, even though I knew I needed to spend more time with Greg if I was ever going to get him to answer any of my spreadsheet questions, I finished my beer and made my excuses before ducking out relatively early, ignoring the rather exaggerated pout that Greg was giving me in an attempt to get me to stay.

On any other night, it would probably work.

But I knew that we had the wrap party the following week as my next opportunity, and if I intended to take full advantage of it, I needed to put the long weekend to good use and arrive back at the studio on Monday in a far better mood for the final two days of recording.

Thankfully, it worked, and I returned to Pinewood refreshed and redetermined. And, of course, ready to put out four more excellent episodes of Taskmaster, lest anyone think that I had forgotten my primary purpose.

Even more thankfully, the remaining episodes went off mostly without a hitch, and without my odd feeling from the prior week making a resurgence. Well, there was a bit of unease in our final episode, mostly because my younger brother Chip was in attendance. To be entirely honest, I had almost forgotten he was planning on coming in to see it. It wasn’t his first time in the studio, and I suppose I should expect at this point that he’s familiar enough with the show and my own comedic persona that nothing Greg could say or do would shock him.

Still, it did present a certain amount of discomfort to sit through Greg mercilessly teasing me about what he deemed my crush on Jack Dee – one of my comedy heroes, and thankfully someone who took it all in his stride, even going so far as to joke that Greg should be nicer to me, fully aware that this would inspire the opposite response – in addition to Greg’s usual sexually charged jokes, knowing that my brother was in the audience and would certainly be using this as future fodder for his own teasing.

It culminated in the final score reveal, with Greg dragging what was meant to be a quick, silly moment of whispering to me for the scores out for a far longer moment of silliness than eventually made the edit. He kept coming up with increasingly ridiculous nicknames for me, like “my dear little boy” and “my sweet, sweet angel” and, even more absurdly, “my obedient pet” and finally, “my baby boy”.

With each new nickname, I couldn’t help but giggle anew, which of course only served to egg Greg on even more. But somehow, each nickname also seemed to hit weirder than the last, dredging up that same feeling of something being – again, the word is woefully inadequate – off. It had to just be my brother’s presence, I thought or assumed, that made it feel strange and uncomfortable in a way that wasn’t our usual brand of fun.

Thankfully, I was able to mostly put it from my mind as I had too much else on my plate to dwell on it.

Finally, after I think everyone had just about lost their patience with us, we managed to get through it and crown Andy Zaltzman the series champion. Then it was just the trophy handover and celebrating onstage, plus more than a few pickups, due in no small part to my giggles, before finally, we were released.

As always, Greg and I walked off stage together, my usual exuberance at another series under our belt tempered somewhat by my lingering unease. But Greg was not similarly affected, instead pulling me into a hug as soon as we were out of sight of the audience before he leaned in and kissed my cheek with his usual friendly affection. 

“Well done, mate,” he told me, but I barely heard his words over the sudden, strange buzzing in my ears.

Just as I felt the kiss burn like a brand against my cheek.

It was something he’d done probably fourteen or fifteen times before, once we had become good enough friends, and yet it had never felt like this, like I simultaneously wanted to embrace him without letting go and also hide in my dressing room far out of his reach.

Everything felt jagged and strange, like an obvious answer was just out of reach, like somehow every bit of lingering weirdness could be explained away if only I could put together a puzzle that was entirely blank.

“You coming?” Greg asked, and I realised a moment too late that I had stopped in the middle of the corridor, staring unseeingly at the wall in front of me.

“Yes, Greg,” I said, rejoining him, but for some reason, my suit jacket felt a size too small, and my palms were weirdly sweaty even though we were no longer under the harsh studio lights. Every time Greg’s arm brushed against mine as we walked sent a jolt of electricity down my spine, and I wondered for half a moment if I had finally cracked and gone entirely mad.

It was in a daze that we made it to our dressing rooms, and Greg paused in front of his, grinning down at me as if wholly unaware that something was wrong in a way I couldn’t even begin to articulate or explain. “I know I say it every time,” he told me, “but I love doing this with you.”

I nodded. “Yes,” I said, my voice strange to my own ears. “So do I.”

Greg didn’t hesitate, just pulling me into another hug, and I closed my eyes for a brief moment as he wrapped his arms around me, holding me close.

For just that one moment, it felt like whatever was going on, whatever strange feeling had taken over, all of it was pushed to the background, and it was just me and Greg, nothing more, nothing less. Simple, uncomplicated, the way our friendship always had been. Easy, the easiest relationship in my life besides my relationship with Rachel—

My eyes flew open and my breath seemed to punch out of my chest like a gasp, though it was mostly muffled against Greg’s suit jacket. Greg released me and clapped me on the shoulder, telling me, “See you at the wrap party,” but I just stood there, numb with the realisation that had just hit me like a lorry.

I had felt this sort of weirdness once before, but it had been almost twenty-five years prior. Had felt each touch as if afraid it would be the last, each comfortable silence like it had become suffocating. Had felt the same easy, perfect friendship tip just over the edge into something far more. 

I knew now what had made our usual, comfortable joke feel so wrong. I realised as I raised a dazed hand to my cheek that I didn’t want Greg to just kiss my cheek or forehead, that I certainly didn’t want him to kiss me on the lips only when it was for someone else to laugh at.

I wanted him to kiss me for real. I wanted him to hold me and not let me go.

The joke felt wrong because I didn’t want it to only be a joke anymore.

And the only other person I had ever felt that way about was– Rachel.

It should have felt unspeakably, unbearably wrong to think I felt this way about my colleague and friend – about my male colleague and friend – let alone about anyone who wasn’t my wife, the love of my life, but instead, it felt like everything had suddenly fallen into place, like everything made perfect sense.

Which might have been the worst part of it all.

I felt someone touch my shoulder and practically jumped out of my skin, earning me a laugh from my brother. “Not changed yet?” he asked. I opened my mouth to answer but no words seemed to come out. Luckily, he didn’t seem to notice. “I hope you don’t mind, but I don’t think I’m up for the wrap party,” he told me. “I know I promised, but—”

“It’s fine,” I managed, barely. “I’ll, er, I’ll see you at Mum and Dad’s at the weekend?”

“Yeah, and don’t forget we’re going golfing next week!”

I had forgotten, but luckily, I knew Rachel would have it in her diary.

At the thought of Rachel, my stomach twisted, and I nodded a quick goodbye at Chip before finally ducking into my dressing room. 

I want to say that I fell apart completely, because it feels like the sort of realisation that should make someone fall apart, but for better or for worse, it was quite the opposite. I took a few deep breaths before pulling myself together, getting changed and gathering my things before heading to the wrap party, putting on a good face to thank the cast and crew for their efforts this series.

And Greg claims I’m not a good actor.

But while I managed to hold it together for long enough to make my rounds, I knew that there was one person that I needed to talk to as soon as possible, one person who needed to know what I had only just realised.

One person who deserved to know.

So as soon as I was able, I slipped out of the wrap party, deliberately avoiding Greg so as to not have to explain why I was leaving early, unable to stand him taking the piss out of me as I knew he inevitably would, even though I also knew that if I told him a version of the truth, that Rachel needed me at home, he would let me go without complaint.

Still, I couldn’t bear to see Greg again. I could hold it together for everyone else, but I doubted I’d make it through that conversation.

Each passing mile as I headed back to Chesham only drove that home, my stomach twisting itself into knots as I tried without any success to figure out just how I was going to explain this to Rachel.

All too soon, I made it home, glad to see that the boys’ lights were out and they were in bed, even if it meant that I had no excuse to delay me any longer.

I trudged to the bedroom, to our bedroom, trying and failing with each passing step to come up with a single thing to say to the woman I married, the mother of my children, the only person until about two hours prior that I had ever really known I’d been in love with.

Rachel looked up from the book she was reading when I opened the door. “You’re back early,” she said, surprised. “How were the final episodes? And the wrap party?”

I wordlessly shook my head and her brow furrowed. She set her book aside. “What’s wrong?” she asked. “Has something happened?

I sat down heavily on the bed, desperate to just close my eyes and curl up next to her in hopes that when I woke the next morning, it would all have been a bad dream. But Rachel and I don’t keep secrets, or lie to each other, and I knew that I couldn’t start with this.

So I took a deep breath, and I forced myself to look at her as I told her, “I think I’m in love with Greg.”

I wish I could remember what her face looked like, what expression flashed across a face I knew almost as well as my own, but in the end the only thing I remember is her reaching for me, pulling me to her, gently running her fingers through my hair like I was a child who’d had a nightmare. “Okay,” she said simply, and I closed my eyes, for the first time feeling like it really might be. “We’ll figure it out.”

For not the first time, I wished I had her confidence.

But then again, what other choice did we have?

Chapter Text

Chapter Six: Interlude

There’s a saying in journalism: don’t bury the lede.

Granted, I was barely a working journalist for long enough to probably speak with any authority on the matter—

(“I imagine your wife feels the same way when you refer to yourself as a journalist as I do when you call yourself a comedian,” Greg had said once, a statement that was both hurtful and true, and thus the perfect level of hilarious. Still, I think he recognised that there was potential for me to take it the wrong way, as he quickly asked, “Too far?”

“For the banter section?” I asked, as that’s what we had been discussing that led to this latest insult. “No, it’s perfect.”

Greg had nodded. “That was the note from the producers, that I’ve been too nice to you this time round.”

Since I was one of the producers who had given him that note, I really shouldn’t have been surprised. But in any case, I digress.)

To bury the lede in journalism means to hide a news story’s main purpose in the second or third paragraph, or even further down in an article.

A discerning reader (or editor, or publicist) would probably argue that a similar axiom almost certainly applies to a book about realising you’re a middle-aged, presumably straight, happily married man who also happens to be in love with your male co-host.

The difference, I would argue (and believe me, have argued several times over now with said editor and publicist) is that this is not a book about realising I’m in love with Greg. 

This is not a book about me wrestling with this discovery and the hell I almost certainly put my wonderful wife through, despite what the tabloid headlines will absolutely claim when all of this comes out (Rachel has my full permission to sell her ‘salacious’ side of the story to the highest bidder should she ever want to, just as I have her full permission to write this book – we don’t keep secrets from each other and, more disappointingly to certain corners of the public who do love a good scandal, we remain happily married). 

This is a book about learning something about Greg that I hadn’t previously known. Whatever I’ve also learned about myself is somewhat incidental.

I also realise that it’s easier to accept this alleged burying of the lede if you understand, as probably only I do, just how little I had any grasp of how I felt about Greg when I undertook this endeavour, just as I recognise it is hard to reconcile the fact that I went from not having any inkling of what I felt to realising I was in love with Greg in the span of about two hours. Surely I must be, or have been, lying to myself, and by extension, the readers of this book, on at least one front.

I cannot always promise complete honesty, if only because large swathes of this are not solely my story to tell, and while Rachel and I don’t keep secrets from each other, there are some that are meant to be kept between the two of us. But what I can promise is that what I will share is the truth, at least as far as I know it. 

And the truth is that realising I was in love with Greg was the easy part.

It shouldn’t have been, I don’t think. But perhaps because I fell so slowly into it, or perhaps just because it was something we had been joking about for so long that it became as obvious as the punchline to a bad joke, but in the end, it was as easy as calling the sky blue or the grass green. And once I was able to name it, it became much easier to recognise it for what it was throughout the various strands of my life.

Like I said, that was the easy part.

The far more difficult part was in figuring out what any of this meant, whether for myself, for my marriage, or, perhaps most relevantly to the reading audience, for this year-long project I had undertaken and the book documenting it. In other words, if it all seems like I was remarkably well adjusted and quite quickly after this realisation, please know that couldn’t be further from the truth, and don’t let my now months of distance between this all happening and me writing this convince you that it was, for me, anything other than a complete and utter mess – or more accurately, that I was anything other than a complete and utter mess. I didn’t know what any of it meant (and, quite frankly, I still don’t). Did this mean I was gay? I didn’t think so, seeing as how I was very happily married to a woman and had been for nearly half of my life. So then did it mean I was bisexual? Pansexual? Polysexual? Queer? I barely knew what any of these terms meant, let alone where or if I fit, and worse, I had no earthly idea where to even start to figure it out.

What I was, and still am, is extremely lucky to have a wife who took care of getting me booked in to see a counsellor as soon as possible, and us both booked in to see a marriage counsellor.

I have friends who are able to speak much more eloquently than I ever could on the relative merits of therapy. I admit that, prior to this revelation, it was only ever something on the periphery of my radar. My general attitude in life is a sort of happy go lucky optimism coupled with a very British stiff upper lip, and supplemented by the general belief that very little in life can’t be solved over a pint and packet of crisps at the pub.

As such, to have this be my first foray into psychotherapy was more than a little overwhelming, and something I needed to adjust to almost as much as the realisation that had pushed me to this point in the first place. I’m not used to speaking about myself at great length without falling back on humour, and found quite quickly that humour as a defence mechanism is somewhat frowned upon in counselling sessions.

Or, as my rather patient counsellor reminded me many, many times over, it’s a waste of both my time and hers.

I suppose my biggest issue with therapy is that I expected there to be answers. I expected to be told what to do. I excel at being told what to do, if I’m being honest, so putting myself into a situation where there are no right answers and certainly no foolproof set of instructions to follow was frustrating, to say the least.

And also frequently infuriating.

I remember rather early on when I started, during what may have been my fourth or fifth therapy session, our time for the day was winding down and I was feeling frustrated with the usual lack of solid instructions imparted by my counsellor. “I just don’t want to feel this way,” I told her, which was a common refrain in those early days as I struggled to adjust to the magnitude of my revelation.

“Okay,” she said, setting her pen down in her notebook before closing it in the way I would come to learn meant we were done for the day. “Then don’t.”

I left, those words rolling around in my head. And they stayed there, echoing on repeat, an even more constant refrain over the following days ahead of my next session.

Then don’t. Simple as.

If only it was.

I came in for my next session quite cross. “It doesn’t work like that,” I told my counsellor, rather accusingly. “Haven’t you thought that if I could just stop feeling this way then I would have, a long time ago? But I can’t just stop feeling this way!”

“No,” she agreed. “So don’t you think it’s time you stopped expecting yourself to be able to?” I gaped at her, genuinely speechless for what may have been the first time in my adult life, and she paused before adding, slightly gentler, “And don’t you think it’s time we start focusing on what to do to move forward, knowing it’s something you can’t just stop?”

As a comedian, I'm used to discomfort, whether in the form of dying on stage or in manufactured discomfort as a punchline. As someone who is routinely humiliated on national television, I’d say I’m even more used to discomfort than most. But this was a whole new world of discomfort, of having to just sit with the enormity of everything that I was feeling.

And I did not enjoy it.

I reached out to my good friend and fellow comedian John Robins, as he has spent quite a bit of time in therapy and I felt he might be able to give me some support. I didn’t share the specifics of the circumstances, of course, but relayed a version of the story without getting into details.

“Ah,” he said, when I had finished. “Alex, my dear, that’s what they call a breakthrough.”

I wrinkled my nose. “I didn’t like it.”

“Mm,” John agreed. “But you’ll never forget it. And you’ll never be able to think about it the same way.”

Well, he wasn’t wrong about that.

Luckily, I was not alone both in therapy and in hoping that therapy might bring some answers rather than just more questions. When we started marriage counselling, the first thing our counsellor asked each of us was what we wanted out of the experience. Rachel, as always, was straightforward and entirely correct in her response: “Answers, and the best way to move forward together in light of those answers.”

She is a brilliant woman.

I wanted the same thing, of course, but I’d’ve never been able to articulate it nearly as nicely.

Our counsellor then asked Rachel what questions she was aiming to get answered, and among the many, practical and emotional alike, there was one in particular that sticks out, even now.

“Why Greg?” she asked, an entirely reasonable question, and one I’d asked myself more times than I could count. And then her follow-up question, as cutting as it was equally reasonable: “What has he got that I haven’t?”

My initial instinct was, loyal as I am, nothing, but that wasn’t the truth and above all else, I owe her the truth. My next instinct was that what Greg had is our comedy partnership, that perfect synchronicity that we’d developed with very little effort. It is intoxicating, sharing that with someone, knowing the part of them that they consider the most important as well as you know yourself. I’m not a big believer in soulmates, but surely this has to be about as close as it comes.

But the fact of the matter is, while Greg and I do share that, he’s not the first person I’ve shared that with, and just given the nature of comedy, it’s doubtful he’ll be the last. But while, for example, Tim Key and I had that, with all due respect to Timmy, I’ve never wanted to snog him except as a joke.

So what then? Why Greg? What did he have that would make ruining my entire life worth it?

“What do you mean by that?” my therapist asked when I brought it up to her. “What do you think you’re ruining?”

The answer should have been obvious – after all, it’s what I had been most afraid of going into this, that my revelation would ruin my life. “I don’t know,” I admitted. “Everything, I suppose.” She was silent, which I had already come to learn meant it wasn’t the answer she was looking for, and I needed to dig a little deeper. “I just– I feel as though I have everything I could ever want.”

That stirred a reaction, as she made a note in her notebook, and I had never before so fully appreciated why contestants on Taskmaster get so irritated with me and my refusal to disclose helpful information. “Clearly not,” she pointed out, “or you wouldn’t want Greg.”

Usually, given what I do for a living, I have a healthy appreciation of pedantry. Somewhat less so when it’s so thoroughly used against me. 

“Then I have everything I should want,” I corrected, trying very hard not to sound as sulky as I felt, and I paused before adding, “And wanting more than what I am already lucky enough to have feels selfish.”

She nodded, which was at least the tiniest bit less infuriatingly inscrutable. “You’ve talked a lot about being lucky to be where you are,” she noted. “Lucky to have Rachel, and the kids, and a job you love.”

It was and still is true. I am lucky beyond belief.

“I am.”

Another nod, this one slightly more forceful. “Then maybe you need to reframe this for yourself,” she suggested.

Any number of jokes about framing leapt to mind, and it spoke to the effect therapy was having on me that I managed not to say any of them. “What do you mean?” I asked instead.

“I mean, you get to spend half of your life with a wife and a family that you love,” she told me. “And you get to spend the other part of your life with someone you also love. Wouldn’t you consider that lucky?” She didn’t wait for me to answer. “And if it is lucky, then isn’t there at least one part of your life that can’t be ruined by it?”

As usual, she had me there.

I was lucky in more ways than I could ever possibly name, and lucky all the more that I had found not just one person to love and share my life with, but two. In that way, my initial instinct was entirely correct: there isn’t anything that Greg can offer me that Rachel can’t. And that’s the point. Why Greg? Because he makes me feel the same way that Rachel does, because even though they could not be more different, they both make me feel safe and cherished and lucky to get to be as weird as I want to be. They’re the two people in this world with whom I have the most fun, the people I could never tire of spending time with, the two people I go to bed at night thinking of and wake up the next morning ready to see all over again.

And for as big of a wrench as it had unceremoniously thrown into my life, getting to realise that meant realising that I am, once again, so incredibly lucky.

Another breakthrough. Who would have thought.

It was times like these that I wish John still drank, mainly so that I could buy him a pint in thanks.

Of course, these barely scratch the surface of breakthroughs I’ve had since starting therapy, just one of many such reframing moments I’ve had and will continue to have, too numerous to detail here.

I suppose it’s only fair, then, to take a moment to reframe this book, despite my earlier protestations. Because while I set out to tell the story of Greg or at least of whatever factoid I ended up learning about him, for myself at least, there is no story about this project without also including this part of my own story.

Just as so much of myself has become inextricably linked with Greg over the past decade, so too is the rest of this story inextricably linked to the fact that I was in love with him. No matter how much I would love to focus solely on Greg and my attempt at learning something new about him from here on out, I cannot do so without this as an undercurrent to everything about to happen, a parameter I never intended to include.

In other words, as you read the rest of this book, keep one thing in mind: I was well and truly fucked.

Chapter Text

Chapter Seven: June & July 2024

Of course, one of the many ways in which I was – if you’ll pardon another use of the word – fucked was the fact that, in addition to working around my usual filming schedule and several tour dates in June, I now also had to schedule my conversations with Greg around my individual counselling sessions and the marriage counselling sessions I did with Rachel. Not to mention, of course, that the central tenet of this ongoing project was to spend as much time as possible with a person I could barely stand to think about without feeling immediately overwhelmed.

The latter wasn’t much I could do anything about, certainly not in those early days, but the former was a real concern, especially since time is one thing I haven’t an abundance of on a good day, and those first days at the end of May stretching through to the dog days of summer were not, by and large, what I would consider good days.

I had begged off from our first few scheduled calls after we finished the series 18 recording, citing a list from Rachel a mile long of tasks of my own to complete around the house before the Horne Section tour resumed and task filming began again in earnest, and Greg agreed immediately, as I knew he would. He needs some time to recharge after the studio. As much as people will point out that it’s only five days of work, it’s five days where he has to be constantly charming and funny and simply on at all times, and that is draining for anyone.

I thoroughly expected after the first couple of missed calls from the schedule that Greg would simply forget about it – I had banked on it, in fact. He’d certainly already forgotten about his challenge regarding friendship chicken, considering he’d let me skip a few weeks without claiming victory, and I figured the calls themselves would go the same way.

Instead, I got a WhatsApp in June asking me if we were still on for our customary chat.

It was a good thing, then, that I had a backup plan.

“My in-laws are visiting,” I warned Greg as I FaceTimed him from the room that functions most as my office in my house. “So I can’t chat long.”

Greg blanched at the mention of my in-laws. “Christ,” he muttered. “Does your mother-in-law know we’re talking?”

“I thought it best not to tell her,” I replied, a little wryly.

Greg is terrified of my mother-in-law, largely because she is a woman with a formidable personality (she would have to be, in order to raise Rachel as she did), and also because she dislikes him. It’s a potent combination for a man who fears authority like he does.

“Wise man,” Greg said, still looking a little ashen at the thought of my mother-in-law. “How long are they in town for?”

They, of course, weren’t actually in town, so this attempt to buy myself a little time couldn’t continue indefinitely, as even Greg would probably get wind of it sooner rather than later. Instead, it was meant only to bridge the gap between not being able to face Greg and being genuinely too busy to talk to him as much. “Oh, just this week and a bit of the next,” I lied, in what I hoped was an airy, convincing way that he wouldn’t question. “Then it’s back to the usual grind – tour, tasks, promo—”

Greg nodded in that way that told me he was already starting to tune me out, a good sign. “Busy boy,” he said, before squinting at his phone. “What have you possibly got to film promo for?”

“The Live Experience, mostly,” I answered truthfully. 

Judging by the look on Greg’s face, he’d already forgotten that was something that’d be coming up in the fall. “Ah, right. Anything you’ll need me for?”

We had filmed most of the promo for the then upcoming Taskmaster: The Live Experience prior to series 18, and used our time with an audience and already in costume to film the rest, but the demand for tickets had already been enough that the studio anticipated us potentially needing to film more. Since I spend a fair amount of time at the house and in my costume, this was a fairly easy ask of me; since Greg does not, it was a bit of a harder sell for him.

Or at least, that was the excuse I was going to be giving for the foreseeable future whenever anyone suggested getting Greg to film anything with me.

“Don’t think so,” I told him, as cheerfully as I could. “But, er, if anything comes up—”

“Have your people call mine?”

I nodded. “Exactly.”

Greg smirked. “Good boy.”

Usually at this point we’d turn the conversation to something else, but I found myself strangely tongue-tied for safe topics and, frankly, a little desperate to get the conversation over with sooner rather than later, if only to make sure I didn’t do or say something irredeemably stupid.

Luckily, there was more to my plan than simply name-dropping my in-laws into the conversation.

“Dad?” my youngest bellowed from elsewhere in the house, right on schedule per the timer on my phone that had just started silently ringing. “Gran’s looking for you.”

Greg went even paler than he usually was. “Fucking hell,” he muttered, and I swear he very nearly rung off then and there. If only I could be so lucky. “Duty calls, I see.”

I nodded. “So it would seem,” I said, trying my best not to sound as eager to end the call as I was. “I’ll, er, I’ll probably have to call you from the road next week…”

Half of me hoped he’d tell me not to bother. 

The other half of me hoped he’d say he was looking forward to it.

Of course, all he ended up saying was the entirely inscrutable, “All right, then.” Followed by, “Give the boys my best.”

“Of course.”

For as much as Greg professes to hate children, he’s never been anything other than kind and supportive to my own, even if his support tended to be at my expense. Like the time he enlisted my eldest when he was at Pinewood on work experience to play a series of pranks on the cast and crew, leaving me to follow my son around all day to do things like re-tie the cameraman’s shoes and unstick someone’s dressing room door.

Greg had immense fun with it. I had distinctly less fun with it, which I imagine is no small part of what made it so fun for Greg.

“And give Rachel my love,” Greg added, which despite being a common way for him to sign off nonetheless made my stomach drop to somewhere around my knees at the confusing mix of emotions at Greg, with all my complicated feelings toward him, asking me to give my wife his love, something I selfishly wanted for myself.

I coughed into my fist to try to hide it. “I always do.”

Again, Greg didn’t seem to notice. “Bye bye,” he told me.

"Bye, Greg," I echoed, before finally, mercifully, ending the call.

I took a long moment to try to compose my thoughts before making my way back to where Rachel was waiting for me, pausing to slip my youngest a fiver for his efforts because, when in doubt, bribery works wonders. Rachel was getting ready to meet up with some friends for lunch and so looked at me in the mirror as I trudged into our en suite behind her. “How did it go?”

In response, I let out a long groan and sat down on the toilet lid, slumping forward to rest my forehead against the sink. “Eurgh,” I replied, ever eloquent, before turning my head and asking, knowing that I sounded pathetic but unable to stop myself, “Is it too late for me to choose a different career path?”

To her credit, she didn’t laugh, though judging by the look on her face, it was a close thing. “Never too late,” she told me. “But I don’t think you’d be happy doing anything else.”

As always, she wasn’t wrong. “Probably not.”

“Besides, you realise you haven’t got to do this, yeah?” she asked, and when I lifted my head far enough to frown at her, she elaborated, “The book, mainly, and the weekly phone calls and everything else that goes along with it.”

“Do you want me to stop?” I asked.

I know Rachel better than probably anyone, and as such I know when she’s choosing her words carefully. “I want you to be able to work through this at whatever pace you need to,” she said finally. “And I don’t want you to feel like you have to force something just because you’ve committed to it and you hate disappointing anyone, including yourself.”

She also knows me far too well. As such, I didn’t even mount a token protest. Still– “Part of me missed it,” I admitted. “Not the project, so much, but talking to him every week.”

Rachel just nodded as if she hadn’t expected anything different. “Well, like I said,” she told me, “I don’t think you’d be happy doing anything else.”

She came over and kissed the top of my head before leaving me alone with my thoughts while she finished getting ready to go.

Of course, between my phone call with Greg, my conversation with Rachel, and my ongoing attempt at being shrunk (shrinked? shrunken? Where’s Susie Dent when one needs her?) by the finest counsellors in the greater Buckinghamshire area, it wasn’t as if I was missing out on opportunities to think about Greg in those early days.

Which was not helped by the fact that others were always eager to bring him up. “And you say you’ve got two great marriages,” Gabby Logan said as we were recording an episode of her podcast, The Midpoint, on a Monday morning later in June, “and one of them is with Greg.”

A smart man probably would’ve taken a look at his diary and rescheduled some unnecessary press or podcast appearances given everything else going on in my life that June.

Unfortunately for all involved, and as this book has proven now several times over, I am not a smart man.

Obviously, it was reasonable to expect Greg to come up in most conversations – he was the Taskmaster, after all – but I’d somehow been lulled into complacency by the easy conversation Gabby and I had been having to that point. “Yes,” I agreed, because there’s little point in denying my own words, even if, for me, they had taken on quite a different meaning in recent weeks. “It’s an odd marriage with Greg. It’s sort of a long distance marriage. We’ll have intense moments of passion, and then we won’t see each other for three months.”

Which was all true, of course, though perhaps I should have chosen a better word than ‘passion’. Better for whom, and how, was an entirely different question, and one I’m not particularly keen on dwelling on, just as I certainly wasn’t too caught up in my word choice that morning, though I did hasten to add, blunting my words with a joke, as is my way, “Which maybe that’s not a bad way of doing a marriage.”

I didn’t really expect Gabby to just leave things there, though I might’ve hoped she would. “He’s very much, in real life, he’s quite a scary chap, I feel,” she told me, and despite the fact that we had literally just been talking about Greg, it still took me a moment to realise who she meant. Scary isn’t the first word I would ever use to describe Greg – it wasn’t even the fiftieth. I can understand why that might be someone’s first impression, but it couldn’t be more incorrect.

And despite my then very complicated feelings towards Greg, despite wanting to turn the topic off of him altogether, despite the fact that I was at least slightly worried that if I so much as blinked the wrong way, a veteran interviewer like Gabby might realise exactly what I was trying to hide regarding my co-host, I knew I couldn’t let that stand.

Perhaps reading some of that on my face, Gabby added, “I’ve done shows with him where he’s quite, because he’s so big and he’s got such a booming voice, and he can be quite– not scary, but he can be quite a presence, can’t he? So I mean, he just amplifies that a lot.”

“Yeah, he walks into the room and everyone notices,” I said, which seemed like a safely neutral thing to say. “Whether or not you know who, I mean, you know who he is anyway, but you turn and look, because this guy’s just made the room dark by his shadow.” And then, because the thought of anyone finding Greg scary ran so antithetical to my Greg, to the Greg who made me laugh, the Greg who sang silly songs and pulled funny faces to make my boys laugh, the Greg who was careful and measured with every touch, I had to add, “But he’s so gentle, he’s really a soft teddy bear, really.”

He wouldn’t appreciate me saying it quite like that, but as the likelihood of Greg listening to a podcast I was a guest on was fairly slim, he would also very likely never know.

“But I still become a little boy around him,” I told Gabby, which was on distinctly less neutral territory, verging into ‘saying too much’, because I never did learn when to keep my mouth shut. “Just because you feel, because I’m quite– I’m six foot two.” (“Five foot four,” Greg’s voice said in my ear, just as it always did.) “So I rarely look up to people physically. And I really enjoy, you know, feeling small again. Honestly, it’s great.”

Again, perhaps a bit more honesty than I should have shared – something readers of this book certainly are intimately acquainted with by this point – but nothing I wouldn’t have said about Greg before my realisation. Besides, I could still easily steer it back onto firmer footing. “And when my kids are with him, especially a few years ago when they were little, he’s so brilliant with kids.”

“He was a teacher, wasn’t he?” Gabby asked. “So he did still have that kind of good communication.”

Personally, I wasn’t convinced that teaching had made Greg good with kids – if anything, I suspect being good with kids kept Greg as a teacher far longer than he should have been. “Yeah, he does. And he always talks about how much he hated teaching, but he also loved teaching at the same time, I think.”

Mercifully, Gabby steered the conversation from there, and I breathed a sigh of something quite a bit like relief. Perhaps not rescheduling this – or any other press appearance I had scheduled that summer – wasn’t quite the mistake I had initially thought that it was. 

If anything, being able to talk about Greg the way I always had without sticking my foot in my mouth too badly served as an unexpected reassurance that perhaps my entire world hadn’t actually fallen out from under me, no matter how much it might have felt like it. Surely this meant that I would be fine, that I could get through this and still do what was ostensibly my job – right?

I had ended my conversation with Gabby by asserting that I hadn’t (yet) had a midlife crisis, and if anything, this really only demonstrated that I was entirely correct, and that this whole revelation regarding Greg and my feelings therein didn’t meet the requirements to be classified as a midlife crisis, if one were to pedantically break it down at least. On the midlife side of things, statistically, I was already a few years past it, and if I lived up to my ever ongoing ‘oldest man in the world’ attempt, I wasn’t even close to midlife yet. As for crisis—

Was it really a crisis? That evoked images of destruction and chaos, and while that certainly had been my fear as to what this could devolve into, it hadn’t yet. In fact, most of my life, minus the regular therapy sessions, remained relatively stable. 

(I must at this point refer you to the previous chapter and the very real internal turmoil I continued to face. If it seems I am vacillating wildly between extremes, it certainly felt like it at the time, too. I would spend one day convinced that I had irrevocably ruined my life and the following day believing I was the luckiest man in the world. As a whole, I had more good days than bad, helped as always by Rachel and her steadfast refusal to let me believe for even a moment that I had broken something irreparably between us.

But for all of the progress that I was making with each subsequent counselling session, for each breakthrough and realisation I gained, it should go without saying that denial, in addition to being more than a river in Egypt, is also quite a potent drug. I’d assume, anyway, my experience with drugs being remarkably limited. I’ve seen far more internet-savvy people [read: far younger] than I refer to this particular brand of denial as ‘copium’, and there is almost certainly some truth to that.) 

Maybe the crisis was still to come, but whether it was just my hopeless optimism or willful naïveté, I went into the next leg of the Horne Section tour with something like renewed confidence. It helped that the Horne Section had a book coming out that July, Make Some Noise (available in all major retailers), and, while newly convinced that I could manage most Taskmaster things without issue, it was still nice, like with the tour, to be able to promote something entirely separate from Greg.

It also made the brief phone calls we had those first few weeks of summer easier to get through, and gave us plenty of neutral territory – mainly touring life, with Greg continuing to prepare for his forthcoming tour – to commiserate about together.

It was a shame that it, of course, couldn’t last. 

As the band and I got ready for one of our promotion stops for the book’s release, Joe asked over the usual din of the band goofing off, “Did you ever work out that thing with the secret?”

I had entirely forgotten about our conversation now three months prior, and, rather unfortunately, while I was scrambling for anything resembling a coherent and noncommittal answer, the rest of the band decided to get in on the action. “Who’s got a secret?” Ed asked, at the same moment Will said, “Are we sharing secrets now?”, all while Mark looked like he was delighted at where the conversation was headed even if he almost certainly had no plans to contribute.

Joe may be one of my oldest friends but I was very tempted to throttle him.

“No one’s got any secrets,” I said, perhaps a little more cross than I normally would be.

“Well, except for you and Joe, apparently,” Mark said.

I gave him a look and he had the nerve to smirk at me like he knew exactly what he was doing – which, knowing Mark, he did. I glanced around the room at everyone’s expectant faces (well, everyone except for Joe, who had the good grace to at least look mildly chagrined at his role in this). Realising that I was not likely to make it out of this without some sort of explanation, I sighed before telling them, “Joe and I were reminiscing about things from our childhood only we know about each other, and the realisation we came to is that none of us has any real secrets. Too many of us know too much about each other.”

“Speak for yourself,” Mark muttered, and almost as one, we all burst out laughing.

It was one of those things that was funny mostly for how not really funny it was, coupled with a healthy dose of preshow adrenaline that made us all a bit loony (or loonier than usual), the kind of laughter where when we all managed to stop laughing, the resulting silence would just set us off again.

The kind of thing you can really only share with some of your closest friends.

When I had finally composed myself for real, I told Joe with none of my previous irritation, “Anyway, I did figure something out, thanks mate.”

“You’re welcome,” Joe said immediately, followed a moment later by, “Wait, sorry, for what exactly?”

Which just set us all off again.

Finally, we all filed out to actually do what we were here for, but Ben caught my arm, holding me behind the others. “Are you all right?” he asked.

“I’m fine,” I told him.

But he didn’t look convinced. “You know that you can tell us anything, right?”

“Yeah, I know. Thanks, Ben.”

It was easy saying the words, easy patting Ben on the shoulder before we hurried to catch up with the others, and easy to not think about it until later when I was home. But it was only when I did start thinking about it that I realised that it would in fact be immensely complicated to tell anyone, if ever I wanted to. The idea of trying to explain so much that even I still didn’t fully understand about myself—

It seemed impossible.

I realise that it was undoubtedly strange to think that at the same time I was still actively planning on writing some kind of book about this whole mess. That I was planning my confessional to the masses (probably somewhat smaller masses than my publisher would like or the advance sales will indicate, but that’s neither here nor there) while I wasn’t sure how I would ever be able to tell anyone in my life, especially when I couldn’t really be sure how my closest friends would react, let alone the broader comedy world or the job which technically employs both myself and Greg, and certainly not strangers on the street or, heaven forbid, my in-laws.

Maybe this was my crisis, I remember thinking, staring down at a vague and long-since scrapped outline of what I had originally envisioned for this book. Maybe the crisis was actually having a story worth telling and yet being entirely and completely unable to figure out how or even if to tell anyone.

Of course, the hardest person for me to tell was also the only one I had, and the most supportive, but as much as I love and appreciate Rachel and her unwavering commitment to staying by my side through all of this, it didn’t answer any of the thousand of questions and ‘what if’ scenarios I played on a loop in my head, far more like Greg’s usual catastrophising than my own normal way of dealing with things.

And, in fact, Rachel’s support ended up raising a big question of all its own.

On a seasonably warm evening, I was enjoying a beer out in the garden while waiting for Loky to decide if she was going to wee or not. The boys were already in bed and I heard the door open and close behind me before I felt Rachel wrap her arms around my waist from behind.

I raised my arm automatically so that she could slide next to me before settling it across her shoulders. I leaned over, resting my cheek against the top of her head. “I love you,” I told her, true as it always is.

“I know,” she told me. “And I know you love him, too.”

I may not have had all the answers I wanted, but at least I had gotten to a point where I could acknowledge that without feeling like I was confessing to a crime. “Yes.”

She twisted her head to look up at me. “I realise you’re still getting used to it, so to speak—”

I shook my head. “I don’t know that I’ll ever be used to it,” I admitted. “But I am trying.”

Rachel nodded as if that answered an unasked question. “But have you given any thought to what you plan to do next?”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

She raised both eyebrows, for a moment looking so much like Greg that it almost took my breath away. “I mean, in a little over a month, you’ll start recording series 19. You’ll be spending five days sitting next to him, and that’s not even to mention whatever joint press appearances you have on the books, plus the live experience launch—”

I blanched at the thought. “Oh, God,” I muttered, scrubbing a hand across my face. “That’s so much.”

Rachel looked almost concerned. “Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”

“No, I– I’m glad you did.” And I was, in a way. Forewarned is forearmed, and while I generally didn’t try to prematurely assume trouble, in this case, it was probably worth it to assume the worst. “No use pretending otherwise really.”

She nodded. “Right.”

I shook my head to clear it and took a swig of beer before glancing down at her, realising I had never actually answered her question. “Sorry, what was your question again?”

She managed to look slightly amused before repeating, “Have you given any thought to what you plan to do next?”

“Right,” I said, nodding, before I hesitated. “Er, in what regard?”

Rachel raised both her eyebrows, looking at me as if she thought I was quite thick. “Are you going to tell him?”

“Tell who?” I asked stupidly.

She was definitely looking at me as if I was thick now. “Tell Greg.”

I gaped at her, looking, I’m sure, rather like the idiot she seemed to think I might be, my mind entirely blank of any response, either sincere or humorous.

It had been ten days, two months, and I suppose a few hours since my initial realisation. I had spent now dozens of hours in counselling coming to terms with what I had learned about myself and what it might mean for me and my marriage. I had spent not nearly as many hours in conversation with the man himself, doing my level best to ensure that nothing in our working dynamic was affected by my revelation.

And yet it had never once occurred to me that, as the other half of this equation, Greg might just deserve to know.

So I gave her the only answer that I could: “I have no idea.”