This year’s Taskmaster New Year Treat was a two-parter, the first time the festive special has been extended from one hour, and both parts were absolutely brilliant. The New Year episodes tend to feature a cast that aren’t comedians, and this time we had Big Zuu, Jill Scott, Sam Ryder, Suzie Dent and Rose Ayling-Ellis - a dream cast.

The ever expanding list of streaming services is a constant topic of conversation and consternation amongst TV enthusiasts, particularly as the current trend is for more and more silos popping up with selected own properties, and fewer general access places like Netflix. I hadn’t expected the distillation of shows to go down to such a granular level as Taskmaster have taken it. The brilliant comedy panel show, that features a selection of comedians trying to complete silly tasks to gain subjective points from the Taskmaster himself, has become a global phenomenon, and that, in part, is the problem.

I love, love, love Taskmaster, and I can’t fault the dedication of Alex Horne to allow the public to get involved like this - there’s a board game, there’s a previous book, and now there’s this adventure. It’s not just a bunch more tasks to play at your leisure, there’s also an underlying game afoot. For each task, there’s a clue that apparently leads to the head of the Taskmaster.

My obsession with Taskmaster meant I was always going to eventually read this book, but it wasn’t until creator Alex Horne was tweeting about the picnic meet-up that I was properly invested. So backing up a little - the book is really just a list of tasks that you can take part in yourself, either as a solo project or as a group endeavour. They’re fun tasks but of course the real comedy and enjoyment comes from how you interpret them.

I’d never even heard of Taskmaster until this latest series, and it only crossed my path because I follow James Acaster on Twitter, and he was a participant in the latest series. I like Acaster’s work, and some of the clips and gifs I’ve seen have made me wonder what all the fuss is about. I had to do a bit of digging to find where I could watch this show – it’s broadcast on Dave, which means it’s part of the UK TV family. There’s an on demand app called UK TV Play (I do not recommend this app, it’s very poor compared to other video streaming efforts). So, I downloaded and started watching.